Earlier this week, I posted some pretty exhaustive first impressions of Iron Marines [$4.99], and consider this review a continuation of that article. In it, I cover most of the basics of the game and how various mechanics work. To avoid endlessly repeating myself a bunch, I'd recommend going back and reading that as this review will mostly confirm suspicions that I had and answer questions about the game's monetization methods which have been fairly controversial in our community.
Real quick, the basic gist of the game is that Iron Marines is the closest thing that I know of to a mobile version of StarCraft that you can play on your iPhone or iPad. Take a universe that leans heavily on inspiration from StarCraft, add in a great touch interface and simplified base building that feels a bit more like a tower defense game, and you've got Iron Marines. Mission types are straight out of what you'd see playing a single player RTS game and have you doing things like conquering different parts of a map, defending objectives, rescuing other units, and many other things. It's sort of wild just how much variety the different levels have.
Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel

The first hour of gameplay, which is where my first impressions stopped, left me with a few big questions. See, much like Ironhide's other titles, Iron Marines is a premium game which as of this writing is selling for five bucks. Inside the game, however, there are quite a few IAP options. The App S...