Planets Under Attack Review

If anyone here has ever played Galcon Fusion, Planets Under Attack is, more or less, a similar experience with extra gameplay elements and better graphics, long story short. But does that make it good or bad?

Basic gameplay involves sending your ships to neutral and enemy planets to take them over. A small marker above each planet indicates how much population it has, which has to be reduced to zero before you capture it. Each planet you take over increases your total income, which allows you to send in bigger fleets of ships to attack.

The learning curve does the right thing by bringing new elements to the game slowly, allowing you to get to grips with each individual aspect before adding another one, as well as providing clear explanations and instructions.

At first your fleet can take out up to about two or three population points per ship (allowing you to take out 30 population planets with about 10-15 ships), but in later missions a ‘bounty meter’ is introduced. This limits your maximum money pot, but your ships perform better the more money you have. If you find yourself low on cash, your ships will be very slow and deal reduced damage. You stop generating money when you attack, so moving even small fleets of ships without proper planning will deplete your cash reserves and reduce the effectiveness of your fleets.

There are three different types of planets to control, starting with the default planets which generate ships. The first is the normal planet which just generates ships. The ‘Space Base’ will attack any ships that pass by it, apart from those owned by whoever owns the Space Base. If no-one owns it, it will attack any ships within range. The third and final type is the ‘Bank Planet’. These planets only appear on levels with the bounty meter and generate money extremely quickly. They can also overdrive your money meter, giving your ships a massive bonus in speed and damage.

Much later in the game you are given the option to convert a planet into another type, such as turning your normal planet into a Bank and vice versa. Space Bases and Banks don’t generate ships; you need to send in ships from other planets in order for them to be properly defended. This means you’ll have to carefully balance your ship-producing planets with your specialist planets to ensure success.

Several different game modes are available:

Elimination: The aim is to destroy all of the opponent’s planets

Domination: The victory condition requires controlling a set amount of planets to accumulate enough domination points.

Capture: This gamemode sets a number of ‘target’ planets and tasks the player to capture them all.

King of the Hill: The challenge is to hold a single key planet for a set amount of time, and losing the planet will reset the timer.

Payback: A rather difficult mode in which you have to pay the ‘Collectors’ a set amount of ‘Sollars’ (in-game currency). You can’t attack the Collectors in this mode, but each payment holds off their next attack on you, and they get stronger each time they attack.

Finally, my favourite: Boss Battle.

In Boss Battle you must face off against a massive planet, set with an extremely high population, as well as being faced with regular opponents.

The first boss level was very well done, beginning with only a single opponent attacking you, but forcing you to move quickly as waiting too long will result in another opponent arriving to swarm you, in most instances taking all your planets. This forces you into action and requires that you find the right balance between cautious pacing and offensive action, as the boss planet also heals nearby enemy planets.

The second boss was, unfortunately, not as good. This enemy has a special attack which will reduce a planet's population, in most cases to zero; although it will not directly take the planet over. Again, the boss is supported by regular opponents who will attack your planets and take advantage of those whose defences are destroyed by the boss’ special ability.

However, the boss rarely uses its attack, and as it is positioned at the edge of the play area and your regular opponent is in the middle, it barely makes any impact. Without significant support from the boss planet, the regular opponent is fairly easy to wipe out and isn’t particularly effective. Once they are gone, this leaves the Boss planet with no means of attack other than destroying a planet’s defences, which makes no impact because as there are no enemies, nobody can come and take it over while it is defenceless.

Owning all planets and having them fully upgraded at this stage caused my money meter to go up to 1,500 and I managed to reveal that you can only send a maximum of 1,000 ships per attack.

There are two different races you can play as, the Traders, whom you control through the course of the campaign; and the Robots, who can only be played in Skirmish mode, with each faction playing slightly differently from the other. When playing as Traders, you select a target and ships from all your planets converge in on it, whereas with Robots you select which planet sends the ships and, instead of costing money, it costs some of that planet's population. Upgrading also costs a planet's population. The Robots also switch planets between producing energy and making more robots for that planet’s population. More energy means better and faster ships.

The story is also very interesting and well thought through, with the plot progressing steadily as the game moves along, providing an interesting background and explanation to ‘capture every planet in sight’ gameplay and filled with interesting characters that communicate with the player before and after each level.

The music in the game deserves special mention, with atmospheric and relaxing music that is randomly picked each level, as well as more intense boss battle music. I found every track very enjoyable to listen to and very fitting with the on-screen action.

Overall, Planets Under Attack is a very nice and unique concept for a game and there isn’t much out there that compares to it. It is everything it needs to be, nothing more, nothing less.