Warfare Incorporated for Palm OS

Product Requirements:
Palm OS 3.5 and newer and 2MB of free memory. Optimized for Palm OS
5 devices (required for voice)

Dominate the galaxy! (Or at least one planet)

If you are a lover of RTS (Real-Time Strategy) games like Command & Conquer
or Warcraft, and you’ve always wished for more of the same on
your PDA, then Handmark’s excellent new offering,
Warfare Incorporated, is for you.

Set in the far future, Warfare Incorporated. places you in the role of a junior
executive with the Acme interstellar mining combine. Sent to planet Icarus to
stake a claim to rich Galaxite deposits, you find that Acme’s arch-nemesis,
Omni Corp. has arrived first. It now becomes a claim war to
see who will eventually dominate the planet and collect the rewards of victory.

In the time-tested tradition of RTS games, you construct buildings, mine resources,
build units, and fight the enemy. The buildings available include
a construction base for building new buildings, barracks for training "Security
guards," a vehicle production building where you can construct various
types of fighting vehicles, such as tanks, defensive missile and machinegun
towers, and a number of others. As with most RTS games, building new buildings
and researching new technologies provide the opportunity to create new buildings
and units.

When Companies Collide – Here the forces of Acme and Omni fight it out over an alien artifact
Photo courtesy of Handmark

As with most RTS games, the customary unit advantages apply, where some units
are especially effective against others (rocket troops are exceptionally successful
against armor, for example) and especially weak against still others (rocket
troops are easily killed by Liberator tanks, with their fragmentation grenade
launchers.) In addition, there are special units with special abilities. In
several of the "story missions", there is a unit with sniper-like
abilities. You can also construct "engineers" that can take over enemy
buildings and convert them to your side. The Dominion mobile
headquarters is a vehicle you can maneuver to anywhere on the map and deploy
to create a new headquarters location.

Construction underway – Tanks being produced at a vehicle

Photo courtesy of Handmark

Warfare offers a number of compelling features never seen before in a Palm OS
game. These include digitized speech (If you have an OS 5 device, each unit
responds to commands with a reply like "Moving out" or "On my
way"), and the real-time strategy element. While the "cut scenes"
are neither animated nor very compelling, they do have the advantage of not
slowing game play in the least.

The interface is simple and elegant. It is so well conceived that I find myself
preferring the stylus input to mouse input on the "full-size" RTS
games. Each building, when selected, provides two or three icons – one for selling
the building (and regaining a portion of the credits spent to build it), one
for repairing the building after an attack (repairs cost credits), and, when
appropriate, one for opening the "build" menu, that allows you to
select units available for construction.

Building the base – The H.Q. building (selected) provides options for constructing new buildings.
Here you can see the pop-up menu, providing the option of build (the hammer),
repair (the wrench) or sell ($) this building
Photo courtesy of Handmark

The one downside to Warfare is the limited number of missions that are provided.
Once you’ve played through the "story" missions, and beaten the
"challenge" missions, the replay ability is limited. A skirmish mode,
where the map is randomly chosen and the AI fights with the specific goal of

destroying your base, would add a great deal of value.

Overall, Warfare Incorporated is very enjoyable. It is, in many ways, the ultimate
Palm OS game, providing hours of fun, and a huge WOW factor when you show it
off to friends and coworkers. It is probably the best game purchase I’ve made
for my Tungsten T | T. If you enjoy RTS games, I strongly recommend Warfare.

Note from Judie: Be sure to check out the
screen shots of the
game for 320×480 Palm OS devices!

Price: $29.99

Pros:
Terrific graphics
Excellent interface
RTS on the Palm… ‘nuf said!

Cons:
Limited replay ability.