Space War Arena Review

The Awakening

Matter manipulator is fully functional. But I still need to re-learn it.

Goal: Destroy the dummy structures. Analyze how the Hunter-Killer units behave in combat situation.

Expected Resistance: Minimal.

No one remembers how it all began. We are the children of the ark. The mothership that creates us all. We cannot die - if any of us becomes too damaged to continue to exist. The ark just creates us again. We have one purpose: to prepare for a war. We are constantly fighting against each other. To evolve our tactics and our technology to be prepared. we, the children of the ark, are also capable to build fighter drones and combat units. But no matter how much we prepared. We faced a serious threat. We were attacked by similar beings. And their technology was superior to ours. Our ark suffered heavy damage while we refilled the invaders. But not all was lost. Trajectory analysis reveals that the enemies came from the core of the galaxy. So, we, children of the ark, move out to find the mysterious threat. We just hope it is not too late.

The distress call of a hopeless, yet hopeful space force. The hope lies within you and your ability to take down the bad guys.

I am going to take you through an almost tutorial type trip, for this game is not like any other. The mechanics are weird and turn based. So, here we go!

Your first match will be simple. Move your sick to control your units, which will be your left stick. Also, to the left you will see your fleet. To start off you will have four rows of fighter ships. You can press either fleet of ships but after that you will have to wait for a duration of seconds. You are sending out fighters to take down the force in front of you. From top to bottom of your fleet that has a set certain amount of ships you can send out all at once. The top selection has 2. Select it and you will send out 2 ships. They do all the shooting and steering for you, you do not have to do anything except press A. Two down for the 2 ship selection you have 6 sets of ships you send out. After selecting these ships, you will have to wait for 6 seconds before you can actually select that set again. The other three selections are yours to dispose of. 10 seconds of let's say, stamina, mana or your energy. So, choosing these ships limits your fleet attack. Selecting two 6 ship fighters will not work. If you want to set out a full fleet attack select the 6, the two and the other two. In the first match I doubt you'll need all those fighters. Simple strategy I would say.

Some ships you will have to hold A and aim at your enemies. These ships are almost like laser ships. They shoot out in a straight line. I say this to point out that there are going to be various ships you control and unlock. I am not in the sense a big space nerd, like the whole Star Trek world, I see myself dabbling into different parts of these worlds though. Star Wars, I love to death, but I was never really into the ship fighting scenes more than I was into the Light Saber scenes. So, it says a lot for me vouching for a game that has nothing but ship fights.

After the training center you will officially start your campaign and be introduced to the Ship Yard. This is where you can select your ships, gear up your side for the next in coming fights. Some ships have defensive skills more than offensive and some are straight shoot and kill. Learning how to balance these ships is vital. If you have enemies that are rolling up on you and you have all offensive units, you'll be wide open and defenseless. You have to have at the least, two or three defensive ships. Having protection may be the only thing that will save you butt. Like every other game you are going to have to learn from your mistakes. So, losing some battles will really put your strategy into prospective for you. The game gets a little faster after training. I guess I've never really played a game like this and first view made it seem crappy. It is worthy of "worth getting". I almost had to go back and rewired a lot of things about this game. I said that it wasn't that good, and I lost interest fast. That might have been at first. A bit after the tutorial center I found that I started to accumulate a lot of ships, that I liked. Being able to put together a death squad with a mix of defensive units, I loved it! See, this means that there is strategy and the game isn't as bland as I thought it was. You have to think and act upon having an idea of where to put that next ship because it could be blown up, defend, or be a decoy ship while the real unit strikes hot. The bigger ships you send out, seem to be pretty slow, unless it is like a 6 ship fleet that are small and swarm an enemy. In the ship yard, I'd recommend playing with your line up, maybe throw up a whole bunch of offensives with one or tow defensive. See how that works out and see if that works more than putting a bunch def, which will take practice to feel out your own way of playing, but it all comes down to preference.

Never judge a book by its cover. That is how this game unrolled for me. Playchemy Studios obviously knew what they were doing and what they wanted laid out before their players. Units that can be placed on the space board, almost like a chess type strategy. Learning how to think about defensive maneuverers as well as figuring out where to put your next piece so that it can attack a certain ship, or the main unit, which will take some time to learn. the slow paced gameplay experienced at first will not last long. It is a necessity to learn how to strategize. I mean yeah, you can just smash the A button and keep throwing units right on top of each other, but if you learn how to spread the ships amongst the screen then you will have an advantage. If you can protect yourself form enemies on the top by throwing up a Sentry Gun and Shield Projector, then you have a couple of minutes to focus on the open section to your ship. Knowing that you have an area protected and that you created an opportunity to either hit your enemy directly or take down his units, you will see that the hours put in are paying off in your skills.

Wouldn't You Want to Evolve?

Me too! After a little bit into the campaign you unlock a mod that will give you ability to upgrade your units, that is, if you defeat the enemies awaiting you.

The first opponent is call Obe,

"Originally an old earth intelligent satellite who provided a bird's eye view to an autonomous army. While Obe's mind evolved for thousands of years her aggression levels are low so she is not a fierce opponent. Fighting and beating Obe to evolve your units. But slowly".

Next opponent will be, Mogera,

"Evolved from an old earth battle mech designed to defend against threats from outer space. He has no D-ring upgrade and very little defensive units. Beating Mogera evolves your units faster than Obe".

The third is Colossus,

"once a nuclear weapons supercomputer, Colossus became peace-loving after it achieves sentience. It then realized the only way to bring permanent peace to the earth was to take total control of humanity. It's original military thought patterns make Colossus tough to beat!"

Atlas,

"Created to serve humanity as a general purpose labor robot. The Atlas rebelled. As all slaves eventually do. And escaped into space. Not its intelligence controls a formidable Dyson ring".

Golem14

Once a military AI computer who obtained consciousness and reprogrammed itself to greatly increase its intelligence. Beating Golem14 will evolve your units faster but you have to think quick because Golem fights every time with different shipyard.

#127

This opponent's origin is a total mystery. No one has ever beaten #127. Based on long-range scans there are theories that #127 is a" homo-sentient" who's mind started out as human. Based on his rage many believe his brain was used against his will and now he seeks justice.

Unlocking ships as you progress definitely helps the excitement to keep playing. On the very bottom below everything the word "next" and a ship below it indicates that you will next unlick that ship shown. Like I have mentioned before this is almost like a turn based game. So, when I do my reviews and I find myself in between liking and not liking the game, it's hard for me to place the game in my category of winning and losings. So, I try to put all the positive things I can in my review, so it does not seem like I'm trashing a video game. There are those exceptions though, where I have to be honest and be true to my feelings and give my honest opinion without using words that seem so harsh and tarnishing. The more I got to play Space War Arena the more I liked it. This has been happening to me a lot lately. I will turn on a game, play for a couple of minutes and tag the game with like or dislike. This game however was difficult because at first I didn't really get into it, but the more ships I got in my inventory and finding out that I can upgrade my fleet, it opened me up to playing more and from there I ended up liking this game and coming out with a whole new outlook and opinion. I'm very happy that I get the opportunity to review games like this.