Alexander the Average
The idea of a game based on the legendary battles of the mighty Alexander the Great is a pretty decent one, as the era and nature of the character lend themselves extremely well to an epic strategy title. However, this game, which ties into the Oliver Stone movie of the same name, sadly rather misses the mark somewhat. it's not a terrible game by any stretch but it just feels like a slightly wasted opportunity which fails to make the most of its source material. It follows much the same timeline as the movie, and even includes visuals and audio directly from it, with four campaigns available for play, featuring the Persians, Egyptians, Indians and Greeks. The game itself in an RTS, similar to Total War or Blitzkrieg, with battles taking on a suitably epic scale, with hundreds of troops and units potentially onscreen. There are plenty of missions to complete in each of the campaigns, but one of the game's key failings is that they pretty much all boil down to the same thing, largely being of the destroy, escort or survive nature. The rest of the game fares reasonably well, with plenty to get your teeth in over the course of the extensive campaigns and whether you're a genre veteran or a newcomer, there is a lot of challenge here. The visuals are fine if a little lacking anything to mark them out as special, although the sense of spectacle on display here is certainly impressive, and the battles really do convey the epic nature of Alexander's life and works. The interface too works well enough but on the whole, this is solid stuff which is certainly worth playing but which doesn't quite hit the big leagues.
