Written by Marvin Malkowski Jr, 5/22/2007
Played on:
Windows
1.5 GB of Ram
Nvidia Geforece 7300 LE
Let me start off this review by explaining a little about myself. I would classify myself as a casual gamer. I do not have time to play games for more than an hour at any given time, if I am lucky. When I was introduced to the unique duration system that Massive Assault Network 2 offers, the casual gamer in me relished over this.
Massive Assault Network 2, or MAN2 for short, is a turn-based strategy game where you pit yourself against the AI or a human opponent using an arsenal of futuristic war machines. The objective is simple: capture the enemy bases. The game is divided into turns that each player makes, and each turn is divided into parts: disclosure, recruitment and combat.
Each player starts off with a number of hidden allies. To begin gameplay, you need to disclose at least one of these secret allies so you may begin the recruitment of units to protect your base or launch assaults on the enemy. The other hidden allies can be disclosed at some point during the game or left hidden which will allow you to perform a hidden attack on your enemy.
Before you can start the combat phase of the game, you must first go through recruitment. During each turn of the game, each of your cities will receive funding. Based on the amount of funding, you can purchase your units that you will take into combat.
The combat phase has you move your units into place to defend your position or to begin an assault on enemy units. Each player gets a range of various units ranging from smallfeet (jeep-like vehicles) to mechs warrior to armadas of ships (my personal favorite). The scenarios you play limit your unit selection.
There is also an additional phase you’ll run across in the game. The guerilla phase comes into play when either you or your enemy invades a neutral country. If you move your units into a neutral territory, the neutral country will join your enemy. If you have enough troops available, you can capture the city. At this point, you take control of the country’s recruitment and combat phase and they are added to your arsenal. Otherwise your enemy will gain their strength for themselves. It’s a tricky decision to decide which countries you want to invade. The wrong choice could cost you the game as it has for me several times. I found it was very challenging to survive an assault from your enemy in this phase due to the lack of resources available in these neutral countries.
I don’t have a powerhouse Windows system to play on but I had no issues with the graphics. The units were detailed and well-designed, and you could distinguish them from a distance. I have played some other strategy games in the past where you couldn’t tell the units apart at any appreciable distance. The landscape was designed with enough features to add to the gameplay, adding obstacles and making movements to some areas to attack your enemy challenging.
The game allows zooming onto the units to get a closer view of that unit. This doesn’t really add anything to the gameplay since you’ll always want to maximize your playing field to see your enemy. However, one of my favorite graphic effects was when you destroy some of the larger sized war machines, you get a close-up view of the destruction. It brings a smile to my face to see the enemy fall in such a fashion.
The music in the game was a great addition as it put you into a warring mood. It brings a great aspect to the game with the usage of such a simple marching song. The sound effects were varying between the different units that you were allocated. Each unit had it own sound for firing or movement, which I found very entertaining. There is also an announcer voice during each turn of the game to offer advice if a major action had occurred.
My only complaint would be during the tutorial and the strained voice of the announcer. It just seemed off. Since you only play the tutorial for a short duration, this makes this a minor point.
There are 2 methods of gameplay were you can play against someone else online. The first is where you play against people in real-time which is preferable if you want a rapid game. The second is where you play someone in a delayed fashion by selecting one of the games in the “Play Now!” list. Just make you are back in time before the time limit is up or you will forfeit the game. Remember, this is a turn-based strategy game and you don’t have to sit down and play it all at once. This is great for a casual player like myself since I can go days between my turns and play at my own convenience. I log in, make my turns, and then log off again. This allows me to play several games against different opponents at once with games lasting several weeks.
There was some network latency when dealing with the user interface to setup games or find games to play against. The screen would take roughly a minute to refresh when loading “Online Players” and “Want to Play With You” with no indication of what was happening in the background. These were annoyance but not enough to take away from the fun of the game.
If you cannot find a game online or don’t want to play online, you can play the AI instead. The level of AI you choose is based on the amount of points you choose that will be a reward if you want. Want more points? You need to fight a harder AI. I found the AI to continue to be challenging as my skill and my point selection increased.
For casual players like myself, this game is probably one of the best games around. I am not forced to sit and play for hours and hours at a time and can play at my leisure. I highly recommend you take the time to download the demo and try this turned- based strategy game for yourself.
