The Battle of the Beaches – Battle Beach v Boom Beach

These are mobile games and differ considerably despite their similar names. There are advanatages and disadvantages with both games, and perhaps before you get ‘bedded-in’ and lumbered with the game just take a moment to read the following pros and cons. It may save you a few weeks of your life!

Let’s start with Boom Beach

Boom Beach

Boom Beach is from the Supercell (Clash of Clans) stable and is immediately bright clean and attractive. Supercell know what they are doing, and there are many clones of what they do out there. ‘Battle Beach’ does wreak of ‘Clash of Clans’ – more on that later. Boom Beach is a map management game really. You log in, you are given a little island to manage. You build up your resources by ‘farming’ your own or by raiding other players or AI islands. You create landing craft, and land on the beaches with the support of the ‘Gunboat’ that can level a few defence towers first to make access to the base. When you destroy the base EVERYTHING around it automatically is destroyed. You are then given a resources reward and you return back to the map view to find some more ‘booty’! This base ‘destroy all’ issue means that traditional ‘farming’ doesn’t work (base outside of walls for shields) There are no walls, only mines.

At first glance this is a really pleasant game to play. However, this is quite short lived. The restriction put upon you when upgrading – EVEN IF YOU HAVE THE RESOURCES – are uncomfortable, “You cannot upgrade this as you do not have enough experience points!”, yet you cannot explore the far distances without building the equipment to make this possible. So you are stuck fighting the locals. It really take s VERY long time to get any sort of basic base going. And to be honest they are destroyed very easily. You would have thought they’d have learned their lessons from ‘Clash of Clans’, but this just has left me cold, I might look in if bored and raid an island, but it has no soul at all. Releasing the villagers and watching them jump up and down soon just becomes an annoying delay. The game does not (like Clash of Clans) match you very well with opponents. It is pretty, but be prepared for the long haul! Or of course the whole point of this is to make you spend money – buy gems and advance. Your choice. If you are on a limited income I would avoid this.

Battle Beach

This is a tweaked standard Clash of Clans style resources game, but it has a beach, and you can rebuild the dock and create ships and subs. These can be charged up with oil to launch a barrage of missiles prior to attack, so this is a similar cross-over to Boom Beach. Battle Beach does have some quite good features. The one that is obvious for those who want to play for free, is they give you ‘keys’ from time to time to open war chests, and they can be full of anything from resources to Quicksilver (their version of the ‘Gems’). The island is able to be re-skinned, you can earn quicksilver in the Shop and watch a video and build some up. You can also get rewards. Now I don’t know if I was just lucky, but in my case I signed-up connected it to my Facebook (got some Quicksilver for that 25 I think?) then I saw an ‘offer of the week’.

Install a game they were promoting (Empire Z pictured), get that game to a level 2 (pictured above) Town center (pretty quick to do) and I was given 25,000 Quicksilver! This offer was tried by a friend who just missed out, so keep your eye on the opening credits as you could get lucky, or try the free keys when they come around as they might open a worthy chest of goodies for you for free! That’s like Clash of Clans giving you 25,000 Gems for installing Boom Beach. Like that is gunna happen! ;).

Then I got a ‘key’ (you can buy more but be careful of the gambling addiction) and opened a Chest and got another load! I managed to update everything (not restricted by experience points in Boom Beach!) and have just about every item available and now just upgrading all that slowly. This is the way to do it! Get em’ hooked and build a good user-base and they will in time shop and make you rich. Boom Beach by contrast are suffocating their users – silly!

Pros and cons

Boom Beach

Cons

• Slow!
• Boring.
• Repetitive – you win an island then have to go back the next day to win the same island again and again. Bored! Kill me now!!!
• If you want to see how repetitive this looks after some time playing then watch this, as impressive as this is, it is stuck in a loop. And how difficult it must be to stop playing and move on!

