Review: PC Flash Game - Age Of War

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Flash Review! - Age of War

We have another game brought to you by Armor Games, or is it Max Games.  I’m not exactly sure how this Flash gaming business works just yet because every developing site seems to have some games from other developers, which I guess have their own development logo?  Whatever the case here is the review of Age of War.

This will be a much shorter review this time around because of the simplistic nature of this game.  Basically there is your own base established on the left side of the screen, and your opponent’s base on the far right side of the screen.  Defeat the opponent.  Okay, that might be over simplifying but that is exactly what this game is.  Not much more than it, yet it provides quite a bit of entertainment value especially over the evolutions of war.

You start off in the prehistoric age where cavemen fight and there are actually dinosaurs as well.  Somewhat of a prehistoric knight of sorts.  It later moves onto the medieval times where the real knights are.  That is followed by some angry settlers or something as they come toting guns and parrying with swords.  After that is of course the modern age with sophisticated automatic rifles and tanks.  The treat is the final stage where it goes into the future and the future consists of supersoldiers and the almighty floating tanks.  Ooooooh!  Really though the designs for the various units, the base, and the add-ons vary in terms of their appeal.  It is interesting to move through the different ages of war, including one’s that didn’t necessarily exist in the first place, but some of the design was better than others.

The overall visuals are somewhat lacking though with solid colors and, I am not kidding you, trees that seem to have been drawn in 3rd grade.  The background stays exactly the same so even though there may be supersoldiers in the future the future of battle grounds seems to be the forest…..yeah.  The design of the later units like supersoldiers were impressive for that era and at the same time the turrets available seemed to shoot little peas at the enemy.  No streaming lasers or anything like that.  Just dots.  So I think more time could have been put into the visuals as well.  Maybe make the units do something else besides walking, or have tanks do more than just slide across.  Extra dynamics and details can go a long way especially if the game screen is as stationary as this one is.

Now onto the gameplay and features.  The gameplay is very simple once again.  You can build units to send off blindly rushing towards the other base attacking everything in their way until they die.  Then the unit behind that one continues the pursuit, once again until it dies.  The units that you build move in single file down the line of fire until it either reaches the opposing base or opposing unit and fights.  The downside is that only the units at the front of the line can attack with some small exceptions.  Three units are available at each stage of evolution including a melee unit, a long distance unit, and a heavy unit.  These are obvious in their functions, except the confusion with the heavy unit.  Long distance units can shoot even if it may be second in line, but for some reason a heavy unit like a tank needs to be at the front of the line to attack.  It would have given it a lot more depth if the heavy units were the extra-long-distance units.  Other than that there’s not much more.  Send your units down the line and attack.  Units can be used for offense or defense depending on whether they are on your half of the screen or your opponent’s.  The only other extra defense comes from turrets.  You can buy or sell turrets which vary in firing rate, and look depending on the era.  It helps you gain more money by destroying opposing units faster, but overall it doesn’t add a whole lot of strategy.

What I was hoping for was some more variety in the gameplay and the strategy.  I was surprised by the linear flow of the game and the single file approach wasn’t very appealing at first, but even after letting that go the lack of changes in background, variations in unit function, and variations in turret functions made the whole experience a little less entertaining than it could have been.  If the background changed along with the units it would have made it that much better.  Make some better transitions during evolutions and it would have been even better.  In the end it was interesting enough to go through the different ages, but it seems to be something not worth going back to again.  Not to say if there were significant improvements in a future sequel I wouldn’t come back, but for now I will let this game settle in the dust of the constant eternal forest of Age of War.  At the least I would say it’s worth giving it a try, nothing more.