Battle Group is fast becoming one of the best games that I’ve played on the iPhone all year. Bane Games’ latest title takes a bit of the real-time maritime unit warfare in the Command and Conquer games and puts that in an “on-rails” setting with the enemy coming at you from all directions. The result? A really rich gameplay experience in which the mayhem of warfare meets steely resolve to pull through.


Players start off with a single flagship as they take on the role of Commander Kelly, going up against an increasingly dangerous pirate threat. You’ll have planes and boats in all kinds of sizes firing missiles at you and your flagship is certainly made of sterner stuff, you’ll need to juggle your rate of fire against incoming threats.

Doing well in missions means that you get to earn stars which can be used to either upgrade or purchase larger flagships or additional support vessels. Support vessels are an interesting feature in the game as they compliment the flagship like how a secondary fire mode compliments a shotgun in a first person shooter.

As such, you’ll need to juggle between firing the flagship weapons and occasionally directing support vessels on their line of fire as well. These support ships tend to have long cool down periods, and savvy players will need to take note and work around that. What I like about Battle Group is that the missions display a variety in mission objectives, something that is normally looked over in the age of mass-produced levels, so props to the developer for that.


Another thing that I noted is that aside from the pretty top-down 2D graphics, the game has a lot going for it in terms of audio. There are voice overs during mission briefings and the sound effects during the levels are simply awesome! Not everyday you get an iOS game that nails a trifecta of gameplay, graphics AND audio.

The developers have put in Game Center leaderboards and achievements as well, and if you noticed, it happens to be one of those games that you can easily earn massive GC Achievement points. Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Battle Group at a 5 out of 5, for being an all-round awesome game. The game is available on the iTunes App Store for USD 1.99, check it out over here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battle-group/id452483055?mt=8

A review code was provided to Nine Over Ten 9/10 for the purpose of this review.