Game of War – Fire Age Multiplayer Strategy Game
Machine Zone (the company behind Game of War) certainly bust the budget on advertising and promotion in 2014, spending approximately $40,000,000 persuading us that this was the city builder MMO strategy game we had been waiting for!!
So is it?
After playing for about four months, I have probably fallen out of love, finding it all rather repetitive. However it did hold my attention for long enough for me to get my credit card out, which is unheard of when paying causal games.
I play Game of War on a Kindle Fire HD, and it is available throughout all platforms.
The premise is simple and follows the same route as many of the genre currently on the market. You must build and take control of what starts out as a tiny city with some wooden walls. Its your job to build an epic city, train an army and through Alliances work with others to become powerful.
Outside of your city Game of War – Fire Age’ world is divided into vast areas known as Kingdoms, each city resides with a kingdom, and the games cities are actually located somewhere on the land in a Kingdom, so you can view the world map and find your city, and other cities, which is a change from most builder games where neighbours feel like a concept rather than a reality!
There is of course combat involved, and before you can attack you must build up your troops, once you send them out to raid, they will march to the chosen city, attack and either return victories with resources or their tails between their legs. When building your army, the further you progress into the game the strategy is involved, considerations such as force composition, what skills your hero has and what research has been completed. It takes time to amass enough troops, so attacks and raids can sometimes feel few and few between, but this makes them more realistic and considered affairs.
If you have played other city builders, you should have no problem getting to grips with Game of War: Fire Age . Fairly standard stuff; choose a plot tap a plot in the city and choose a building, which depending on what type and level takes real time to construct. Because there are a decent amount of types of buildings, and levels, with some buildings linked to others, the building system is quite in-depth. Expect the basics, such as farms for food and barracks for troops but you can also build a embassy for working with other players, upgrade your walls and traps to stop enemies and keep upgrading and adding to the array of resource and research buildings to construct.
Although voluntary, joining an alliance in Game of War – Fire Age is really a must, an alliance is a group of players who try to work towards common goals, helping each other to build up cities by boosting building and research, raiding together with war rallies ; and sharing resources and information. Most alliances in Game of War – Fire Age are pretty well run. I am pretty antisocial, not really interested in chatting or making friends, however there is certainly plenty of evidence of that within alliances, but for those of us who just want to take some time out and play without having to play nicey friends with anyone, that is just fine, it doesn’t stop the alliance interaction, teamwork or running. Read the alliance About before joining, I was always keen to ensure I was playing with Adults and so choose 18+ alliances.
Machine Zone are obviously in it to make money, and although you can play without spending a penny, buying gold pack obviously makes it all go smoother, its expensive though, and the price goes up each time you pay out (£2.99 for a starter pack of gold and chests and boosts, then £7.99, which goes up to £14.99 – £7.99 was my limit, the gold goes very quickly and I think for what I see as a casual tablet game its rather too much to be spending) – however the money flowing around my alliance showed that plenty of others disagree.
All in all Game of War – Fire Age is a good looking 2D builder strategy game, which has enough intricacy to keep you playing for a while.
rating 6/10