Advance Wars

The Good
I'd never played a strategy game before but this game is very easy to play. All the little features like terrain advantages work well. There's plenty of scope for tactics (my two favourite victory techniques are: 1) place a footsoldier on the enemy hq and surround it with tanks and artillery, or 2) attack crazily from the south with a troop of med. tanks while a footsoldier creeps in from the west to take the base. (that technique was actually used when Germany invaded France at the start of World War One!) That first one isn't foolproof, though - ranged weapons can easily break it apart. But that's the beauty of it. No technique is guaranteed to work.

The Bad
While the training is useful, the new units are introduced at a rate of knots, leaving novices a little confused. Example - there are two non-offensive naval units: landers and cruisers. They look similar, but landers carry ground forces and cruisers carry air forces. I found myself mixing up missiles, rockets, artillery and anti-air units far too often.

The Bottom Line
From the screenshots it's hard to fathom the appeal of the game. I'll tell you now - it's about manoveuring troops into mountains for superior cover, it's about balancing fuel and ammo supplies and capturing cities to refill them, it's about joining units together to combine HP, allowing a footsoldier to climb aboard an APC for greater speed, about deciding whether to destroy the enemy or capture them. The thrill of victory has to be felt. Buy it.