TouchArcade Rating:

If you missed the Twitch stream yesterday, it’s alright, but one of the games that got requested was Gregory Challant’s Front Wars ($3.99). It seemed neat enough to give it a little hat tip in a regular news story, just in case you’ve missed the game as it has been practically pinned to the Hot Games list for the past couple days.

What’s interesting about Front Wars is it seems like the perfect candidate to get into one of those long-winded internet arguments about what constitutes a clone versus a highly inspired game as Front Wars basically is Nintendo’s Advance Wars. The units look the same, function the same, and there’s even a map in the game that’s direct from the original that is causing quite a bit of drama amongst people who make a hobby of getting worked up over clones.

While it might look like Advance Wars, the game’s AI seems about as barebones as you can get. As you can see from the stream, the AI is shockingly passive, almost to the point of being boring, as most of the levels I’ve played devolve into endlessly passing turns as you move your forces to take out the one enemy unit that’s chilling in the corner of the map not doing anything.

Thankfully, full online multiplayer via either Game Center or Facebook comes to the rescue. If you’re looking for someone to play with, swing by the thread in our forums. An online turn based shockingly similar version of Advance Wars were basically the dreams of a iOS gamer in 2009, so it’s sort of neat to see that come to fruition.

Definitely give this game a look if you’ve ever found yourself saying, “I wish I had Advance Wars on my phone."