Android Game Review - Independence Day: Battle Heroes
Hello fellow steemian ,hope you are having a wonderful time on steemit, today game review will be on the game title The Independence Day Battle Heroes developed by Zen Studios
Independence Day Battle Heroes is basically a Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, but with more of alien fighters, outer space backgrounds, and majestic explosions.
The game developed by Zen Studios, focuses on building a fleet of air ships to defend against an alien invasion. The ships use an advance technology which use a reverse engineering method like the alien crafts. A new alliance has been formed known as the Earth Space Defense (ESD) which the player will command.
According to the game the Earth has united and spent the last 20 years rebuilding and reverse engineering alien tech to protect them from future attacks. The alien threat once again set its sights on Earth and the ESD must recruit veteran pilots and new to defend against the deadly extraterrestrial forces.
The very structure of the UI reminds me of Star Wars Galaxy Heroes.
There are:
The main story missions– Campaign, where you can play each mission on normal and hard modes.
Challenge missions – with specific characters admitted to certain missions only, like male-only, or US-only, or fighter units only, etc. Have long cool-down timer, but bring pretty good loot.
Operations – each operation unlocks as you reach different level as a player, and consists of multiple chapters.
Combat Arena – challenge other players, the AI offers three opponents based on your team score and theirs. Brings no immediate loot, but sends you loot at the end of each day instead, based on your rating in the leaderboard.
Allies – this is where you make friends, most especially on Facebook.
Assignments – daily and achievements, a good way to earn currencies in the game.
Hangar – your pilots and their aircraft, with all the upgrading glory.
Shipments – crates you can buy for the in-game currency.
Store – you can also buy in-game currency for real cash.
Supply Drop – you can get a free crate every day, and one premium per day, you can also pay to get them more often.
The characters in Independence Day Battle Heroes come along with their respective aircraft, and you need to collect their blueprints to unlock them. As usual, these blueprints can be found in the missions across the board and in the shipments. Nearly every section of the game contains its own store, and its own currency, so there is a variety of ways you can earn and spend the cash, insignia, etc.
You can upgrade various parts of each ship, the pilot’s skill level, and each pilot’s special abilities’ level. Each upgrade-able slot requires a specific item, so the entire process is lengthy and takes a decent farming.
Gameplay
Before each battle, you are given a brief description of what lies ahead, some of which include possible enemies, level requirements, and possible rewards for completing the challenge. The next screen takes you to your squad selection, where you can choose up to five . Here you will be able to assign which squadrons you will send out for the fight to start exchange bursts of fire and spits of energy in the outer space. This menu gives you a chance to compare your squad’s overall strength to that of the enemy’s in order to determine the most effective team.
This is where the battle begins, the combat are usually in turn, and there are nifty Play and Fast-forward buttons when you know you have greater chance to win. When in doubt, go manual because I found it is possible to win 3 stars in the missions the automatic AI would lose.
All ships come in three categories – kinetic, explosive and electromagnetic.
Likewise, all ships are armed with shield against a specific kind of weapon. The game make it easy by matching attacks with the most vulnerable enemy – by highlighting the enemy ships with three colors, red, orange, and green. Green means you will do significant damages, red means that that particular enemy has defenses to that type of attack, and yellow is neutral, meaning average damage will be dealt. After all of your ships have made their offensive maneuvers, the alien ships will take their turns, then back to you, and do on until the battle is complete.
The battle system are usually in turn, giving your ship with the best speed to attribute first attack. Choose an attack, then choose a unit to attack.
Attacks do one of three types of damage: kinetic, electromagnetic, and explosive. These are where the color coded highlights come in handy. Each enemy have their own weak point prior to which attack types are defended and heavy against each other.
Each ship have a unique ability that recharges immediately and two special skills that recharge after an X number of turns. Once your squad unleashes its firepower onto the pesky aliens, the latter fire back at you until the battle is over.
There are three different types of battles you will encounter during the campaign.
Attack waves, which you will have to outlast and defeat waves of alien squadrons.
Boss fights, where you must destroy the boss before a certain amount of turns has passed.
Counter defense, in which you have to keep your ships alive for a certain amount of turns before reinforcements arrive.
After each battle, you will be rewarded with XP to raise your ESD level, a variety of salvaged parts to use in upgrading your ships, and in game currency. As your ESD level rises, you will be able to unlock different areas of Area 51, including daily challenges, squad specific operations (some operations have requirements such as only male pilots or only American pilots), as well as gaining allies (other players). There is also a Player versus Player (PvP) mode that you can unlock after reaching ESD level 11.
