An 'Advance Wars' clone that brings turn-based strategy to Xbox Live Arcade.
If you have ever played the 'Advance Wars' games on the Gameboy or DS, then you will know what to expect here. The gameplay is very similar. There isn't any sort of RPG element here, so it's just going from battle to battle. Like I said, at first that bugged me. But after I got into it, I REALLY started to get into it. There isn't much here that we haven't seen in similar games before, but for a $10 Xbox Live Arcade game......this is a great purchase.
The game has a nice, clean look to it. In fact, everything about the visuals and audio have that retro feeling since the game is based in the 1950's. While the graphics will not blow you away, they are certainly nice to look at.
The only thing you will be doing throughout the game is building units and destroying your enemy. You gain resources from oil derricks that are placed around the map and near your base. You then use those resources to build different kinds of units depending on the situation. There is every thing from infantry, tanks, artillery, bombers, and even 'Super' units. Your main unit is your 'Commander' unit.
At the beginning of the mission, you can choose one 'Commander' to take into battle with you. Different commanders have different special abilities, so depending on your play style you make like one more than the others. They also have passive abilities that really help out your troops. These commanders are also the main characters in the storyline.
Speaking of the story, it's actually not too bad for an XBLA game. It will keep you interested until the end of the game and that's a good thing since the campaign took me around 20 hrs. to beat. My biggest complaint with the game is that after you beat the normal campaign, you get to play the "advanced campaign". The problem with that is it's the same exact campaign over again, except a little harder. While I am glad that they give you this option, it certainly wouldn't have hurt to make the campaigns a bit more different from each other.
You also get many 'battle-maps' to play on if you just want a skirmish type battle. The game supports online play and the game is fun to play over Xbox Live. As of this writing, however, most people seemed to have abandoned the game so it was very hard to find a match.
'Commanders: Attack Of The Genos' was a surprisingly good game. I LOVE turn-based strategy games, so this was right up my alley. It may not be for everyone, as it is very slow paced. But if you are a fan of this genre, I would highly recommend checking this out.