Battle of Survival for Facebook isn't much of a survivalist

Unlike so many other free-to-play games currently available, I must first commend SpellCasters for adding a lot of options to the play schematics for The Battle of Survival. Much like newer action games, this Facebook title actually sports a bevy selection of weapons for both humans and cyborgs; ray blasters, shotguns, pistols, sub-machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket launchers are just some of the many available weapons in the game. There are also special attacks that include ninja stars, ice shards, fireballs and an assortment of other team-based, defensive and offensive magic/special attacks that can be utilized by either humans or cyborgs. The developers obviously put a lot into the conceptual phase of the game's design and it shows with some of the ambitious things that it tries to achieve.

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This leads to another issue with the gameplay in Battle for Survival: vehicles. It’s a neat feature for a side-scrolling MMO. The problem, however, is not in the ability to use vehicles but in the simple fact that the vehicles are way too over-powered for newcomers. Anyone who snags a vehicle first is basically guaranteed to score the most kills unless someone manages to blow them out. Veteran players who have leveled-up to Elite status can easily destroy a vehicle but if you’re new to the game, expect to spend a lot of time watching that respawn counter countdown if an opponent manages to get in a vehicle first.

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A somewhat impressive Battleship mode is also present with its teamwork strategy elements; it mirrors the likes of Anarchy Online’s mothership battles, which sees players assaulting the opposing team’s base and having to destroy the ship’s main core. It requires a lot of teamwork and could be considered one of the more fleshed-out modes of the game.

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Even with its sloppy gameplay pacing, the game’s integrity could have been preserved with better level designs. The fact that most levels consist of a few oddly shaped and lazily placed level obstructions; it usually turns into an open-area free-for-all in just about every stage. Better levels could have easily prevented this major flaw for the game. Maybe in future updates the team will iron out more streamlined levels for better deathmatch gameplay. But as it stands, the level design for anything other than CTF in The Battle of Surival is simply poor.

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Now I know a lot of people would probably say, “It’s free you shouldn’t expect too much”, however the simplicity of this game was supposed to be its highlight (i.e., Cave Story, Kudos, Runscape, etc.) but it works more-so as its drawback. While the controls aren’t faulty and aiming the mouse is very responsive, the fact that the game plays out like a fast-paced Klick’n’Play title strips away a lot of the pace and usability that it should have. Instead of gracefully running around and aiming at targets to snipe off, fire rockets at or toss grenades toward, the loose controls and arcade-speeds usually result in every player pressing the mouse button as fast as possible and aiming wildly around hoping to hit something. Contra this game is not.

Again, I wouldn’t say that the controls are bad or designed incorrectly, but the speed at which players move and the floaty vehicles sort of force the game into the unpleasant territory of seeming unpolished.

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Nevertheless, it’s the game’s lack of refinement for the too-fast firing mechanics that creates the kind of frustration that will leave you caring less about how you see the effects or what you hear and more about just trying not to die so often in cheap ways.

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When it comes to menus and navigation the game handles them in the same fashion of every other feature in the game: it’s all very simple. The menu consists of picking either a human or cyborg and then choosing your armor, your weapon and your special ability (all of which can be upgraded with more kills). After that there’s just a basic menu that shows various games to join and how many players are in each game (or game type). That’s about as far as it goes when it comes to menu and options aesthetics.

If you don’t have a computer that can run games like GunZ, S4 League, War Rock, Counter Strike or Combat Arms or maybe you want to play a game at work that doesn’t include installing any of the aforementioned titles, then I suppose Battle of Survival isn’t too bad of an option. This is, of course, assuming that you don’t mind a game that acts like it was designed over the course of a few vacation weekends.

Battle of Survival’s potential is apparent but seemingly untapped. If Spellcasters can iron out a better gameplay pace and offer up better starting options for new players – as well as conveniently make it accessible to level-up and challenge other players (like GunZ) – then perhaps this could easily become one of the best free-to-play action games available on Facebook. In its current condition, however, The Battle of Survival will need to do a lot more than offer up a lot of good ideas in an unrefined fashion to gain any recommendation here.