App of the Day: Allied Star Police
Bomb the base.
Remember the moment in Advance Wars when you get your first Medium Tank? Of course you do. Everybody remembers this moment. So there you are, working through the campaign, and for a while you're pretty pleased with your starter tanks: they're chunky and brightly coloured, and they can chew through infantry in a few rounds. Then, you're finally let loose with the bigger model. It trundles onto the battlefield and just decimates everything it sees. You feel almost guilty using it, but that doesn't stop you.
The reason I mention all that is because Allied Star Police has its own Medium Tank Moment (MTM). You're getting stuck into the enemy, you're moving towards their base, but you keep getting held up along the way. That's when you notice a new icon's flashing away in your unit tray: WCSV. It's the standard tank made a little more, well, memorable. It's a gigantic metal killing machine, and it's a pleasure to unleash it.
ASP is a wonderfully straightforward lane-attack strategy game, and it's absolutely filled with these instances. There aren't many units, but they're all beautifully crafted and bristling with guns, and each new one seems to be expressly designed to make the older model feel a little toothless. The enemies come at you in never-ending waves, plasma bolts and bullets sing through the air, and although you've only got a handful of special powers they're all worthy of the name, allowing you to grant your forces brief windows of immunity, say, or letting you fling bombs onto the battlefield with a single imperious prod.