Space Admiral

Board games have been liberated and put into stars in a testing battle called Space Admiral.

The board game in question is Battleship, rather than having to destroy the usual frigate, destroyer and submarine, you have various spacecraft at your disposal. As with the original game, it boils down to you having to seek and destroy the enemy craft before their admiral dispatches the seven gates of hell upon you and casting your remains to the astral winds.

Now I usually like board games and indeed Battleship is one of my all time faves, however this rendition although has some nice touches I can’t help but think I’ve seen it done better (please see Pirate Ship Battle). The game at first gets off on the wrong foot as it starts up in French – and although I was able to navigate around this problem, it would have been pertinent to ask which language you would like to begin with.

After I got round this little obstacle, I was able to discover that you have the option of playing the computer (at three different difficult levels) or a two player mode (so you can try and beat your friend). On starting up a new game it gave me the chance to plot my spaceships on a grid. The ships are varying in sizes and colour, you have one unit which is one square big (which looks like a spaceman with wings – but they probably are meant to be a jetpack), a small shuttle only two squares big, two craft which take up three squares each, and one four square space cruiser and five square battleship. If you want to change the position of any of your craft, you can (both by moving the ship or rotating it). Once you’re happy with your positioning of the craft, the battle commences!

As you can probably guess, this is a turn based game where you must then take it in turns to take shots at the opponents’ grid – in a hit or miss manner. If you miss, the shot of your laser-beam goes straight through the square and a small milky-way looking square marks the spot. However, if you should hit the enemy ship you’re rewarded by seeing a patch of smoke appear – and most importantly of all, you get to shoot again! This is repeated until you manage to destroy their craft, which is signified by the squares now being filled with debris which floats in space.

After every shot you are given a report by your second in command who gives you such comments like ‘What a shame, bad shot!’, ‘Close miss!’, ‘Target hit. Move to another target.’, ‘Enemy battleship damaged. Pursue attack.’ and ‘This battleship now belongs to the past!’ I can’t honestly tell if these comments actually are much help in a way of telling if you’re getting warmer or colder – I don’t believe they’re entirely accurate when you’ve missed and only states the obvious when you have hit the target.

To help you in your mission, you have some special weapons which help you target more squares at one time. It is important for you to use these sparingly as they’re slow to recharge.

In total then, this is a good game of battleship and is certainly fun and challenging. For me the graphics are a little dated and the AI is a little stupid (e.g. it’ll hit one ship then rather than try to find the adjacent square, it will blast a random shot off into space). The controls are simple but the grid is not terribly clear so you can easily end up firing at the wrong coordinates!

Rating 71%

Positives

Challenging – even on easy level

Quite addictive as any board game is

Animation at the end of a battle

Negatives

Graphics are dated and unclear

Initial set up – it helps if you know French!

No mini-games to break up the repetition