Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders Xbox

Phantagram's Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders is a truly unique Xbox game - blending strategic RTS type strategising with real-time 3D arcade battling. It's an ambitious premise, and rather surprisingly, it works very well. Rather than throwing the two genres together in a viscous hotch-potch of confusing tasks, we have been presented with a well-formed product that seemingly exists in a genre all of its very own. It takes its lead from the PC prequel, Kingdom Under Fire, which as a more straightforward strategy game in a near-saturated market, failed to make much of an impression when it was released in 2001. As such it places you in charge of a human army, with up to 1000 units, doing battle against the forces of darkness. There's a variety of assorted military types with which to compose your army, all presented with the same decent, if slightly unremarkable, graphical style. There's the standard infantry, archers, spearmen, cavalry, scouts, sappers, trebuchets, catapults and ballista. Once these chaps are assembled on the battlefield, the player will then wage war against various Orc troops: heavy-infantry, axe-throwers, wolf-riders, giant scorpions and swamp mammoths; as well as fantastically leggy and buxom Dark Elf Amazons - who amongst their archers and mounted archers can summon the assistance of Wyverns and ghouls later on in the game. Before the scrapping commences, the player has to organise the appropriate forces. Flirting with RPG type elements, you can visit the barracks to upgrade troops and warrior leaders, you can train in the fundamentals of warmongering, you can visit the briefing room, you can even eavesdrop on the common-soldier's prevalent concerns by visiting the local pub. After that, it's time to venture forth into the open plains, contemplating a suitable strategy from a god-like cartographic perspective. The single player mission slowly opens up, offering more and more pitched battle sites, and to gain ground you'll have to nip on over and indulge in some epic carnage. Thi