Battalion Wars 2 hands-on

Do you see that girl there? That was one of the booth attendees for Nintendo. She is going to be tied to Battalion Wars 2 for the next 4 days. That is absolutely fine with her though. She was a freak about the game…she loved it. When Nicky and I walked up to play, she was in the middle of an intense match. You could see that gamer stare in her eyes. Today was her first day playing the game, but she fully admitted that she was addicted. After she lost her match (she liked the game, I didn’t say she was good!), I grabbed the controllers to have a go.

Nintendo had two demo stands for BWii, and they were linked in a “versus” game. I tried to convince the guy playing against me that we should just be friends instead of fight, but he wanted nothing to do with that. It’s just a tad scary jumping into a game like BWii without having any time to learn the controls. That’s okay though, I had my “booth babe” there to help me out. We had chatted her up so much earlier that she stuck by our side. She was fighting the good fight!

The objective of the game was to capture the flag points, which in turn scored you points. You could also gain points by taking out your opponent’s army. The bigger the object you took out, the more points you racked up. Taking out a solider will net you a few points, but blasting an aircraft out of the sky can put you way out in the lead. Obviously, the harder the target the bigger the reward.

Everything I remember from the first BW was in BWii, but the Wii control scheme really seemed to make things easier. BW is not a game for the casual gamer, but managing your teams and aiming at your enemies just works better with this system. As I said, when I first jumped in I had no idea what was going on. By the end of our battle, I was micro-managing squads, and blasting down aircrafts.

You can do free aiming and an enemy if you like, or you can lock on and blast away. Once you destroy your current target, the lock on will move you to the next closest enemy. You’ll have all your favorites at hand as well. Gunners, rocket launchers, heavy artillery and more. Not only does the aiming system help give you more control over these character classes, it helps you get a better view on the field. It is much easier to look around your playing field now. This really helps when the guy standing next to you (IRL) is blasting you in the back with a bazooka.

I definitely need more time with BWii to see how the overall experience ends up. I had a blast with the multiplayer, but it’s the single player experience that I am really looking forward to. The missions, characters, and scenarios are what pulled me in for the first game. All the elements are here in the sequel, but without the narrative and single player time to base my opinion off of, things are still up in the air.