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Axis & Allies is another game adaption of the popular board game. While the game does feature some strong potential, appalling artificial intelligence seriously limits what can be done in any of the single player modes. This potential remains with online play, but inconsistent graphics, bland audio and additional quirks will probably leave players looking elsewhere for their WW2 action.

Graphics

The graphics in A&A are a mixed bag of tricks. Watching the game trailer will give you a sense of some of the scenes a player will watch unfold during the course of gameplay; the game can display a large number of tanks, infantry, aircraft and ships on- screen, with plenty of explosions, falling trees and other eye-candy. Nevertheless, once players have progressed past the initial "wow"-factor, they will see there is little to separate opposing sides. The machinery for the superpowers all generally look the same, as do the variety of towns and other peripheral buildings present in the game.

I also found occassional graphical artifacts on my test machine; most annoying, the text would sometimes not antialias. This resulted in the rather small and blocky text becoming pretty unreadable. Units within the game would also have no qualms about driving or walking through each other. This was especially obvious with many on-screen agents.

Gameplay

Gameplay within A&A is actually very good as there are a large number of options and strategies that the player can adopt. The game allows you to control, deploy and strategize your units in a variety of ways that means you can (technically) approach your objectives in an infinite fashion of ways. Each superpower general has several unique traits that adds a certain element to controlling each nation's forces. There is a fairly diverse range of units available to the player too.

Resources are managed in an intuitive way; oil and ammo is defined purely as a positive or negative flow, building additional depots can increase the flow, while a negative flow of resouces results in a negative flow of income, which is turn affects your units' health.

With this in mind, such a large range of units, resource management and varying capabilities could be a potential hinderance to the beginner player, especially given the extremely terse nature of the training missions. The two training missions cover the very basics, but don't even touch many of the important elements required to successfully deploy your units into battle.

This can be exacerbated by the large range of battle scenarios present within A&A. This said, I cannot fault A&A's attempt at presenting World War II's myriad of pivotal battles, including Pearl Harbour and the Normandy landings.

In short though, if you are an experienced RTS player, A&A provides a large number of options with which to tackle the enemy. In reality, these options are essentially removed due to the appalling artificial intelligence present within the game.

Artificial Intelligence

The AI in A&A is extremely disappointing, and any player (experienced or otherwise) will find the game very easy to defeat. Safety in numbers is key to defeating virtually any obstacle, since the AI finds it hard to strategically defeat a numerical advantage, or indeed reinforce troops, or fight on the "bigger picture".

The rudimentary elements of the AI are in place, individual infantry have some idea of their units position and move accordingly, similarly pathfinding seems adequate at long range, although at short range vehicles make unrealistic movements to orient themselves in position.

It is really when it comes to fighting and defending that the AI really falls down. It is easy to understand the caveats in the AI and exploit them to your advantage. Once the AI has been sussed, then potentially tricky maneuvers such as taking a town using a parachute drop becomes easy.

I rarely saw the artificial intelligence use any strategy that truly surprised me, movement seemed confined to aggressive attacks, defensive stands or fleeing. This ends up being extremely unfortunate, because with better AI, A&A's other faults would pale, and the game would have provided a pleasant experience. As it stands though, the AI severely impacts on all aspects of the single-player modes.

Conclusion

It cannot be said that Axis & Allies is without merit—the game must be commended on its breadth and ambition to portray World War II from many angles. Unfortunately, small disappoints like the uninspiring audio and inconsistent graphics are dwarfed by the game's main failing: its artificial intelligence. Players that are buying the game for its online capabilities will undoubtedly get more from the game, but the majority of WWII or the board game enthusiasts should look elsewhere.

	6.0
	Platform: PC Liked: Some nice graphics, breadth of play and some potential for fun online play. Disliked: Appalling AI which seriously affects most single-player aspects of the game, sound bland. .: Buy at Amazon.co.uk :.