There are over 30 different ships and pilots you can acquire through leveling up or finding blueprints through end of round salvages, it is a big goal to achieve.
Navigating the main menu (Area 51) is a bit problematic. It felt unresponsive and sometimes while trying to access one sub menu, a different one would open instead. While you progress, illustrated versions of characters from the movie will pop up to give you the run down. Jeff Goldblum’s character shows up often to give you hints and tips and also walk you through the tutorial. There is no clear place to press to continue the text during these speeches and sometimes you just get stuck until tapping your screen multiple times before you finally move on.
Missions, challenges and operations come in three types. Attack waves see you battling hoards of aliens that come in waves. Boss fights task you with defeating the boss and its minions, or just the boss, before the boss retaliates. The bosses have long cool-down timers, but when they fire, they knock the entire squads down, so neutralizing the boss ship in under an X number of turns is essential. And counter defense fights, where you need to keep your ships alive for an X number of turns till the reinforcements join in.
If you clear a stage with three stars, you can then use a quick loot ticket to replay it without replaying. You just harvest the loot again. The three-star levels can also be played on*** Hard mode***, and if you score three stars in Hard mode, you can also replay it with the quick loot tickets. The number of replays is limited to three per day. This is a good way to upgrade pilot training and skill.
note, some parts you win or buy won’t fit in any of your craft because the part are different.
I am about the level to make use of each part; I just hope once my pilots reach the required level I will be able to use them.
If I am correct, there are over 30pilots and aircraft. You can level them up by earning or buying blueprints, and you will want to keep your entire squad upgraded to its maximum capability at each given moment. Because you will be using more or less all of them – challenges let you play with certain types of pilots/aircraft only, as much as operations and Arena PvP.
Speaking of the Alliens, even if you have no Facebook, you can still summon random allies in certain battles, based on what the AI offers you.
The UI is simple, straightforward and clean, I’ve had no problems navigating.
Control
The controls are responsive, as if there was a way of using them in the battle. With the Play and fast-forward, and the overall lazy combat gameplay, Independence Day Battle Heroes is more of a quality time killer for the fans of the movie, and the genre. Even though it’s a fairly familiar scheme and quite frequently used on mobile these days (Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, Soul Heroes), it’s a well-done “more of the same” game.
Design
The looks are pretty cool, the aircraft models are spectacular, as much as the weapon blasts and frequent close-ups. Even the backgrounds are well painted, and make for quite an atmosphere. You also get quite a lot of Jeff Goldblum and Liam Hemsworth text bubbles, so as far as movie tie-ins are concerned, Independence Day Battle Heroes is quite a legitimate looking and moderately deep free-to-play game.
Merit
Good visuals
Plenty of things to do, missions to fight, levels to grind for more loot.
Intuitive, familiar upgrade system found in other similar games
No annoying pop up ads
Non-intrusive IAPs, you can play for free
Clean UI, responsive controls
Semi-automatic gameplay where you can fast-forward the battles you know you can win.Good replay value, perfect for playing about 1.5 hr per day.
Great for the fans of the original movie, and sets to the mood for the upcoming sequel
Demerit
Requires Internet connection, too bad for those that like offline games.
Requires Facebook sign-in if you want allies.
Though spectacular, the battles are rather static and get down to picking a skill and picking an enemy to target.
Game Rating (over 10)
Game play -------------------- 9/10
Design ------------------------- 9.5/10
Controls --------------------- 9/10
Game Sound ------------------------- 9/10
Effects ------------------------- 9/10
Overall review -------------- 9.5/10
Independence Day: Resurgence Battle Heroes is available on Amazon, Android, and iOS store.
Minimum requirements
OS: 5.0.
RAM: 2GB
Storage: 1GB Free Space.
Independence Day: Battle Heroes Amazon Store Review
Independence Day: Battle Heroes Google Store Review
RELEASE DATE
June 9, 2016.
CONCLUSION
Independence game: battle of heroes is an amazing game, i will recommend this game more to those that miss the game back then.
The graphics is superb, one of those things i love about this game is the way the attack is been launched towards those aliens. Honestly everything about this game is dope. One of the main reason i decide to share other player reviews inform of screenshot to justify all the claim i made about the game.
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