Forums → Games → Gripe with IriySoft and "Battilion Commander" Review

I feel like IriySoft is overrated along with their games. As you may know I Can't Stand Cursed Treasure 2 and IriySoft strikes again with Battalion Commander. It's not that these games don't look great or have elements that could be fun, but they fall short and have major issues. Some of these issues would be excusable if these games were made by one person, but IriySoft is a group of 11 people. It's inexcusable. My Battalion Commander Review sums this up nicely, so here you go.

Battalion Commander Review

IriySoft fails again.Some people may think I'm very critical of my flash games, but there's a reason for this. I rate flash games that are made by companies or teams a little more harshly than games made by a single person. Why? Because if you are a company, team, or group, you're playing in the big leagues. You should have some sort of quality assurance, game testing and what-not. Let me quote some items directly off of IriySoft's website (http://www.iriysoft.ru/):

IriySoft is a game development studio based in Bryansk (Russia).

and

We have a director, a project manager, a game-designer, 4 programmers and 4 artists at the moment. We also use outsource for art and sound when needed.

Irirysoft is an 11 person team that sometimes outsources. This is not a solo, on-man, deal. So the flaws and bugs in "Battalion Commander" shouldn't exist.

Let me start with the first glaring error. The sound. This game does have sound effects, but I forgot that it did becuase the sound glitched out and shut off after about only five minutes of play. I tried a few things to fix it as well. I shut off the music and the sound effects returned, but after turning the music back on the sound was gone again. I checked the sound option and toggled it on and off, that did nothing. IriySoft, a team of 11 people, can't program the sound to work properly in their game. Such a basic feature of a game and they can't get it to work.

This leads to problem number two, the game freezes up for me about every two seconds. It's like this quick half second of lag that just keeps happening over and over. I am on a slower machine, so that is a factor, but the game offers no way of turning down the graphically quality. I looked at all the menus and even tried left clicking the game. Nothing, no option to turn down the quality. The lag reminds me of the memory leak in Iriysofts other failed game (that everyone seems to love) "Cursed Treasure 2", that causes you to have to refresh the page every 3 playthroughs or else suffer from unbearable lag. It's like IriySoftjust can't get basic game elements to work properly.

But the gameplay itself suffers in many areas as well. The difficulty is uneven. First the game starts you in normal mode where the first few play-throughs seem really easy. You will get about 500 meters or so before it becomes a challenge and you die. But you will be expecting that because you have no upgrades. But wow, will you ever have to upgrade a bunch of times (or get the car) before you can ever make much past the 500 or more meter mark. But, you'll get more upgrades and eventually normal mode will become a walk in the park. Even the last boss will be really easy. Too easy in fact. It's far easier to defeat the final boss than it is to get to it. To me that's a mistake and should be corrected. The difficulty unevenness is exemplified even further by endless mode. When you first start endless mode it's nearly impossible to go more than 400 meters. Not until you get all the upgrades will you be able to make any real progress, but it will still be insanely difficult. You will absolutely need a full or nearly full battalion to get anyway in endless mode. So, the game goes from super-easy to impossible, to super-easy again, and then back to impossible. Why doesn't the game just ramp the difficulty up gradually like any good "distance game"? Take for example "Knightmare Tower" it's a similar type of game, but it's actually fun to play, and the difficulty doesn't bounce around so much, it actually ramps up gradually.

There are more areas of the game that are uneven as well. Take the upgrades for instance. The shotgun is better than the rifle, but the machine gun, and the missiles are worse than the shotgun, but are unlocked later. Why would I ever want to use the machine gun that only fires in a straight line and has a longer reload time than the shotgun? Even after you upgrade the machine gun it still seems to fire slower than the shotgun. Why would I ever want to use the homing missiles that fire far too slow, even after the upgrade, don't do as much damage as they should, and target the worst possible enemies. The homing missiles seem to prefer to shoot mostly harmless enemies that are behind you or barrels that will explode and damage nothing. It's like, "Please homing missiles hit the bunker, hit the tower, the helicopter, please!? Nope, you're going to hit the barrel, thanks." The specials are uneven too, the airstrike is the best special and it's the first one you have. The napalm will only be effective if you have a full battalion, and that doesn't happen often. Also the airstrike demolishes everything on the screen, while the napalm only hits directly in front of your battalion. Why would I ever choose to hit just a small area on the screen, when I can use the airstrike and annihilate everything on screen at once? Then there's the heroic dash. It's nice to move three times the speed and be invulnerable, but then the dash ends and you are stuck in the middle of a mess of towers, bunkers, helicopters, and troops. Heroic dash just ends up leaving you in an instant death situation. When you run three times the speed, you don't get a chance to really damage or defeat any enemies, so when the dash ends and you lose your invulnerability, your almost guaranteed to be left standing in the middle of a pack of enemies and die. The heroic dash should kill everything on screen when it ends, like the car does. That would fix the problem. Fortunately you can switch back to the airstrike after upgrading your special, but the upgrade order seems wrong. Airstrike should be the last special you obtain, napalm the first special you start with, and heroic dash the second special you obtain. They could also fix heroic dash, like how I mentioned above, and leave it the last special obtained and then switch napalm with airstrike.

