Winterstate
There’s a long, cold road ahead of us
Free (with IAPs) Developer PlayRaven, playraven.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7 or later
Come the long winter, your carefully stocked bunker will protect you from nothing. In case you’ve forgotten what Mad Max taught you – aside from the fact that playing a flaming guitar while strapped to the front of a speeding truck will make you the coolest person on the entire irradiated planet – it’s diesel that will provide salvation. Who needs bottled water and bacon when you could have tons of armored metal? Fools, that’s who. And you, friend, are not a fool. Instead, you’re the leader of a ragtag band of drivers, using steel and wheels and unholy amounts of ammo to overthrow bandits (who’ve also seen a few too many episodes of Top Gear).
Each encounter is a selfcontained skirmish selected from the menu map. Your units range from vulnerable yet snappy roadsters through to hulking, lumbering tanks. To move each, you draw a line on the screen. You automatically attack any vehicle within your range, and certain marked zones unlock special abilities such as firebombs, mines and special shields. You can plan out your strategy before you engage, but with little aesthetic difference between enemy units, it often descends into barely managed chaos in the field, with victory or defeat sometimes occurring suddenly and with little in your actions to differentiate.
You start off with just one speedy reinforced vehicle, and build up your arsenal – with added flamethrowers. Well, in theory, anyway. Building or upgrading requires resources, in fairly large amounts. You can collect them, sure, but waiting for a plant or factory to dole out a consignment of loot can take
hours, literally. Frankly, if we risk life, limb and a chunk of an afternoon to liberate an area from Very Bad People, we hope their gratitude would maybe speed them up a bit.
Your initial supply of diamonds is soon burnt through (especially when they’re also used to unlock missions, speed up repairs and so on) – which means that getting more is a case of opening your wallet. 100 diamonds for 99¢ – which will give you another couple of hours, say – isn’t too steep, but it soon adds up. Cold comfort indeed.
the bottom line. Fun, if haphazard, combat that plays like real-time strategy for those with short attention spans. Sadly, the IAPs frustrate and slow progress.