Art of War

There's an art to a lot of things: diplomacy, property development, and getting someone else's lighter to work, for example. So why shouldn't there be an art to war? Indeed, Sun Tzu, a Chinese general, wrote a rather famous tome back in the 6th century BC about it.

And it turns out there's an art to playing Art of War, too, which is to think very fast if you want to win.

This is full-on real-time strategy, after all, and there's barely time to mourn the departure of 15 of your units to a gun turret and a tank platoon before it's time to dash back to base to put a stop to the rogue heavy artillery that's trying to blow up your command centre.

Mobile gaming doesn't abound with RTS games, probably because they're mostly complex affairs, with controls to match. But Art of War deals with the control issue seamlessly. To construct buildings � which are needed for training troops, as well as building weaponry, defence and farming resources � you simply click on your command centre and scroll through the menu of options. You then place your selected building on any empty spot of land.

Creating troops and tanks is similarly done through your barracks or weapons factory, respectively, and these new units are simply commanded by clicking to select them, then clicking their target. Dealing with multiple units is no more complicated; they're selectable by holding down a button and dragging across them to highlight them. This selection can then be allocated to various keypad numbers so you can instantly take control of them as and when you need to.

The game and its control scheme allow for multiple strategies, so that you can build groups of artillery or bombers or a mixture of both, for instance, then send one group to distract the enemy while another sneaks into their base and blows up their power station.

Pleasingly, your units are quite smart. You'll get better results by ordering them to fire on targets but, left to their own devices, they usually work out for themselves to return fire on something that's killing them. The only time our patience wore thinner than Sergeant Hartman's in Full Metal Jacket (okay maybe not quite that thin � we're not complete nutters) was when trying to complete a stealth mission with a group of wayward bombers that kept wandering the wrong way around trees only to be blown to smithereens by gun turrets.

But this led us to realise sometimes control could be tighter, and we could also have done with a 'cancel' option for when we accidentally selected the worst area on the entire map to move to. Still, overall it's a system that's commendably done.

The missions themselves � there are six in total, with three difficulty levels � are fairly epic from the third one in and each is set up differently so as to require a unique approach. Generally, you need to get your base in order, which means ensuring you have the right resources at your disposal (so building mines to produce metal for more buildings and for weaponry, and power stations to provide electricity, for instance). Your levels of resource are shown at the top of the screen, although once you've got enough built they take care of themselves, which means you seldom have to be conservative with your unit production or bother too much with maintenance (provided they don't get blown up).

Instead, you can concentrate on forming groups of units and balancing your defences and attacks. Throwing troops in the direction of the enemy only offers so much success and the game forces you to think of better ways to advance. A handy map screen offers an overall view of the battlefield with enemy and ally positions marked, and it enables you to highlight an area then exit the map at that point to save endless scrolling. Our only gripe is that when you press the numbered button that corresponds with a group of units, it doesn't move the camera to their point, meaning you still have to scroll to find them, which isn't ideal in the heat of battle.

Six missions doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't. Then again, they are large and can conveniently be saved at any point, so you can jump back in where you left off. Besides, we also played it on the default 'Easy' setting and it certainly wasn't easy (at least using the definition we were taught at school), so hardcore strategists prepared to replay the same missions on a harder level will doubtlessly find enough of a challenge to keep them going for some time.

Art of War has certainly nailed the art of making a good RTS for mobile, then. We knew it could be done.