• Experience Points restrict what you can do – even if your resources are full to bursting! This is unnecessary. And will result in impatient people just moving on.
• Too easy to smash newbies (and the units are over powered really) which will result in them just uninstalling it in frustration. I don’t care if the unit does look like Rambo, 2 machine guns, 4 sniper towers and 2 rocket launchers firing for 2mins at them and still not killing the units is ridiculous!
• Drains the battery! I have a Anker mains powered smart PowerIQ™ USB Unit and the device is still draining! I can play ‘Clash of Clans‘ or ‘Age of Empires Castle Seige‘ all day and it is still 100% – this is a serious consideration for those on the commute!
• A bit of a headache regarding sculptor and statues and what to do with them. Watch this – intuitive it is not!
• Like ‘Clash of Clans’ this has a terrible matching algorithm, meaning you never get a good match you are either outclassed or the guy has one hut and 25 wood LOL! – speak to Age of Empires theirs is perfect!
• The ease by which you can continually attack an individual without it being prevented, for example if you attack a person in ‘Age of Empires Castle Siege’ you cannot attack them again unless the revenge. In Boom Beach you can just keep attacking a neighbour and this will result in bullying weaker players who can logically never catch up without spending money. They really need to look at this.

Pros

• Pretty
• Interesting concept and a real twist on a theme. However there are better games out there like Pirates or similar that were originally popular sea-based windows map-management games and have much broader appeal.
• Map management. Instead of just town management. But this can quickly become irritating. Try ‘The Simpsons Tapped Out’ if you want map management without all this Testosterone ;).
• Depth – as in get a sub and dive for resources (later in the game as you expand), look for the buoys – interesting!

Battle beach

Cons

• Seen it all before, a Machine gun is the canon in Clash of Clans, very similar cross-overs between the two games. A bit pushy with ads, one appears on loading the game, and for some maybe it is annoying? But if that supports the freebies they offer, then maybe it is a pro?
• The Giants are replaced with tanks, motorbikes for wall smashers. goblins are motorbikes etc… You can lose a lot of battles if you do not use the correct units for what you need.
• The starting map is far too cluttered with trees, rocks and obstacles, to remove them requires spending resources. This slows the game down a bit, and they could ease off a bit with the skins, however some trees have Quicksilver in them, (like Clash of Clans and Boom Beach) so clearing them is swings and roundabouts eh?
• Drains the battery! I have a Anker mains powered smart PowerIQ™ USB Unit and the device is still draining! I can play ‘Clash of Clans‘ or ‘Age of Empires Castle Seige‘ all day and it is still 100% – this is a serious consideration for those on the commute!
• A little bit less attractive (somewhat like early ‘Clash’).

Pros

• Free stuff! Lots of ways to generate ‘Quicksilver’ and this is actually one of the most generous games I have played, especially if you have no money to buy in-app purchases. I think they have a get rich slow logic rather than quick. Makes no odds – they still get rich. Boom Beach should take a look.
• VERY GOOD alliance set-up. I don’t know if they are staffers paid to donate you troops but they are really generous and quick – join a big ‘alliance’ or ask and someone will quickly invite you – do it!
• Interesting and more relevant units. Tanks, Machine guns, etc…. Most people can work this out more quickly than what a dragon can do?
• Aerial units come quite quickly. Dragons in Clash take weeks – Helicopters arrive with just a few barrack upgrades.
• Units are good value and render fast. And some interesting addons to the usual Clash of Clans Fayre.
• Sea and Beach element – means this moves beyond the sphere of traditional clash.
• Offshore storage – a ship that can store a proportion of your resources if attacked – clever – I call mine Switzerland 😉
• Like the other game mention called ‘Empire -Z’ that has a casino. This game has gambling addons. “Buy more keys for the chests! – choose a chest.” This is gambling in disguise. You win Quicksilver, but you may just win some XPs. So be patient and careful about this one – especially if you have your PayPal hooked up to your Google Play or iTunes account! So it reminds me of a loss leader that a casino might do, in that they give you lots of stuff to lull you into a false sense of security, then you start spending. If this is the case it is just another way around the whole funding games and making a profit issue. These are businesses and need to make a profit. Understand that and it’s cool.

Conclusion

If you are in it for the long-haul and have plenty of money then ‘Boom Beach’ is aesthetically pleasing to play. However if you are a gamer who quickly moves from game to game during upgrades, and simply want a free game with some good in-game conversation (it is better than even Clash in that regard) the ‘Battle Beach’ chat room is fast, funny and generous – unlike Clash donated troops do not protect you off-line they just add to your army (well I have not seem them rez and fight off attracts). and one that is pretty generous, then the ‘Battle Beach’ game is for you!

DOWNLOAD LINKS

Boom Beach – Free Download Android IOS Appstore
Battle Beach – Free Download Android IOS Appstore

Enjoy!