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The best strategy game I played this year

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: December 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Massive Assault is neither unique nor too complex. Still, it offers some of the best fun I've had in a long time. As a strategy buff, I'm particularly fond of turn-based strategies, which are easy to learn but hard to master. Whether old games like the original Warlords or the more recent Moonbase Commander, these games offer an almost unlimited replay value. This game follows the footsteps of its predecessors. With only 13 units that have very limited features and two sides to play, learning the game is a matter of minutes. Mastering it is a whole different story.

Pros
* Excellent tactical-level artificial intelligence. The computer will be very challenging in scenarios and campaigns, where each side starts with a predetermined number of units. With a recent release of 12 new free scenarios, the learning curve here is quite low, allowing for hour of fun, even for a novice.
* Great balance. It shows that this game was originally a board game. There are few units, and the maps are very carefully designed. Both these features allow for very exciting battles, and no exploits.
* Great graphics. The graphics are unsurpassed, as far as turn-based strategies go. I loved just to stroll around, wathing the battles from up close and different angles.
* Replay feature. You'll be allowed to save the replay of your battle and share it with others. It's fun and a great learning tool to see how others are doing.
* Multiplayer adds more to the replay value of the game.

Cons
* The strategic-level A.I. is weak. Once you fight world wars where you have to conquer countries and build your armies from scratch, the A.I. is easily exploitable and beatable.
* Sound and voiceovers. These are not up to par with other turn-based games, even those that are cheaper than Massive Assault, such as Moonbase Commander.
* Missing features. Currently, the multiplayer has one weakness: the loosing party often doesn't submit a turn, stalling the game and making it impossible to finish. This is only one of several features that the developers forgot to include.

Final verdict
Massive Assault is still the best turn-based strategy game I played this year (which also says something about the niche). I would recommend it to everybody who enjoys sitting back and thinking about the strategy, but younger players, especially those who prefer quick fingers over brain exercise may want to avoid this title.

Good Game, Disappointing AI

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: February 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The map selection on this game is inexcusably small and even on "hard" difficulty the AI is weak on strategy, consistantly making some obvious and costly mistakes. This is disappointing in what is otherwise a great game with nice graphics and enough units and terrain effects to keep it interesting.

Still, mutliplayer mode gives it extra value (who needs AI when you can just fight people?) and the AI is strong in the tactical missions if you prefer a directed campaign over a free-flowing "here's a map, go fight" setup.

In my opinion this game rates about 3.5 stars. Doubling the number of maps and fixing the glaring AI problems would make it a 5.

Seems simple, but that just means that

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

It was designed to be accessible. You can dive right in and learn how to play this game faster than you can learn how to play Chess, for example. Like Chess, learning strategies to win is the challenge and the joy of this game. Playing against the computer is fun, but they make playing other people online so easy and fun that I'm hooked! Graphically its the best-looking game in the turn-based strategy genre right now.

Great game, great bargain

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is a splendid game that engages you from the very first few minutes. I bought it for about $5.00 plus shipping, and it's a bargain at several times that price.

Too Difficult for beginners!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I love strategy games. I played games like Fallen Haven, Civilization II, Heroes of Might and Magic, Total Annihilation, Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Dungeon Keeper, Starcraft, Warcraft, and many more. I would give any of the above games a 4 out of 5 at least based on quality and creativity as well as plain old fun. Massive Assault only caught my eye because it would run on my non gaming Dell laptop and it wasn't incredibly old. I also thought that any game under five dollars was worth a try even though such a cheap game couldn't be that good. I bought the game and tried it out to find the tutorial easy to understand and I thought I was doing good. Then, I got to an actual mission. I had trouble beating even the easy missions, and I skipped a couple because no matter what I did, I couldn't win. You could call me a quitter, but I don't usually give up on a game that easily and there wasn't anything in the game to motivate me in trying any more. There are only a handful of units you can use and the enemy has the exact same armament with different looks. This is basically future chess. If you're looking for a challenge, you might have found it. There is (probably) only one way to beat each level and no hints provided. Difficulty makes this game unplayable for the light hearted. Hours of strategizing and creative thought are required for playing this game. But, if you just want to play games for fun and not to test your mettle just play one of the games I've listed above. Don't waste your time here.

All-around average.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Just spent the last 4-5 hours playing Massive Assault, and I can say, while it wasn't the best turn-based game I've played, it was far from the worst. Where you are fighting these people, in what time period and where did these units come from is never actually explained. Don't ask, just set your units up on the hex-based maps and go kick some butt.

The good:

-Bare-bones unit types and purchase options, but extremely well balanced for hex-based play. No rushes of one unit type mean you can have various different force combinations for more replayability and satisfying tactics.

-Interface is just fine. Without pointless multiple unit abilities and in a turn-based mode (with undo function, ty) you don't need three hands to operate the game, making it ideal for beer and pretzels play with a buddy.

The bad:

-Underwhelmingly scripted, and with maps that are well-balanced but all fairly similar, Massive Assault leaves you longing for "Military Madness", the classic hex-based computer/console game that this title tries and fails to live up to.

-Few maps and a short, linear campaign mode leave you pretty much done with the single player options for this game after several hours.

Verdict: Moderately fun turn-based hex game, if somewhat derivative and unplotted, Massive Assault is fun for a few go-rounds, and at around $4-8 on Amazon is well worth it's dollar value in entertainment.

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