What Is Mobile Strike - Why You Should Play It

War never changes, unless you"re Arnold Schwarzenegger swapping out a Type 69 RPG for a smartphone.

If you"re a fan of building an army and unleashing it upon the world, or you watch any TV at all, you might have heard of Mobile Strike. It"s one of the most popular games available in the Play Store right now, so we"ve taken a look to get you all the details. This free to play MMO meshes elements of base building, and full out combat that you can spend hours on. You may have seen a few of the commercials that have been popping up over TV advertising for Mobile Strike.

If you"ve been curious, but you aren"t sure what this game is all about, we"ve got you covered.

The World

Mobile Strike is an Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game in which you are trying to build up your home base and an army to defend that base, and then launching attacks to destroy nearby enemy bases. The game is split into two different types of play — internal construction and external destruction. You"ll need to juggle construction, resource gathering, troop training, and research within your home base. Going to the world map lets you scout and then attack nearby bases of other players.

This game has a ton of different element that are all sort of mashed together, with varying success. This means that if you have access to a tablet, that"s probably where you"ll want to play this game. It"s because with a smaller screen it can be difficult to see everything going on clearly. You"ll also want to stick close to a charger since the game can easily drain your battery once you get sucked in.



As is often the case with these games, step one is building your base. A tutorial will have you construct all of the integral buildings you need to get started, as well as explaining what each one does. There are a half dozen different buildings, and you"ll need to level all of them up as you go along. Your home base is where you"ll recruit and train troops, decide on what you want to research, heal up troops after battle, and more. Thankfully you"ll be safe for the first 24 hours while you get your sea legs, as the game gives you a peace shield that protects you from attacks from neighboring players.

If you head out to the world at large, you"ll see your base along with any other neighboring bases in the area. Each one will have a designation, level indicator, and the tag from that player"s alliance. From this screen that you"ll be able to scout out the neighbors that you plan to attack, and send out attacking parties. When you"re on the world map you"ll also be able to see coordinates, which is how you"ll let other friendly players know where you are placed.

Resources

As you might guess, resources play a huge part in this game. You need them to do everything from researching new technologies, to upgrading your buildings for better troops and weapons. Stone, oil, iron, food and silver are the five in-game resources that you"ll need to succeed. There is also gold, which you can obtain by completing certain quests or through in-app purchases.

You"ll need to collect resourced by building the appropriate resource gathering building, and continuing to level it up as you go along. You"ll be able to have multiples of each type of resource building, but you also need to make sure that you have enough storage to hold everything. Each resource will be consumed differently, depending on the situation. Just keep an eye out when you go to build troops, or choose new construction, you"ll always be informed what it will cost both to build, and to maintain.



While upgrading your buildings does use up some of those precious resources that you might be tempted to hoard, you"ll also be able to collect and store more resources by upgrading. Essentially you"ll need to continually gauge the benefit of an upgrade versus the cost. This is pretty routine for anybody who is used to base building in games. Research also uses up those resources, but it"s how you"ll be able to find new technology to aid you in battle, as well as making it easier to construct buildings, or train troops.

One of the more problematic elements of Mobile Strike is their insistence on pushing in-app purchases onto you at absolutely every chance that they get. We mean that seriously too, just switching between screens will earn you an ad about buying another pack of gold. They"ve always got sales going, and they really, really, want you to pick up a few. It also seems like as you get higher in level, those purchases might become more a necessity and less of a luxury. When compared to something like Clash of Clans, in-app purchases are way pushier here.

Alliances

Mobile Strike is an MMO, which means it"s meant to be played with other people. While you can get buy on your lonesome at first, it quickly becomes apparent that having an Alliance is definitely in your best interest. Your Alliance, is made up of the people who you fight with, and you can choose to join an already existing one, or build one of your own.

In an MMO having allies is always a good thing, and that"s exactly what your alliance is. It"s the people who will fight with you, help you speed up buildings, and — so long as you join a good — who will help you succeed in the game. There is an alliance tab right at the bottom of your screen, because once you join up, you"ll be spending a decent chunk of time here.



As much as your alliance helps you, you can help them out as well. There are several ways to do this even. You can speed up buildings, ask for resources or troops, and send troops to aid in war actions. If you need help in any of these areas, it"s simple to ask for help and members of your alliance will usually be right on top of aiding you. You"ll get gifts for helping your alliance too, which will help you out with in-game items to make life easier.

There is even an alliance chat, so that you can talk to your teammates and plan out future moves. Considering that the goal of this game is to knock out your enemies, being able to privately speak to your alliance to decide on a strategy can be key.

Missions and items

After you"ve gotten the hang of the basic game play in Mobile Strike, you"ll start noticing that you"re inadvertently completing quests, and you get prizes for those missions. Missions and items both have a tab in the navigation menu at the bottom of your screen, and for good reason. Much like everything else in Mobile Strike, there is a lot going on here.

Missions are broken into a few different categories: "Base Missions", "Daily Missions", "Alliance Missions", and "VIP Missions". Base missions are all directly related to the work you"ve been doing on your base, like upgrading buildings. There are also more base missions, than any other kind, and you"ll complete them through normal gameplay. The Daily Missions, Alliance Missions, and VIP Missions are a bit different. You"ll tap on a mission to choose it, and then wait the appropriate amount of time for the mission to complete.



When missions complete you"ll get all sorts of items. These range from speed ups, which will cut down on construction time for buildings, to timed resource boosts. If you open your item menu, you"ll find 5 categories of items: "Special", "Resources", "Speed Ups", "War", and "Crates". It"s here that you can see which items you already own, and showing you the ones available for purchase with gold.

Your items are there to make your life easier, and you should use them. The speed ups in particular make life far easier. You"ll find the items you receive from missions in the special, or speed up section. Resources are set amounts of specific resources that you can hoard for a rainy day, or immediately add to your stockpile. The War items holds items specifically helpful in battle, from peace shields to attack boosts. Crates are packs of in-game items holding an assortment of goodies, but you"ll need to purchase them to get access.

Should you play it

Mobile Strike is a genre of game where you should definitely know what you"re getting into before tapping the download button. For those of you who aren"t interested in spending tons of time and battery on an MMO that needs to be checked frequently, you might want to steer the other direction. Likewise, the amount of IAP that the game pushes on you will probably agitate would-be players. This also isn"t a necessarily kid friendly game. There isn"t any gratuitous violence to be found on the screen, but the game is centered around playing with other people. If you prefer to censor when your child can contact other players in a game, you probably want to steer away.

If you like base building games where you raise an army and then unleash it upon your enemies, then you"ll enjoy this game for what it is. It"ll steal your time, try to convince you to spend money, and probably eat your battery too. It will however let you take over the world, which is a plus. So are you going to check out Mobile Strike, or is there another free to play MMO on Android we should check out? Let us know in the comments below!

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