First Strike 1.2: Android App Review

Wassup gamers of the internet, Josh is back! Today I'll be reviewing the Android/iOs/Amazon game "First Strike", and you'll see why I was so excited about the game coming to PC soon. In my opinion, this is one of the best strategy games that Android has ever had, even though it is not that hard to learn.

How does the Game Play?

The gameplay is pretty unique. You choose one of the nuclear superpowers of the world that vary wildly in size, such as the massive United States or the tiny North Korea. The bigger the superpower, the easier the game is to win. Once you start the game, you build missiles out of your nations, which you can then launch at any other superpower (no being the nice guy, this is free-for-all nuclear warfare!). After you launch a missile, you have to wait for the cooldown time to finish. In addition to just blowing the living crap out of your enemies, you can research technology that will help you in different ways, such as a tech that reduces the time it takes for missiles to be build and their cooldown, or one that shows where enemy missiles are going with laser targeting. Even though all this is nice, the real reason that you research technology is so that you can reach the superweapons at the end of the tech tree. They are all extremely useful and powerful in unique ways. There used to be 2 superweapons in First Strike 1.1, but in 1.2 they added two more.

There is a giant missile that is almost impossible to shoot down, a stealth bomber that can instantly be reused after it gets back to your capital, a huge rocket that causes nations it hits to be poisoned beyond use, and a massive bubble shield, one of my personal favorites.

Nations that you own can also be used to expand and take control of nearby neutral nations. Expanding is what you really want to do in the game, although it gets really difficult to defend a massive, sprawling empire.

What are the Graphics like?

The graphics are very minimal, but really cool-looking in their own way. They have a model-globe style look that works fantastically with the simplified but still very deep gameplay. You can tell who owns each nation by a color-coding system; US is gray, Western Europe is orange, and so on. There is also a 'tactical highlighting' power that outlines the nations that are currently owned with the color of the superpower the nation belongs to.

You win the game when you have annihilated all other players with the awesome power of your missiles and superweapons.

What I would like to see in the PC Version...

There are a few things that the PC version might be able to do that the mobile version is not capable of. I think that on PC, the game should have online multiplayer. This would really add to the replay value of the game, and make it really fun to play with friends. Another feature that it should definitely include is Steam Workshop support. This way, users can create new content for the community, like superweapons, resource management, new superpowers to play with, new missiles, and so on. A couple of other games that I really enjoy on steam are Plague Inc. and Portal 2, both of which have Workshop support, and it is really fun to play puzzles and plague types that other people have made for the community.

The game costs $3.99 on Google Play, App Store, and the Amazon Appstore, but trust me, it is worth every penny. The biggest problem, however, is that you can't save your games. If you have been playing for 30 minutes and you want to do something else, then you have to throw away your progress, which is really frustrating.

Overall, First Strike 1.2 is an amazing strategy game, but the fact that you can't save your games brings my review down to an 8 out of 10. 

Well, I hope that you guys enjoyed this review, and make sure to hit that follow button!