Colossus Command – Uninspired and insipid

I don't know about you, but when I play a real-time strategy game, I expect there to be some strategy involved, usually in real time.

It seems Square Enix didn't get the memo though, as its new RTS Colossus Command doesn't really conform to these silly 'rules', leading to a dull, lifeless, and uninspired trudge through every trope in the genre.

Well, every trope except those that form the core of the genre itself - 'Real-Time', and 'Strategy'.

Gameplay amounts to tapping to order your selection of units, dubbed Colossi, around the battlefield.

Colossi come in three varieties. There's the short-range Threx, the slow but long-range Sagittus, and the speedy but melee-only Equtes.

These form a rock-paper-scissors triangle that would be fine, although somewhat simplistic, if combat were as easy as the modicum of strategy behind it.

However the units are so similar, generic, and unwieldy, I could never effectively manoeuvre them or even tell the difference between them.

Fights boiled down to commanding my entire squad – of between four and 10 colossi, typically – to attack each enemy (also bland in appearance) in turn, before sitting back and letting them get on with it. There goes your Real-Time Strategy.

The generic art style carries through to the environments, too. The grey and brown battlefields vapourise any drama generated by the nicely energetic and atmospheric 80s-inspired soundtrack.

The narrative also fares little better. Here we have a cast of 'characters' placed in a story about space battles and enemy corporations. It's like The Phantom Menace all over again.

As with the game as a whole, the plot isn't extraordinarily bad, it's just tired and routine.

And thanks to your units being vacant robots, there's no emergent story either.

It's much harder to form a personal connection with empty drones than with XCOM: Enemy Unknown's mouldable humans, for example.

The only reaction they provoke is ridicule. Seeing these purportedly powerful machines struggle to navigate around a simple obstacle is pathetic.

And, when your sixth 'destroy all enemy units' mission comes to a close and your identikit robots park back up in the space garage for the night, you'll probably do the same.