With such a wealth of strategy games on the market at present, it's perhaps surprising to learn that this is the first amongst the World War II collection to concentrate solely on the famously pivotal conflict between Rommel and Montgomery in North Africa.

Wisely avoiding the inclusion of real historical figures, the game focuses on men from opposite sides of the battle who met in the previous Olympics and are chronicling what is happening while commanding their troops in the field. It's an unusual and welcome variation and does help to give some shape and perspective to the ensuing fighting.

Regular RTS fans will skip the tutorial that runs through the traditional control and command systems, although you'll note immediately that the emphasis is away from resource gathering and unit construction and wholly on knowing how and when to deploy your troops and equipment.

There are twenty missions to explore in all, depending on whether you progress in Story mode (alternating between Axis and Allies) or Campaign mode (i.e. sticking with one side) and you have the opportunity to replay any of the missions once they are completed.

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The essential structure of the gameplay is simple - at your briefing you are given details of the mission (which ranges from making your way to an escape plane to protecting convoys to full scale tanks assaults) and a set configuration of men and machines. As each level is completed, your numbers increase and you have the choice of upgrading some vehicles and equipment by earning prestige points from being successful on secondary mission objectives.

Your leader also acts as a hero unit, providing a boost to the performance of the vehicle or soldiers he's associated with. There are eight specialised soldiers in total (rifleman, scout, machine-gunner, medic, sapper, flamethrower, sniper and grenade launcher) and seven categories of vehicle, including recon, tanks, anti-air artillery and transport.

One useful innovation is that the enemy's empty, abandoned or captured vehicles can be commandeered and thus added to your forces. What's more, the specialist skills of the soldier who occupies the vehicle will enhance visual range or fire power, for example.

The essential hotkey is the pause button which allows you to survey the battle scene and then make tactical decisions about deployment. You can give up to three commands to each unit so a sequence can be planned in advance.

The 3D graphics are remarkably detailed even when zoomed in to the max, with scratches visible on tanks, impressive lighting and shadow effects, spectacular explosions and smooth animation.

Not everything is plain sailing, though, as pathfinding is wayward, which means you spend a fair amount of time recalling units to the right road. The voice acting of the principal characters is hammy and their accents questionable. The maps are relatively small which tends to limit your strategic options and although there's no resource gathering, there's a lot of micromanagement involved in later missions when your units become numerous.

However, there is an additional multi-player option that allows you to play the familiar Deathmatch and Capture The Flag modes, plus a Tobruk-to-El-Alamein mode where defenders and attackers are constantly re-supplied with reinforcements until someone wins.

It's good that someone has finally made a perfectly engaging and graphically beautiful strategy game covering an under-exposed conflict in WWII. If you can be patient with the pathfinding problems and micromanagement, you'll have many happy war-gaming hours.