BWii: Nintendo's cartooney strategy/shooter comes to the Wii

Lets kick this thing off with a nice intro: Battalion Wars 2 is a third-person shooter, with some strategy elements thrown into the mix. It is not so much a squad based shooter, like Ghost Recon, as a real time strategy game, like Command and Conquer, except it is played from the point of view as one of the soldiers on the ground. As this soldier, the player commands "battalions"(as they are called in-game) of troops and vehicles, pitting their forces against the enemy's, capturing facilities along the way to add to and replenish their forces. There are 6 races, although the player only ever takes control of 5 of them in campaign mode. They all have the same classes of units, so there is not much distinction gameplay-wise for each race, but they do all look very different. The 6 races are the Western Frontier, which resembles the U.S.A., the Tundran Territories, which resemble Russia, the Solar Empire, which resembles Eastern Asia(basically Japan), the Anglo Isles, which are the British, and the Iron Legion, and Xylvania (pronounced Ex-ylvania), which both resemble Germany during WWII, and in fact one is the younger version of the other.

The controls worked well for this game, as the Wiimote acts as your rifle, and wherever you point it, that is where you shoot. Unfortunately, the pace at which you turn when you point the Wiimote towards the edge of screen felt quite slow, and there are a few times in the missions where you are ambushed, and the limited turning pace really hampers your movement. It's not a big issue, but it's something that could be fixed for future iterations. As for button configuration, the B button fires whatever weapon you happen to be holding or manning, and you use the control stick to move around, and you can do a rolling dodge to left or right if you hold the control stick left/right, and tilt the nunchuk in the same direction (this felt slightly weird, but I got used to it after awhile). To jump, you just flick the nunchuk upwards. The z button locks onto a target, but you still have to aim a bit with the wiimote, and the C button adjusts the camera on three levels: one is a personal view of your character, the second level widens out to see more around you, and the third is mostly reserved for using tanks, and doing lots of micro-management, because it's almost a bird's-eye view. The A button is your Order button, and it is context-sensitive. If you point at a flag and press A, your units will capture it. If you point at an enemy and press A, your units will destroy it/him. If you point at one of your own men and hold A, you will take control of that unit. The minus button brings up a map, and the plus button pauses the game. Overall, the controls felt pretty solid, but they take some time getting used to the layout.

The graphics stay true to most of Nintendo's games: bright, cartooney, and colourful, and the sounds go great with the art direction, although that darn MIDI music is kinda disappointing (Games are almost like movies in production values nowadays....c'mon, Nintendo!) With the graphics, many people don't like cartooney, but it really doesn't detract from the overall sense of chaos that you get from battle. I for one don't mind it all, and the sheer number of units on-screen that can be produced, and with no frame-rate reduction, means smooth sailing through chaotic seas. The battles can be quite intense, if I haven't hinted at that already ;) , mainly because the enemy will throw multiple things at you at once. The troops work like specialists; your Bazooka Vets are great at blowing up vehicles, but don't work against the more agile infantry accompanying those tanks, and the Flamer vets won't do a thing against that Bomber, but your Anti-Air vets will shoot it out of the sky with a magnificent hail of rockets.

The enviroments are pretty large, and the fog of war only minutely evident. The new thing for this installment of the series is that there are Sea units now, like Battleships and Frigates, and Submarines. The sea missions are cool in the fact that they really give you the sense of "going to war", with columns of ships navigating the seas, and bombarding the shorelines and The water effects are very nice, too. Most of these missions involve securing a landing spot for your transports to get infantry onto the beaches. With that addition, mission sizes can be pretty big near the more advanced stages, going from mass sea, to mass land battles, all in one level with no loading screens.


Another new thing about this installment, is online play. Unfortunately, it uses the Wii Friend codes, so to play your friends you need to get his/her code, and then give him/her your own. The whole process is kind of cumbersome, but to those who just want a match against a random person there is an option called "Play Anyone", which searches the network and finds people for you to play with. The game does keep track of your wins and losses, but not against who, so it's hard to settle personal vendettas if someone beat you. There is a co-op mode for online, but curiously enough there is no offline multiplayer whatsoever, which is an odd choice to go with... All in all, it's decent online play, but for those looking for a more robust online experience should look elsewhere.

Overall, this game is great for casual and hardcore alike, as it has intense action-packed battles, and involves a lot of strategy to boot. Plus, it's just plain fun, and the quirky infantry characters utter lines that can give you a chuckle or two (one of them being "Ya ever feel like we're pawns in some big huge game of chess?" - Western Frontier Grunt), and fun is what games should be about, right? I'd give this game at least a rental, to see how ya like it before you buy it, but I know I definitely liked it, and plus, it has great replay value, as you will spend hours trying to get an A on mission rating to unlock the bonus content, and online play will keep you busy for awhile after the campaign has finished.