Setting aside, the game differs from Total War in one key area - the 3D battles, which are set to follow the common RTS template where bases must be built and resources gathered before you can join a battle. As in Total War, you have your turn-based Risk-style bit (a digitised version of the A&A board game), with realtime 3D battles that blitz onto the screen whenever you or your opponent advance into a defended territory. So what now? New Radicalsįor the all-new A&A, developer Timegate is taking a more radical approach, one that takes almost as much inspiration from the Total War series as it does the original board game. It was a straight-up board game conversion, no more, no less. Problem is, the last Axis & Allies PC game, released in 1998, covered all the bases anyway. So we were very excited by Atari's new plans to reintroduce the game to a new generation of PC war-gamers. This is a big plus, when games like A World At War drag on almost as long as the battles they attempt to emulate.

It may lack the tactical subtlety of titles like Squad Leader, and Risk may be more approachable, but with its marriage of realism and WWII fun, A&A ticks all the boxes - and can be completed in an afternoon. For the most part, you're sat watching a massive clump of your chaps duking it out with a massive clump of the enemy's chaps.Īxis & Allies is the king of war board games. But these are khaki-clad drops in an ocean of military mediocrity. Engineers can build bunkers, airborne units can make paradrops, and you can use special powers at the crucial point in the battle. Trouble is, when the fighting starts, tedious drag-and-drop mass assault tactics and creeping defence building ensues, and once again an RTS betrays its genre, featuring very little in the way of the eponymous strategy.

and aircraft are called in one at a time to either bomb or scout. The only naval units available are battleships - which are little more than floating HQs. Units are grouped into regiments, each with six or so troops, trucks or tanks. An ever-expanding border shows the limit of your power, and within this area, troops can be re-supplied and new constructions built. The base building and resource gathering system is fairly interesting, revolving around constructing HQs that produce and manage your armies, and depots that expand your terrain and generate cash, oil, supplies and ammo.

You can zoom in a little, though apart from the odd detail like trees crushed under tank tracks, there's not much to look at.

The RTS battles are fought over dull, isometric maps.

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