If you want a war in your pocket, go for this!

User Rating: 8.3 | Field Commander PSP
Field Commander was one title on my wish list and when I saw this for 19.99 EUR I didn’t hesitate half a second. I love strategy games of any kind, though I must say most of them are RTS (Cossacks series / Blitzkrieg Series), followed by tactical shooters. You should start with the three very short tutorial missions in order to get familiar with the ground-, air- and sea units at your hand. Among these are different kinds of infantry, half tracks, tanks, helicopter or submarines. You’ll also learn about geographical aspects of a map, like swamp slows down half tracks, forests can’t be crossed with tanks (until you blast the trees out of your way). In the campaign you start with a briefing and learn about your mission goals as well as victory and loss conditions (occupy enemy HQ, control certain tiles). There are 3 main elements to consider before you start your first turn: the enemy, factories and towns. Depending who occupies a number of towns/factories first can use this as an advantage: towns will rise money and heal units, in factories you'll "buy" equipment. The array of different units is decent, some units can deploy mines, some have short or long range, units can be used to blast trees away. In addition to the basic abilities there will be different divisions to choose from at the start of a mission, each with a unique ability and features, there are fast divisions with limited sight or slow but very durable ones for example. Certain divisions are specialised in ground-, sea- or air warfare. The campaign starts easy in the beginning and you may start to underestimate the next missions after rushing through, and then – suddenly – you’re facing a whole new quality of thread. Beneath the Campaign you can choose from wide array of customised battles. You can create own Maps, geography, victory and loss conditions. There’s a mission creator and a nice Ad-Hoc and Infrastructure mode to compete against other Commanders. Graphics could have been better, but who cares when it’s such a rewarding gameplay?