Mobile Warfare

Title           Mobile Warfare
Game Type       Strategy
Company         Islona/Applaud Software (1998)
Players         1
Compatibility   AGA
HD Installable  No
Submission      William Near

Review
Mobile Warfare by Applaud Software Ltd., is a single-player strategy war
game that pits you (the Allies) against the enemy (the Axis). Various
missions must be completed in successive order to finish the entire game.

The game begins with a mission briefing in the office of General
Armstrong. He tells you exactly what must be accomplished in the current
mission in order to progress to the next. After the briefing, you are
taken to the game screen. This screen is split into two areas. The largest
part of the game screen is the play area, where you actually see the
background, your units, and the Axis units. To the right of this is the
information area. This area contains your current unit's statistics
(Attack, Defense, and Movement points), a compass for unit movement, total
money in your account, and four buttons to select:  End Turn, Options,
Statistics, and Air Support.

There is a plethora of units to select from in Mobile Warfare. Virtually
everything from riflemen, spies, nurses, tanks, missiles, and bazooka men
to paratroopers is available. The availability of the various units is
dependent on the mission you're currently playing and the amount of money
you have available to you. Most of Mobile Warfare's diversified units move
in the same way, one block at a time. To attack an opposing unit you have
to be adjacent to it. Once your unit is next to the target, you must move
one more square in the direction of the target, which causes the two to
bump together and assess the damage to both units. You can also destroy
non-unit areas on the play field, fences are a good example of this. In
some missions fences are used to hold captured civilians, therefore you
will need to use a bazooka man to blast a hole through the fence in order
to release them. Of course, there's usually an enemy tank or car within
this sealed area that immediately commences in the destruction of the
civilians once the area is breached. Forethought is definitely required in
this type of attack. You will need appropriate units available to destroy
the "guardian" unit and a nurse comes in handy for keeping both troops and
civilians healthy.

Each successive mission usually gets harder to accomplish, and strategy is
the key element in playing Mobile Warfare -- this is not a fast-paced
game, it requires you to think about every move you make and to anticipate
the enemy's next move too. Failure to plan your moves in advance, or
forgetting to anticipate the enemy's next move, will most assuredly lead
to your demise. At the end of every three missions you are given a
password. By using the password, you can avoid having to replay earlier
levels. The only thing I don't like about this method is that if you
successfully complete the first two missions, but fail on the third, you
are forced to replay the first two over again in order to reach the third.
This grows tiresome after a few go-rounds -- I would much rather have a
save game option, or a password for every level.

The graphics in Mobile Warfare are adequate, but don't expect too much.
The sound track used in the game is from the Public Domain and you'll want
to turn the sound off after a few minutes of play -- as far as actual game
sound effects are concerned, forget it, there's not a single one!

Mobile Warfare supposedly has the ability to run from a hard drive, but I
couldn't get it to work past the intro screen, unless I booted from a
stock Workbench 3.1 floppy. The game doesn't promote to a Picasso
screenmode, it prefers PAL instead. I ended up booting the game from the
two floppy disks after selecting PAL from the Display area of the Early
Startup screen. Mobile Warfare does not multitask, instead it takes over
the entire computer. The documentation consists of a small ASCII text file
that gives you the bare-bones information needed to play, along with a few
strategy hints.

Mobile Warfare is a game with a good core that is somewhat lost among the
poor sound track, lack of game sound effects, mediocre graphics, and
somewhat awkward unit movement procedure (clicking on a compass instead of
directly on the playing field). This game is far better than Breach, but
it's no competition for a game such as The Perfect General.

Alphabetical list.