GalCon

As I annouced a few days ago, GalCon is now available on the Android platform and, being a fan of the game from my iPod Touch days, that made me pretty happy. So far I've reviewed three similar games available in the Android Market with GalaxIR Star being the most recent and best.

To recap (only necessary if you are completely unfamiliar with this type of game) these games put a galaxy of planets on your Android's display. Each planet produces military units at a rate based on it's size... bigger has more resources and thus produces faster. You're goal is to take your fleets and conquer your opponent's fleets for complete galactic domination. The game is played in real time and thus many call it a "real time Risk".

Now that GalCon is here, do competitors need to quake in fear? GalCon is nice and IS the best of the bunch. It's professionally done and that shows as soon as the title screen loads. In contrast to GalaxIR Star, it has some neat graphical effects such as ships travelling around planets instead of through them. Necessary? Probably not... in fact you could argue that space is three dimensional so going 'through' them takes advantage of that.

GalCon offers ten skill levels all neatly displayed with basic emblems (instead of a drop down list). It also features five modes of play in single-player mode as well as multi-player support. The five modes are Classic, Vacuum (conquer as fast as possible with no opposition), Stealth (can't see planet strengths), Beast (the enemy is everywhere right from the beginning), and 3-Way (2 opponents instead of 1). GalaxIR actually has many of these modes available just in different places such as 3-Way being a choice of the number of opponents (and actually GalaxIR let's you play 4-Way) instead of a mode of play and Stealth being one of the harder difficulty levels.

Conclusions? After revisiting GalaxIR Star I was quite surprised how well it holds its own to GalCon... I really thought I'd be blown away by GalCon's greatness. It's also about a dollar cheaper if that matters to you. Unless I was a die hard GalCon fan I'd probably stick with GalaxIR Star if I already owned it... then again if I was a die hard (and I am) I'd want both just for some of the things (like 4-Way) that GalaxIR Star brings to the table. Once the dust settles, however, GalCon is the best GalCon by a nose and it earns a 5/5 star rating along with that.