Review: Commanders - Attack of the Genos (XBLA)

Commanders is a welcome addition to the strategy games currently available on XBLA.

Pros: Advanced Wars on XBLA; well balanced gameplay;

Cons: music is weak; limited camera; multiplayer needs to be fine tuned.

Achievements: Hard

Commanders is a turn-based strategy game in which you use military units to complete single player missions, AI battle maps or 2-4 player online matches. Essentially Commanders is a rip-off of Advance Wars (Nintendo DS), complete with mock-anime characters, cheesy dialog and rock-paper-scissor units. Normally, I would decry the lack of originality. However, the lack of decent strategy games on the Xbox 360 means that this title stands out and is a lot of fun to play.

There are some minor issues with the game. The maps are viewed from a top down perspective, and it is sometimes hard to get the right zoom and view that you need. The graphics themselves are fine, but the units do lack variety (only two sets of models) and some of the colour combinations can be confusing.

The overall presentation is good for an XBLA title, with only the repetitive music really standing out as a weak area. The menus, user interface and general aesthetic, a kind of art-deco, are all perfectly functional and legible.

The turn-based gameplay is spot on, and the missions (15) offer a fairly steep challenge for Advanced Wars veterans. The addition of 10 multiplayer maps, that can be played both on-line and off, is enough to get started with. If there is a slight criticism, the maps are sometimes a little too large for the unit movement distances.

Online, the matches can take a long time. I personally have experienced a couple of 3 hour games. You can limit the number of turns to 20 or 30, and I would recommend that you do this otherwise things can start to drag on a bit. Another tip to maximise your enjoyment is to turn off the fog-of-war. Although this might make things a little easier for experienced players, the fog can lead to a vary isolated experience as you cannot see what is going on between the other players, and miss out on the more humorous encounters that might occur.

Overall, Commanders is a solid turn-based strategy game and one deserving of every-one's attention.

8/10