Operation: New Earth

Planetary defense is something we are not yet using in the real world, because there’s little need for such a massive project when no one and nothing is threatening our planet from the outside. Naturally, such a project would require cooperation from every nation on Earth, as well as a humongous amount of resources to put everything together.

Operation: New Earth is a multiplayer strategy game in which your goal is to construct a military base in order to fend off the alien attackers that try to invade our planet. It’s a simple game when it comes to the mechanics, since all you have to do is click on things at your own pace and mostly wait for the buildings or units to be completed, which takes longer and longer the further into the game you happen to be.

Everything you build takes real time in order to be ready, starting from a few seconds in the beginning, all the way to a few hours in the later stages of the game. Naturally, you can speed up the process by spending currency, but since it takes a lot of time to gain the said currency, you are constantly stuck in the waiting period with nothing to do. It’s possible to work around this issue by paying actual money for currency, but that’s not an option for everyone.

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is the fact that you share the world map with other players, which means that you can also interact with them every now and again. The troops you build come in handy during battles, and there are plenty of units to choose from. As you might expect, these too have a pretty long waiting time associated with them, which can cause frustration.

Lastly, the graphics are nothing to write home about, but they are not bad either. There’s plenty of detail in the maps and the buildings, and you can even zoom in to get a better look at the scenery. Granted, the texture resolution is pretty poor, which is easy to observe when you zoom in too close, but that’s not a very important issue, not when the gameplay has a lot more critical problems.

In the end, it’s quite clear that Operation: New Earth is a mobile port designed to bring a bit more cash, given the lazy interface design and lack of proper mouse & keyboard controls. Hence, it’s only worth a try if you are prepared to pay for the right to enjoy yourself without waiting entire hours for your buildings to be ready.