Warfare Incorporated revisited

A long time ago, way before the world realised that mobile devices could play games and organise people, a company called spiffcode released a game called Warfare Incorporated. Those of us who owned Palm T3’s at the time were blown away by the depth, graphical quality and all around greatness the game brought to the mobile platform. We had seen nothing like it before and it ate up batteries quicker than seemed possible. We did not care; it was brilliant and as refreshing to mobile games as the iPhone was to the smartphone industry when it was announced.

I cannot think of a complex mobile game as perfectly balanced as Warfare Incorporated or one that offers excitement continuously over long periods of time. I am writing this article because I decided to revisit an old friend today and downloaded it for my iPhone. Three (3!) hours later I have stopped playing the game for a short time until I ‘need’ to jump right back in and have another crack at the enemy.

I am not great at strategy games because I do not have the patience to play them, but like the opportunity to think about what I am doing while under pressure and this is where Warfare Incorporated excels. There are times when you will be frantically building new vehicles, soldiers and towers to protect your base and others where you have to carefully consider the entire structure of your base. If you take your time and think about what you are doing you just may be able to pull off a victory, and in some levels you need to think about every possible scenario to have a chance.

The game is extremely fluid and at no point do you feel like you are solving a puzzle, at no point do you feel like you are repeating steps and at no point do you want to put it down and do something else. You are presented with a story mode in which you have to solve every more difficult levels and this builds into a clever storyline which is not contrived and which flows nicely to give you a genuine sense of achievement at the end.

The real beauty of Warfare Incorporated is that this is not the end. There are literally hundreds of add-on missions created by players that you can download and play at will. Some are pure fun, but some are vicious in their difficulty. The forum at the developers website is a good place to learn how to author missions and also to get help and the community is still quite vibrant after all of these years.

All I can say is that if you have not tried the game, spend a few pennies and see why I am so positive about the experience. It is ludicrously priced on the iPhone and also still available for Palm OS and Windows Mobile. Without doubt one of the greatest mobile games ever created.

More details at www.warfareincorporated.com.