Taking charge of your units is a breeze with the Wii Remote and Nunchuck in Battalion Wars 2. The original Battalion Wars on the Gamecube had a unique control set where you could easily control your squad while switching units with ease; now on the Nintendo Wii, you become a master commander of your squad within the first 30 minutes of play.

The story is quite well written, it is told through in game cut scenes and anime style storyboards. As the battle progresses you get a little more glimpse into the greater story, which we won’t spoil here of course. While each of the 6 countries in the game does not have a real life counter part, it just seems that some of them are just hard to ignore such as the Anglo Isles which have British accents throughout the game. The game starts off with the Anglo Isles invading the Solar Empire because they fear the latter have a super weapon.

The first few missions are tutorial missions, but the game is well developed because instead of the standard boring click here, jump here, you actually start playing the game and they slowly introduce various elements of the game. In the first mission you learn to run and shoot enemies, then slowly they show you some squad based commands, taking command of ships and so forth. All these earlier missions introduce you to the controls at a nice slow pace that won’t overwhelm you.

As with the first game, most missions involve you to control a bunch of units. A typical mission will include a bunch of troops, recon vehicles and tanks. Simply pressing left or right on the Wii Remote will let you select groups units (such as grunts or tanks). You can even select individual units once you’ve highlighted the group, you could send one tank to fire at one target while the other tank is headed for another enemy.

You must be in control of one unit at all times; feel like hopping in tank? No problem, with just one click of the Wii Remote on the unit you can take control of that unit. When you control one unit, it is quite smooth. For instance, the air Gunship quickly reacts to a twist of the Wii Remote, or the crazy quick reaction of the super fast Recon vehicle.

The graphics in the game have improved since the Gamecube version. While the graphics are not earth shattering, the cute units have a nice polish to them and the units are very sleek looking. There are way too many units to name in this review, but here are some of our favourites: The Flame Veteran toasts enemy troops; Recon vehicle is very fast and can outrun most enemy fire; Battleships are massive and Helicopters reign terror from above.

New Naval units make for some action packed sea battles where enemy planes and boats will try to sink your ships. Oddly enough submarines can be spotted in the game by frigates; I guess they need to learn how to dive deeper into the water.

Missions are well paced, usually starting with a small skirmish, moving onto some side missions and finally the goal of the level. There are some pretty tough missions whereby you have to deploy your units behind sand bags or use the right amount of units to defend a structure in order to survive. If these instructions are not followed you’ll die over and over again causing quite some frustration.

While there isn’t much strategy to the game, you do however have to use units wisely. If there are enemy Veteran Flame troops, don’t send in your Grunts…but rather make quick work with them using a tank. The same goes with blindly sending in a tank against a dozen Bazooka troops that will waste the tank in 30 seconds.

After you have finished the over 20 some odd missions why not hop online? There are various modes of play online:

MP ASSAULT:
You take control of your army completing or defending a series of objectives. Being the defender, you must stop your online opponent from finishing each objective. You must also secure your HQ in order to win the battle. As the attacker you must do the opposite, complete each objective and take over the HQ to win.

MP SKIRMISH:
Don’t feel like thinking? How about all out war against your online opponent? As you destroy each enemy unit, you get points. Larger units yield a greater point value; you can also capture facilities to add to your fighting force, so try not to lose your buildings.

MP CO-OP:
Co-op is the new "cool" in videogames these days, why make enemies when you can finish missions together. Since there is lack of voice communications, you can lock onto units and "tell" your friend to help you out. If your friends own the game, you can add their friends’ codes or play with some random people online.

Occasionally an online game would not connect; but without a headset, we couldn’t figure out if the person was on the other side of the planet or next door. The Co-op mode is lacking since you do not play through the entire game and end up selecting only a few missions, but that would have been amazing to play the whole game. You can unlock more multiplayer missions by playing online Co-op.

Battalion Wars 2 has a solid presentation that will make you want to play "one more mission" before you head to bed, the online play adds more value to the game and the cool co-op mode as well. Lack of communication online is a slight downfall and the friend codes that you must key in to add all your buddies. Over all Battalion Wars 2 is a great third person blast em up game that shows off how pointing and shooting is done properly on a console system.

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