A good RTS game for the console. Campaign mode very short and one or two problems but worth a rent if you like RTS games
The battles themselves are good, while the rock-scissors-paper system isn't original, it works well. The battles force you to adapt your forces to what is going on and makes you think. I find the infantry or engineers are the most powerful units if you can get them in cover, they they become very hard to kill, making them ideal for defense. Of course lack of mobility means leaning too heavily towards your foot soldiers means you can end up handing the initiative in the battle and in some maps, no cover means they get exposed and destroyed quickly. It is a case for all unit types, if used properly by using conditions and working with others units, they will be invaluable, used poorly and you will lose. No lag during single-player during the battles, good graphics and it is a pleasure watching the units fight, listening to them respond or give warnings. One of my favorite moments was when someone one my marching engineers talked about her grandfather's 60th birthday the week before and how she had to miss it, a touching moment before the fighting started. The need to respond, readjust and think your way through the hectic battles makes for a good, enjoyable game once you get down to that part.
Outside of battle, the brought upgrades for the troops makes a noticeable improvement in battle. The prologue is good, an entertaining story with some humor, though choice of villains is rather stereotypical. It should probably should teach about use of WMD's, grouping the troops, artillery and command jeeps rather then leave it to the loading screens but it does give you plenty of information over why the war started and how to play the game. The campaign mode merely gives a minor news item but your aide can give useful pre-battle information and your commander gives useful information on your objective, the opposing commander and a nice little speech. If there is any replayability of campaign mode (other then if you really like the game), it is to sample the different commander each faction has.
There are problems that mean the game is not as good as it could have been. Once you get beyond the prologue, there is no storyline at all, which after the entertainment of the prologue, is a comedown. A story for each faction would have added some replay value to the campaign mode and you would be nice to feel more involved in how the war goes. In the briefing screen before battle, the Generals can be erratic when deciding if war goes well or war goes badly which is a little confusing. During same briefing, it only shows uplink points for certain battles which is not very helpful. Without that information, I once put infantry in a precious early slot to discover we controlled two of the four uplinks, very frustrating. The difficulty mode starts off as normal, having played it it seems like they made an easy mode and called it normal, why the need to do that? There are relatively minor things that don't detract too much from the fun of battles but there are some things that do hurt the game considerably.
At the end of battles, when it says press x to continue, it won't be ready for quite some time due to the considerable loading times. This can be rather disconcerting and made me feel it had crashed but eventually, after waiting a few minutes and pressing x then waiting again, it worked. The music during that wait is load and more then once overshadowed voices set at max which had slight effect on my understanding of the prologue story (which contains no subtitles). Then there are the WMD's, might be fun with a friend but absolutely frustrating during single-player as the enemy wipes out a lot of my force as I am on brink of victory. All this does is stop me pushing on after capturing the required amount of uplinks and simply go onto the defensive to wait for the timer to end. Nothing wrong with being forced to defend, it is great when the opposing commander is good enough to do that. However it is needlessly annoying when forced to do it because the game punishes aggressive commanders by throwing in a devastating WMD for the losing side.
The game works and is fun because the battles work well thanks too good graphics, excellent small touches and a good system but it is too short and too lacking in storyline for me to call it a classic.