Land Sea Air Warfare HD

Stories in games are, generally speaking, throwaway tat.

Whether it’s the effect of having to squeeze out hours of gameplay or that writers are brought in at the last second, most game plots are cheap, predictable, and dull.

This is especially true for real-time strategy games, where the flagship Command & Conquer series seems to revel more in its terrible and convoluted plotlines with every new entry.

As Land Sea Air Warfare HD aptly demonstrates, there’s a reason why these genres still need some kind of sensible story-based campaign.

The idea behind Land Sea Air Warfare HD is to take the always-popular Skirmish mode from real-time strategy games, rip out the multiplayer part, and rely solely on computer-controlled opponents for kicks.

It’s a bold move, but it’s one that isn't successful. Without a campaign mode to ease you into the game, the first few battles on even the easiest difficulty are confusing and messy due to the entirety of the rather pathetic tutorial being resigned to a small, scrollable box.

Nor does it help that the default speed is set to blisteringly fast, just in case you weren’t having enough difficulty learning how to use the different types of troops.

In part, this confusion is due to the game's extensive range of units. As the name suggests, you have all kinds of ships, vehicles, and planes at your disposal. Resource gathering is almost entirely automatic, so most of your focus can be on managing your units.

With patience, tactics do start to blossom. The mega units and wide range of research choices strike a healthy balance between hunkering down and rushing the opponents early at the risk of being out-produced in the long run.

The controls are initially baffling, but efficient once you memorise the shortcuts. Unlike in the iPhone and iPod touch version, up to eight custom groups can be assigned to virtual hot-keys at the edge of the screen.

The game also retains the extremely useful ability to quickly select one type of unit from inside a squad or the entire army with a single touch.

Deselecting units is fiddly, resigned to a button in a tiny box in the bottom-right. Another important feature - the tactical map - ends up being useless due to the unintelligible way in which it's presented.

At least the map’s simple icons look better than the main graphics, which are plain ugly and impractical. Trees and buildings hide vehicles, marshes look almost exactly the same as oceans, and everything looks like it’s been ported over from the wrong decade.

Horrid graphics combined with the lack of a campaign and multiplayer modes to keep you engaged for the long-term, Land Sea Air Warfare HD is a tale only the most dedicated real-time strategy fan will enjoy.