Fighting Fungi- Mushroom Wars Review

SeanNOLA’s Take: After several years of giving up, the home console industry as a whole is once again trying to crack the mouseless RTS code.  The past two years have seen a handful of consolized attempts at cloning the PC genre, such as Brutal Legend, Red Alert 3 and Halo Wars, and each have been met with mixed reception.  Mushroom Wars has stripped the genre down to its skivvies to deliver the most basic elements of war to your TV set.

Mushroom Wars boils the traditional RTS down to its most basic elements.  There is no base-building, no resource management, and only one troop type.  You send your troops out to capture buildings, upgrade structures, using your troops as materials, and upgrade your weapons by controlling specific bases that affect the strength of your army.  That’s it.  No tech-trees, no air-raids, no tanks.  The simple one-command gameplay is fast-paced and very addictive.  The wide variety of maps and mission-types keep the game from feeling repetitive or boring, and the in game and meta-trophies are a great incentive to keep at it. 

PSN aficionados will immediately recognize a resemblance to Pixel Junk Monsters, both in graphic and sound design.  The bright colors, along with subtle tweets and bleeps in the background have the same mellowing effect in Mushroom Wars as it did in Monsters, which is nice to escape to when slashing monsters or shooting Nazis gets too intense, and I need to relax.  Creat Studios has forged a nice afternoon distraction that, well deserving of an ancillary look.

DesertEagle’s Take: It’s been nearly two years since colleague and resident indie aficionado TideGear turned me on to a little gem entitled Galcon. The diversion, which was later ported onto iPhone screens, brilliantly re-imagined Risk as a real-time strategy game. Capturing territories to forge an increasingly-powerful empire was delightfully addictive, and provided an outlet for my inner megalomaniac. Yet, despite the proficiency of these two iterations of Galcon, neither took advantage of myriad of pixels offered by a high-def television set. Someone needed to bring the game onto consoles.

While Mushroom Wars forsakes the intergalactic setting of Galcon for the confines of a fungi-filled forest- little is lost in the transition, and even a few novel nuances are gained. Each of the title’s 28 levels can be played on three difficulty levels and offer a trio of variations. Conquest maps require players to control every territory on the map, while Domination compels gamers to command specific agaric areas. King of the Hill is the most volatile deviation as participants earn points for capturing jurisdictions, winning the game at predetermined score levels. Each of these modes are varied across the game’s campaign mode, or available individually across twelve skirmish maps, presenting players with a respectable amount of game types for the titles ten dollar price.

A few elements would have securing an unrestrained recommendation for Mushroom Wars. A level creator would have offered a painless way to increase the longevity of the title, while an option for online multiplayer would have offered a reprieve from the predictable artificial intelligence. Visually-oriented players may be able to overlook these omissions, as they’ll be relishing the game’s enchanting graphics. From the title’s charismatically capped castles to its watercolor-inspired playfields, the game is certain to charm PS3 owners.