Battle Supremacy Has An Eye For Detail But Not For Controls [Review]

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Battle Supremacy

It’s been a little while since I reviewed a tank game, so I picked up Battle Supremacy, a new tread-and-turret action title from the developers of Sky Gamblers out today for iOS devices.

Battle Supremacy by Atypical Games
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $4.99 (special launch price)

Battle Supremacy takes place during World War II and features authentic vehicles and locations. It’ll have you participating in campaigns in both the European and Pacific Theaters. If you can stop firing long enough to look around, you’ll see birds in the sky and fish in the water. And you can run over absolutely anything that gets in your way. It’s an action-packed, detailed game with incredible graphics.

And honestly, I thought it was kind of boring and clunky.

Supremacy‘s attention to the little things translates most directly in the control and firing of your tank. When you’re just driving around, your gunner handles the aiming; you just tell him when to unload. And that’s logical because it doesn’t make sense for a single person to be both driving and shooting. You can also zoom in with binoculars and target more precise shots manually, but mostly you’ll be rolling and firing, and that works alright.

The first problem arose for me when I learned that the tank handled like, well, a tank. It’s slow to move and slower to turn, and while I’m sure at least one of the seven other tanks on offer are more maneuverable than the Sherman I started with, it did not make the best first impression. There’s also the fact that your controls consist of a virtual joystick somewhere in the vague “left side” of the screen, and camera controls are on the right, and something happens in the middle that’s neither of them. And I had the same problem I always have with virtual joysticks: Thumb-slippery.

You can run over absolutely anything that gets in your way.

I was constantly having to reset my thumb, so my tank wasn’t rolling so much as lurching, and sometimes I’d end up in that weird twilight zone in the middle of the screen. By the time I got moving again, I’d taken more hits. I can’t really fault the game for this; I’m willing to accept that I simply have never learned the subtle art of using a virtual joystick. But my experience, as good-looking as it was, was frustrating more often than not, and I never got a sense that I was going to get any better at it.

Battle SupremacyGame Name: : Battle Supremacy
The Good: Authentic things everywhere, good graphics, tanks.
The Bad: Clumsy virtual controls, tanks.
The Verdict: I can see a game that a lot of people will like in here, but unfortunately, I’m not one of them.
Buy from: App Store

[rating=game3]

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