Battleship thrusts you headlong into an Earth facing an unknown aquatic alien menace. Upon emerging from the idyllic blue waters of the Hawaiian Islands, these humanity threatening space invaders erect a dome around the archipelago, restricting all communication and radar. As Cole Mathis, the US naval fleet’s “Boots on the Ground”, you must prove yourself worth as an elite soldier and help defeat the enemy. Don’t let the soothing scenery fool you - this is no time for a vacation! Find your inner soldier and stop the alien threat before it’s too late...

Battleship is based loosely on the movie which is based on the board game (yes, I'm still scratching my head thinking about that one too). What we have here is a game that has a lot of promise, but was obviously rushed through development and given neither the time nor money that would have made it an entertaining offering.

Think of the two most popular first person shooters (FPS) around at the moment... Did you think of Halo and Call of Duty? If not, why not? Well that appears to be the thinking behind Battleship - try to capture the best aspects of both these franchises. Sadly they didn't manage this very well at all. There are very obvious elements taken from both, without managing to create a game that's really worthy of your time.

There's a rather bizarre attempt to add something different by allowing you to enter another aspect of the game play by having you switch to a screen where you can control seafaring vessels in your fleet. When you kill enemies in the FPS area of the game, they occasionally drop wildcards, which can be used to improve individual ships. You can even use a wildcard to take control of a ship's firepower. But to be honest this is pretty pointless and very unrealistic, as you can destroy your enemy in seconds - even if they were pounding you into the ground beforehand.

The lack of an online game is also a bit of a disappointment, and to be honest this should have been released as a £20 budget title.

It's such a shame that more time and money hadn't been available, as it's not as bad as it could have been - but then again, it's not very good either. Hopefully this will sink without a trace (do you see what I did there?)

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Darren Rea