I was some way into Black Hole Rising. Mission? Reclamation. Day 9 I think, and I made a mistake that cost the whole battle. Brilliantly, I knew it at the time, as well. I knew I’d been too eager to advance. Heading off for the front line, I left a newly captured airport undefended. Yes, busy pressing my advantage and all that – or so I thought – but it allowed an enemy I had seen but not worried about to start taking the airport back. At the time, I had a twinge that this was very bad, and a hope that I could still turn it all around. But deeper, somehow, I also knew that I had just blown the entire thing. I would lose the airport and before I could take it back they would have whacked a perimeter of other units around it – junk units, sure, but time-wasters on a map in which tempo was everything. Somehow I knew I had screwed it up, which is the mark of a good tactics game. The mark of a great tactics game, though? Even as I continued playing, grinding my way towards a defeat I had already seen quite clearly, I was having an excellent time.
I was. It was a mixture of: next time I’ll do this then that then this! A mixture of: I’m dead here already, so what happens if I try something weird just to see what happens? The bright paint, the revving of engines, the fog of war being pushed back like snow banking and shifting in front of a holy snow plough! And is there anything in turn-based tactic games better than the corrugated click you get from taking the Advance Wars movement arrow for a quick chug across the map?
The new Advance Wars on Switch is actually two old Advance Wars – Advance Wars itself and its sequel, Black Hole Rising. Both were originally made for the Game Boy Advance, and I have a memory, I think, of having them bundled together on a cartridge back then. There’s new stuff this time around, though, mainly a new art style, which has been pretty unpopular from what I’ve seen. Gone is the chunky pixel art, replaced by sheeny 3D models of glossy tanks and gormless soldiers.
