Battle Bugs

The Good
This game kind of took me by surprise the first time I played it. After all, it's a real-time tactical strategy game released in 1994 with a fun, cartoony feel to it. It's pretty involved as far as the interface and the depth of gameplay go, but it is approachable and never takes itself too seriously.

The game features good graphics for 1994 - which I believe is due to the fact that it's in a higher resolution than 320x200 (yet still runs in DOS). I'm not quite sure, but it could be in 640x480. Either way, the graphics are smooth, sharp, and colorful.

The sound and music are also excellent. The bugs' voices are appropriately high-pitched, and the briefing voiceovers are very well-done. The music, however, is really outstanding. The music selection ranges from catchy, jazzy numbers to more inspiring war themes. Truly an excellent use of conventional MIDI.

Finally, the game is funny as hell. Most of the humor lies in the product satires seen throughout the game. Since the game is in a very domestic setting, there are many opportunities for humor involving household products and brand names. True, some are just lame puns (Sony becomes Phony, and Cheerios become Uh-Ohs), but others are quite clever (my personal favorite is No Entiendeo, which is a play on Nintendo).

If you ever see this on ebay or in some bargain bin somewhere, do yourself a favor and pick it up.

The Bad
The game is a bit too challenging in some spots. I never actually beat all the missions. The are 30 some-odd missions available, and I could only complete about 15 of them.

The Bottom Line
It's addictive, funny, and most importantly it's fun. Battle Bugs belongs in any strategy fan's collection.

The Good
Graphics, setting, gameplay. It's like Command & Conquer in a kitchen. IMO, they could've really replaced the bugs with a bunch of toy soldiers but that'd take away the "sim" pretense - in any case, it's a "sim" of sorts, a sim of children playing war games inside the house. There's huge sinks, bottles, forks, knives, etc - and your little soldiers battle around them. It has a wonderfully childish feel about it, and yet the gameplay is fully functional and with lots of strategic thinking involved. First things first, the stop-start RTS engine which X-COM 3 later ripped off, which is quite frankly great - sometimes it's like pausing an avalanche though. And then lots of small things - flying units, positive influence of commander units on the soldiers, use of the landscape, slower-faster/stronger-weaker units, all kinds of adult stuff like that there. It's fun, funny and smells a lot like another Sierra game of this period, the Incredible Machine.

The Bad
Too damn hard. No point in making a little fun funny game and then making it much harder than most "serious" RTS. The battles are too much about "get this bug standing there JUST now" and "get these guys dead BEFORE my heavy artilery arrives" and "for god's sake don't let them get the commander unit but still keep the damn thing near enough to get the combat boost". All the battles are a bunch of short set-pieces and mostly there's just one ideal path that you have to figure out, else you fail. It's more like a puzzle game really than an RTS, there's no freedom and improvisation and those are exactly the things that a game with such a childish original setting should have so it kinda shoots itself in the leg a bit there.

The Bottom Line
Tries to capture that mystical feel of children playing with toy soldiers but forgets the most essential element, the feeling that you can do anything, change everything and pretend to be what YOU want and feel like. You have to play by the rules here, and the game doesn't give you the time nor space to feel any sort of immersion in its world. In the end, it's just a quaintly original puzzle game with RTS elements, fun but mostly too difficult and not worth the trouble in the later stages.

The Good
Fun and addictive. Played countless hours in the past, and still never beat every mission. Very Challenging. Plus you got to move on regardless of whether you beat a mission.

The Bad
Seemed to be just one way to beat a level.

The Bottom Line
Addictive, and impossible to quit playing. Be ready to devote some time.