Battleship is a tie-in to the action movie of the same name, which is inspired by the Hasbro board game based on a pen and paper game. It is played as a first-person shooter with demolitions specialist Cole Mathis as the protagonist. The character does not appear in the movie and even though it shares the plot, the game focuses on the U.S. army stuck on a Hawaiian archipelago and not on the battleship crew from the movie. Aliens have invaded Earth and control giant battleships. At the same time they have put an impenetrable dome over their location, trapping everyone inside.
The gameplay involves Mathis following orders as he fights along, repairs, activates or deactivates machinery, defuses charges and places C4 to blow up key points. The game mechanics are standard to the shooter genre with both regular and alien weapons. Objectives and the remaining travelling distance are shown as an overlay on the screen.
Mathis has access to a remote command gadget that allows him to access Battle Command control at any moment. When activated, the game is paused and he can direct battleships on a map to unlock artillery support. However, there are alien ships as well and when they manage to take over the location a bombardment will follow, making the missions harder.
The battleships can engage each other directly, but initially the player has no further control over them. Ships have a certain amount of health and points to attack other ships or submarines. Statistics of the ships are shown during regular gameplay in the top left corner through percentages. Wildcards can be earned that can be assigned to the battleships, including armor, longer range, additional strength, missiles or torpedoes.
One of these wildcards is ship control, which allows the player to take direct control of the weapons of a battleship from a third-person view, not on the map, to take out alien ships. These sessions only last twenty seconds. There are seven main missions in total and no multiplayer options for Battleship on PlayStation 3.