Iain McCracken polishes off his…. Wars!
Medal Wars is a 2D isometric shooter by Retro Army, ostensibly set in WW1. Green army (that’s you) versus Black. Your character is a grunt, just arrived at camp. The ‘cockney’ cheeky chappie is obviously sent straight off for some basic training. Cue standard obstacle course-style thing that involves running from A to B and trying out how to shoot, slash and wallop your way through some very threatening straw dummies that look a bit like the bloke that tried to hit on your girlfriend in the pub last night.
That’s over with? Good. Now we head back to the officer for our first mission.
As well as the obvious go there > kill them > blow that up style missions, there is also the option to buy new weapons in a gun store, upgrade the ones you’ve got and also collect cigarette cards, which can randomly drop from enemies you kill or crates/boxes you destroy. I never did manage to find them all, but there is a reward for completing a set. Might head back in for the sake of completion after writing….
For most of the game the view is top down, moving and shooting by clicking the left mouse button. However, as you approach the boss moments Retro Army mix it up by giving you a pop-up target range of enemies to deal with instead. This is an unexpected but very welcome break from the constant swearing due to a miss-placed clicks that either shoot instead of move your troops, or vice versa.
The boss moments themselves are a little underwhelming. In truth the visuals and spectacle throughout the game are too. Perhaps I’m being too critical, but even with my lack of ability I found it to be too easy. The only thing that managed to make it a challenge was running out of ammo.
To summarise, Medal Wars doesn’t try to be immense in scope or feel. Its a game thats small in scope in terms of visuals as well as gameplay. The game just tries to entertain and for that I salute it, if a bit halfheartedly. I did manage to finish all the missions and bosses within about eight hours of play, but I probably will find myself playing it again just to find out what the special prizes are for collecting all the cards.
7 little isometric explosions 10