And now, the review intro you’ve all been waiting for! A quote from The Simpsons:
Lisa: “B3.”
Jasper: “You sunk my battleship.”
Old People: “Hahahaha”
Thus begins my journey into Battle Group 2. It’s a game where you control a battleship shooting missiles at factories, planes, helicopters, and other missiles. These hazards are constantly and mercilessly coming at you by: “wooOOOooo – mysterious bad guys – wOOoooOO spooky noises”.
All your base are belong to us!
Your battle-boat is on “rails” as it were, making its way from left to right forcibly across a watery landscape. You don’t control the boat itself, only the rate and location of missile fire. This is achieved using the Joy-Con to move your cross-hairs and the A button to fire. These particular controls are not very intuitive, and I found them quite difficult to use.
After dying multiple times on the intro level, to the extent that I wanted to rip out the digital bytes comprising this game and throw them like glitter into the ether, I wondered if I could play using the touch-screen; lo-and-behold, you can, and it boosts the fun factor of this game tenfold! So, if you do end up with this game in your Switch library, please consider handheld, touchscreen mode for maximum enjoyment. This, of course, puts a bit of a damper on people who prefer to play games docked; unless you are really up for the challenge of getting wicked good at those joy-con aiming controls.
In terms of visuals, it’s fine, nothing to sing a bardic ballad about, but it’ll get you through. The music is also fine, it has ominous battle music combined with nice SFX of missiles launching and hitting things. Your boss-lady also has a bunch of voice-acted lines that are well done; kudos to her voice actor! Personally, I am quite demanding in terms of desiring good writing along with a good story, not only in games but in all media I consume; I felt this game fails to deliver in that regard.
I know it looks grammatically fine, but something is weird about this English…
The background of BG2 also isn’t too straightforward. I’m supposed to be a boat that protects peace, yet we are out for murdering-revenge? Seems a little oxymoronic to me. Right at the beginning, the villains demand that you surrender your ship otherwise they’ll blow up a plane full of hostages. So, of course, you surrender your ship. Then when your next mission is about to start your boss-lady wants to buy a new boat for the sole purpose of revenge.
Excuse me? I’m not quite sure if that’ll work, maybe we should try something else? No, okay, let’s keep shooting at their stuff until they destroy the world or are stopped? I guess what I’m trying to say is that the premise of the game kinda rubbed me the wrong way, and as someone who wants to see art (and video games are art) try to mostly make the world a better place, well, I didn’t see this game meeting that expectation.
Ahh, nothing like some good, old fashioned, revenge, eh?
Honestly, this game feels like a port of a mobile game. But heck, if you want a cheap-ish game that lets you mindlessly tap a screen that’s not your phone shooting missiles at enemy planes, then maybe this is the game for you. If you like a good story and even a bit more gameplay depth, then I’d give this one a pass.
Battle Group 2 £7.99
Summary
Battle Group 2 gives you control of a battleship which you tap your way to victory-via-missile. A tried-and-true premise with little in the way of deep writing or story, but the sound effects of missiles firing and exploding enemies might be enough to get you through.