This is the long-awaited real-time strategy game from Chris Taylor, the architect of Total Annihilation all those years ago. And as such we installed it with bated breath, or we would have done had we known ...

When it comes to city-building games, it's hardly surprising that ancient Rome has often been the prime source of inspiration. It had probably the most impressive empire in history, had stunning buildings and also knew how ...

They say an Englishman's home is his castle, but just tell that to this reviewer's neighbours, who churlishly denied planning permission to add a turret extension to the side of his house. It wasn't "in keeping" ...

There's a cold, callous core at the heart of Defcon. It's a game that thinks nothing of casually informing you of the death of millions of people, nor of advising you to take out your enemy's ...

Picture the scene. There's a man at a train station, wearing a blue anorak and clutching a thermos flask in one hand, a laptop in the other. Can you possibly get a geekier combination than trains ...

It was 2004 when Relic first translated the Games Workshop tabletop war game to the PC, with almost universal acclaim. Here was a strategy game that got away from the classic Command & Conquer 'resource gather ...

"Oh no", you groan, "not another World War II RTS game with the usual resource gathering, base building and mass charging that have characterised the genre for so long, together with bad acting and repetitive oaths?" ...

They say that Rome cannot be built in a day and even the most dedicated fan of this game will be hard pressed to achieve all the tasks you're set within 24 hours. Having said that, ...

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 ...

It was, of course, only a matter of time before the first strategy game based on the new terrorist threat rumbled onto the shelves, and to show how contemporary Monte Cristo wants it to feel, the ...

Darth Vader. Why is it that a dark Jedi master with innumerable fleets of terrifying star destroyers at his beck and call, one of the most nefarious and powerful men in the universe, can't afford an ...

Bored of the Rings yet? We certainly hope not, as it's mandatory for the 'one ring' to travel in trilogies and EA will almost certainly pump out another Middle Earth RTS after this sequel. But let's ...

New York, New York, it's a wonderful town... providing you aren't being mugged, of course. Or shot. That can really take the zing out of an otherwise top night out. Still, we'd rather be both mugged ...

The third RTS in Microsoft's acclaimed Age of Empires series picks up from the medieval 16th Century and leads on into the industrialised 19th. The single player campaigns, of which there are three, spanning twenty four ...

"Mamma Mia! Eh, Luigi, lets-a have-a some extra pepperoni over here." That isn't a direct quote from Codename: Panzers Phase Two, but it might as well be. With the snippets of speech your soldiers spout, they ...

Believe it or not the United Nations World Food Programme has become a games publisher. Head to its Web site and you can download this game, Food Force, free of charge, although please note that it's ...

Beware games that are devised as movie tie-ins, especially if there's even a hint that they are being rushed out to match the film's release date. Apart from the occasional notable exception (like The Chronicles of ...

Who would have thought that a desktop war game would have been as popular as Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000? Based on a futuristic scenario where several galactic races play out an unending war for domination, the ...

It seems to be a national pastime amongst PC gaming critics to knock The Sims at every opportunity, largely because of its astonishing popularity (it's the highest selling PC game ever). But as the success of ...

It's easy to sit back and scoff at the likes of Beckham. He gets thousands of pounds a day for turning up and having a kick about for an hour a week, not even including the ...