Commanders: Attack of the Genos
- March 14, 2008 00:00 AM PST
Slowly but surely the XBLA service is filling in the genre gaps that have plagued it since the service started. One such genre that heretofore has not received enough attention has been turn-based strategy games - but with Commanders: Attack of the Genos this problem has been reduced to a degree.
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Commanders: Attack of the Genos is one of the first beefy turn-based strategy games to be released on XBLA. Anyone who has played Advanced Wars or anything similar should be almost instantly familiar with how things work in Commanders - you generally have one task to accomplish on a map, such as destroying all enemy units, capturing a specific structure, etc. To do this you build the standard variety of units - infantry, recon vehicles, tanks, artillery - and then each side takes turns moving their units, building new ones, and so on until you get the eventual victor. Unit strength generally remains with a rock-paper-scissors mechanic - for example regular infantry is strong against heavy infantry, which itself is strong against vehicles, which themselves are strong against regular infantry. Commanders doesn't do anything especially different from this basic formula and it does it adequately.
Besides the actual gameplay Commanders places a lot of focus on its art direction - namely going for a retro art deco style. You'll notice fairly rapidly that the tanks and other vehicles take after fifties era cars to some extent, and to this end the game does a remarkable job. This is also somewhat translated into the story - an alternate universe in this case where atomic energy was invented at the start of the twentieth century and thereafter conflicts were propelled not by nation-states but by genetically modified humans. Conflict between modified and unmodified human factions takes over for the length of the fifteen mission campaign, but its not developed to any significant extent.
The length of that campaign might also key you off to the fact that Commanders has actually got quite a lot of potential gameplay backed in for only 800 points - as besides the campaign you have around a dozen standalone battles, and a multiplayer component - though unfortunately this segment is seemingly devoid of an active player base.
* Core gameplay is solid
* Visual art deco style is appealing
* Plenty of content a fifteen mission campaign, several standalone battle scenarios, and multiplayer
CONS:
* That music get terribly old very fast
* Doesn't really do anything new
FINAL VERDICT: Coming in there shouldn't be any expectation that Commanders: Attack of the Genos is trying to do anything new for the turn-based strategy genre. Instead it offers a fairly substantial amount of gameplay for a fairly small price tag, which should be enough enticement to grab those in need of another turn-based game.