Then you have the missions. There's over 100 hundred missions, but you'll probably finish normal mode, get all the upgrades, and play endless mode several times and only have about 30 missions finished. The missions aren't too fun, but not too boring, they definitely can be enjoyed, but their either needs to be less of them or they get completed more quickly. When unlock endless mode you should have at least 50 to 70 missions complete, leaving you with 50 to 30 more difficult missions to finish in endless mode, not 70. It's like the developers just didn't care to test this game for balance issues. it's like 100 missions are too many, the player is going to finish the game, play endless mode hundreds of times over and have all the upgrades far, far before they finish all the missions. That means about 70 of the missions are pointless because completing them give you gold and experience, but you will lave nothing to use it on because you've upgraded everything already. It's like IriySoft isn't paying any attention to detail.

I really do feel like the developers aren't paying attention. For example, the car. Why is it a car? When was the last time cars were the vehicle of choice for war? It doesn't make sense. The vehicle you use should be a Jeep (you know an all terrain vehicle with big tires and no roof). Even the game shows a picture of a Jeep on the upgrade and above the cars health meter. So why a car? Why a car that looks like it's from the future, making it out of place with everything else in the game. The car really should be a Jeep.

Next we have our battalion, a group of idiots that only know how to spread out across the entire map in a Mighty Ducks style flying-v. When you get promoted to the higher ranks and your battalion gets full, good luck trying to keep them away from enemy fire. Sure, the flying-v allows my bullets to cover more of the map, but when I usually focus on destroying one enemy, in one spot, at one time, spreading out the fire doesn't help. My battalion should either be in a double file line behind my commander or they should form a square grid behind him, something like three rows of three (or more depending on your battalion size). If they lined up like that it'd easier for my battalion to dodge enemy fire and I could more easily focus my fire on the enemies I want to hit.

Another small problem I have is that there is no way to shoot behind you, so if an enemy gets past you and continues to fire at you, you have no choice but to dodge the bullets. It's a minor inconvenience though.

Next, the game throws way too much at you at once, especially in endless mode. There are so many bullets, enemies, towers, bunkers, helicopter, and bombs on the screen at once, how do you dodge it? Most the time your flying-v battalion will have to take damage and you will probably loose a squad member. At least you can focus on saving your commander, but this will sacrifice your squad. More often than not, there is so much stuff on the screen, you just have to take damage.

It's like this game was designed to remove skill form the equation and replace it with happen chance (just like IirySoft did in "Cursed Treasure 2&quot. If you don't get enough upgrades you won't make it far. If you don't have enough allies in your battalion, you won't make it far. The game places it's enemies randomly so if the game doesn't decide to go easy on you, you won't make it far. Normal mode should have had a set pattern of enemies, so that the player could memorize bullet patterns and and use skill to get through the game instead of luck. (Endless mode should remain random to keep things lively).

Next, the game crawls at a slow pace and is repetitive. There's no upgrade to improve your walking speed. In endless mode you will feel like you are making big progress, but you then realize that you've only moved a few meters. This problem is made worse by the game constantly freezing up every two seconds. There is variety of enemies, but they all start to feel the same quickly. Just about every game screen throws every single enemy at you at once and the games is simple so you will use the same strategy to defeat every enemy, thus making the game repetitive and boring. Also, there are no onscreen power ups to collect, aside from health and factor that increases repetitiveness and boredom. Also, I noticed the game kind of moves in waves. You'll destroy everything on screen and then have to slowly walk across an empty screen before facing more enemies. This helps you get a break from the action, but it happens too often. If the game didn't clutter all of it's enemies so close and spread them out a bit, it more help reduce the lag, repetitiveness, and inane difficulty (in endless mode). Yet, another area of the game that could have been fixed if IriySoft had better quality assurance testing.

Lastly, I noticed a few times in the game were I had an "instant death". it was hard to tell what killed, or if just walking into certain enemies can cause this, but it sure was frustrating. I was up to 1800 meters in endless mode, close to obtaining the Tough Squad quest (walk 2000 meters in endless mode.) and I insta-died. How frustrating. It seems like a glitch in the game or poor programming, but it should definitely be fixed.

To conclude, there are a bunch of distance games out there that are far better and rely more on skill instead of luck. "Knightmare Tower", "Toss the Turtle", "Into Space 1 and 2", and "Learn to Fly 1 and 2" are just a few, far superior distance games to mention. Look at "Learn to Fly", it's a far better game and appears to have been made by only one person (lightbringer777) (Maybe it was a team, but I doubt it was as big as IriySoft.). "Battalion Commander" had a team of 11 people working on it and they couldn't even get the sound right. I feel like IriySoft's games are far overrated. These flaws could be understandable, if the game was made by one person, but it was not. "Battlion Commander starts out fun and promising, but receptive gameplay, lag, and balance issues everywhere turn this game into a boring march of frustration. Just a few fixes and some additional gameplay elements could have made this game a true hit. Unfortunately this game is flawed.

Rating: 5/10