Written by: Alex

 

 

 

"Military Madness" is a striped down turn based strategy game. The franchise has been around for twenty years, making on and off appearances on a number of platforms, including the PC Engine and Playstation. It has been eleven years since the series last graced a major platform, so Hudson has decided to revitalise it and release it for download on the XBLA market place.

 

With eleven years past since it’s last iteration Military Madness was in dire need of a graphical overhaul before it hit the current consoles. The original sprites have been re-imagined in 3D and, on a technical level, look good for the scope of the title.

 

By virtue of releasing the game as a download only title the developers were also able to place a greater focus on online play. The single campaign consists of small-scale skirmishes and offers little in the way of lasting challenge. I assume this is because Hudson, knowing that players would have access to the Internet designed the single player as a training ground for multiplayer that forms the backbone of the game.

 

 

Perhaps my biggest problem with Military Madness comes from its story’s heritage. An Earth force sent to battle convicts rebelling from their force labour mines on the moon. While it is undeniably clichéd, the plot serves as a serviceable setting for the action. Unfortunately the moon does not serve as a fantastic environment for today’s more visually demanding audiences.

When the game was originally conceived there were legitimate worries about colour palette, the limited greys’ of the moon were perfect.

 

Now however the moon is just featureless. While it is possible to distinguish between the grey of flat lands, harsh terrain and marsh it is more of a strain on my eyes than I ideally want from my games. This combined with each army having all the same units and being predominantly grey with only highlights of a similarly hued green and blue to distinguish them, and you find your self navigating more by the menu bar than you do the map.

 

The gameplay is very striped down and combat focused. In fact apart from your numerous pre-allocated units all you have is a base, which offers little more than a last line of defences, and factories that can repair units.

 

 

There is no recourse management, no construction and very little in the way of fortifications. It makes everything feel quite bare bones, and the only thing that ever drives you towards combat is capturing neutral or opposing factories, either to take the units contained within or as a base from which to launch further attacks.

 

While the previous paragraph may make it sound like I didn’t enjoy the combat you would be wrong, it was just more direct than I am used to. There is plenty of unit variety and positional tactics to make the game more cerebral than my initially impressions lead me to believe, and once I started to work out how to use terrain to my advantage everything became a lot more entertaining.