On my signal, unleash... the horde?

Little people get a raw deal in life. Oompa Loompas, for example, tirelessly slave away for demented candy merchants, always at their master's beck and call. Real-time strategy games call for players to assume a celestial role and control whole races of little guys, as you strive to conquer other civilisations and lands.

There's a distinct lack of RTS games on the Xbox (some may find the lack of keyboard limits the complexity of commands), with only Alien Versus Predator Extinction presently staking a very mediocre claim. However, GC: UTH sets out to buck this counter-console strategy trend...

Things are not well in the land of Ogriss. A human wizard, Fraziel, has created five different clans of goblins, and put them to work in creating a 'Great Machine'; one of which will grant them all unimaginable power. After Fraziel mysteriously disappears, the clans start warring, and this is where you, as the titular Goblin Commander, step in to sort things out.

Gameplay is refreshingly simple for an RTS title. As opposed to endless farming, mining and building, resources are limited to just two; Gold and Souls. The first is obtained by destroying the surrounding environment, which is a lot more exciting than waiting for crops to grow, as is usually the case in RTS games. The second are 'harvested' from fallen enemies in battle, or from captured Soul Fountains. These soul-spewing structures must be captured by holding the surrounding area for a certain amount of time, and both these methods encourage aggressive offensive play. Something we like to see.

There is wide clan, or goblin race variety in the game; Stonekrusher, Hellfire, Plaguespitter, Stormbringer and Nighthorde. Each clan is in turn made up of five types of goblin, each tactically diverse, including short- and long-range attack units, along with healing and magical troops. Units are created in the Clanshrine (a pre-constructed building where goblins are 'bought'), with the more advanced units requiring larger combinations of gold and souls to unlock. Custom platoons can be easily, and handily, made up in seconds, if a battle has resulted in decimation.

The controls are both simple and intuitive, and have been intelligently designed with console controllers firmly in mind. Each clan is limited to just ten units at any one time, but players can control up to three clans, each allocated to the A, B and X buttons. Each goblin clan is effectively controlled as one (via the one waypoint), thus doing away with unwieldy dragging and clicking to highlight troops. To attack enemies or structures (the main command in the game), simply move the ethereal orb (the Goblin Commander) wherever you wish, then tap the corresponding clan button. The more involving Control option allows you to possess an individual goblin, giving an impressive soldier's view of battles, although the rest of your clan will still follow your every move like a horde of deformed lemmings.

If you soon tire of mere underlings then check out your clan's Hall of Titans. Similar to the Clanshrines, here, turrets and other defensive aides can be purchased. More importantly though, this is where you'll get your hands on your clan's unique Titan unit. Ranging from an electrically charged stick creature (Stormbringer) to a pulsating blob of slime (Plaguespitter), these bad boys cost a fortune in souls, but their destructive power is unparalleled. However, in a strategical masterstroke, they must be directly controlled, and each player can only have one in operation at any one time, causing many head-scratching problems as to when and where to deploy them.

And so things progress at a pleasingly decent rate. Throughout the single-player campaign, new clans are gradually conquered and acquired, and more complex gameplay techniques, like using the magical Runestones to best effect and harnessing the teleportation powers of Moongates, are gradually introduced.

However, the multiplayer option, long the staple of RTS shenanigans, has been criminally overlooked here. A complete absence of System Link, let alone Xbox Live, is sorely missed. A two-player option is available, albeit via split-screen, and call me a dirty cheater [You dirty cheater! - Ed], but it's nigh on impossible to play a sly strategy game without your gaze wandering to an opponent's half of the screen, thus negating the point and ruining the experience.

The combat system also suffers from a couple of fundamental flaws. Although upon close inspection each clan is quite distinctive, in the heat of battle, things unfortunately can look a bit messy and confusing. Because you are only able to select whole squads at a time, in an attempt to simplify things GC: UTH may have stabbed itself in its sandaled, wart-covered foot. Smaller groups of units cannot be selected to target individual enemies, so battles result in a pitched numbers game, where you have to have at least double your opponents' units to guarantee success.

At the end of the day, Goblin Commander: Unleash The Horde is a decent attempt at bringing an accessible, action-friendly strategy game to Xbox, though if you're a hardcore strategy gamer, don't look for anything too involving here.

1. Simplified RTS
2. Titans are destructive
3. Action-heavy

1. Cannot select individual units
2. Poor multiplayer
3. Confusing combat

Power
No slowdown, but then never a great deal happening on screen at any one time,

Style
Cartoon graphics coupled with goblin-esque dialogue that tries to be humorous. And isn't.

Immersion
After a fairly redundant tutorial, simple controls make the learning process easy.

Lifespan
The seventeen maps are finished relatively quickly, and the linear gameplay means limited replayability.

Summary
More on action and combat than building civilisations, though RTS veterans may find it too rudimentary.