Strategy gamers are rapidly getting to the point where they despair of seeing much in the way of innovation in the RTS (real-time strategy) arena. The only variations seem to be in the amount of micro-management you must perform when building up your troops and how close you can get your camera to the action.

Midway had the additional problem here of taking on someone else's project when Stainless Steel Games went bust, and the result is a curious mix of the old-fashioned with an attempt to inject an action genre perspective.

The scenario is not exactly original: the ancient Greeks (led by Alexander, naturally) fight the Persians, and Cleopatra's Egyptians mount a spirited defence against Julius Caesar's Romans in either of two campaigns. There is a skirmish mode - which peculiarly denies you the chance to practice the game's two novelties - and multiplayer mode, but not many have taken advantage of the latter yet.

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Resource gathering is kept to a minimum. Your citizens gather gold and wood to make buildings (also few in number) from which come your troops, granaries, altars, etc. There's the usual Fog of War to conceal unexplored parts of the map and the general aim is to amass your forces and then send them out to beat up the opposition. So far so familiar.

Where Midway has tried to beef things up a bit is by giving each army a Hero who has the opportunity to level-up through gathering Glory by defeating opponents, exploring the map, expanding your city or building special glory statues. The higher the level, the more special Advisors become available to you who can increase manufacturing ability, morale and resource-gathering speed.

But the really fun part of being a Hero is Hero Command, where you switch to over-the-shoulder combat mode and can wield either a sword or a bow, plus one special ability to take out hordes of enemies. Stamina boosters have to be collected to keep you going and you can issue rudimentary commands to your forces at the same time. Certain parts of the campaigns require you to act totally in Hero Command and sometimes you wonder why you need an army at all...

The other well-trumpeted addition is naval combat, where you can either ram or grapple with a hostile ship, and while this can be quite exhilarating at first, you soon get frustrated when you learn that ramming is only possible when you line up your vessel at exactly the right angle and the grapple command sometimes doesn't respond at all. Pathfinding in general is pretty abysmal, with ships frequently unable to manoeuvre and troops getting stuck in foliage or rubble.

The graphics are at best colourful but far from sharp and look as though they were completed about three years ago. The music is relatively stirring but after a few hours there isn't a great deal else to keep your interest stirred.

The addition of a lively Hero action mode and some half-decent naval combat can't disguise the fact that this is essentially a clone of scores of RTS games of a few years ago.