Colossatron: Massive World Threat

The talented folks at Half-Brick have a knack for creating addictive and unique takes on popular genres. Their next effort on iOS platforms is Colossatron: Massive World Threat, and it's been bleeding our mobile batteries dry over the holidays.

At its core Colossatron: Massive World Threat is a variation on the match-3 puzzler. Power cores arrive in three basic colours - yellow, blue and red - match three and they combine for a stronger version of the yellow, blue, and red piece of the mech-centipede. Combine a yellow and a red for an orange, yellow and blue for green, and blue and red for a purple and you have six variations of mech pieces for your Colossatron. Each colour has different attacks depending on what weapon is currently in rotation (you can unlock these with in-game currency for a more informed choice). As you add them up there are infinite combinations and potentials each time you start playing as the colours complement each other in different ways.

You don't directly control the mech centipede, but there is a special ability that allows you to focus your fire power in certain spots (with a cool-down). There are also power ups such as rapid fire, mega bomb and shield that affect nearby segments of the centipede.

It's chaotic to figure out exactly what's happening on screen, especially when played on your iPhone as there can dozens and dozens of enemies as well a very long mech centipede on screen with projectiles going all over the place. It's easier to keep track and match pieces on an iPad, but things still tend to escalate into chaos quickly.

The basic structure of the game is that you land in a fictional country and you take out four cities to unlock the next (seven countries are available in total from the start). Clearing a country also unlocks survival mode for that country. We managed to clear the first two countries in our first go without actually knowing exactly how the mechanics worked (winging it) and how to properly update our Colossatron, but then country three came and put a massive dent in our newfound confidence. While not a paywall per say, it's clear that there are some difficulty spikes that you'll likely either have to grind heavily to clear, or you'll have to open your wallet. Even after we had mastered the mechanics the third country (Kingland) still took some effort and upgrading to overcome.

While it's not as elegant and minimalistic as Fruit Ninja or Jetpack Joyride, Colossatron still possesses the same addictive component and it's a really nice concept that brings together frantic action with strategic puzzle solving. The our main beef with the game is the difficulty spikes, as the challenge comes from the game simply throwing lots and lots of enemies at you.

It's understandable why it's been designed in this way, as it promotes microtransactions, but I feel that the concept could have benefitted from less chaos and more strategy. Once things get hectic you tend to simply throw tactics out the window and focus on getting the power cores added to your tail no matter where they fit... and soon thereafter your mechanial monster explodes and it's back to square one.

As you progress towards the final couple of nations the capitals turn pretty grindy and at this point updating the armour of your power cores is fairly expensive. While not an outright paywall the cost of upgrading is so expensive that it will take you around an hour to earn enough prisms (premium in-game currency) to take your armour from +75% to +100%.

While this doesn't make the gameplay any less enjoyable it does make it feel a bit pointless after a while. Complaining about microtransactions and freemium models may feel a little old, but somewhere in the back of my mind I feel that the core concept deserved something better.

I realise this sounds a little negative, but ultimately I enjoyed the concept. The presentation is sleak and it's impressive how the match-3 concept still finds new applications in gaming. And as you'd expect, laying waste to cities is massively addictive.

Images taken with iPhone 5.