Age Of Empires: The Age Of Kings

If Age Of Empires on the PC is the Star Wars saga, Age Of Empires on the DS is the animated Clone Wars spin-off. It's still Star Wars, but in bite-size chunks and with its own stylised design.

Rather than a straight (and unplayable) port of the PC strategy title, the DS game is a cleverly trimmed-down version, distilled to its barest essentials. It's now turn-based, which better suits the lack of a large screen and mouse, and it borrows familiar combat mechanics from successful franchises like Advance Wars, Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics. So if you've played any of those, you'll be right at home.

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The biggest difference between this game and its bigger brothers is the inclusion of resource-gathering - the collection of food and gold to generate buildings and units - and the ability to carry out research. On every turn you need to study new topics, such as crop rotation, spying, ballistics, religion and so on. Completed research increases your ability to farm, mine or wage war, and only once you've completed enough research can you 'age up'. For example, you can't move from the Dark Ages to the Feudal Age unless you've researched three different subjects.

But research also costs resources and money, so it's a fine balance between ageing up, building farms to feed your citizens and creating enough troops to protect your territory. The key thing is that if you collect the right balance of resources and undertake the right research you can age up quicker than your adversaries and gain a real advantage in battles.

The Empire Strikes Bad
Combat is fairly traditional, with adjacent units taking it in turns to inflict damage, while ranged units - archers, cannons and the like - can cause grief from two or three spaces away. But in the heat of battle things can get confusing when you've got half a dozen units ganging up on enemy villages and forces. Sometimes it's hard to tell which unit you're attacking and it's annoying when you waste a really powerful strike on a stupid farm when you actually wanted to destroy a bunch of elite archers. And despite the developer's best efforts, using the stylus is just a bad idea; D-pad and buttons is where it's at.

In terms of game modes, The Age Of Kings boasts a generous package. For solo gamers there's the main campaign that lets you embark on set-piece battles through history, from Joan of Arc's hoofing of the English through to Richard the Lionheart on his hols in the Middle East. These missions are essentially tutorial-based at the beginning, but do get progressively harder as you work through (indeed, the last one is massively hard).

And that's good news, because there's a major flaw when you get to the open-ended head-to-head games. Here you can choose to play on any of the available maps against any mixture of one, two or three computer opponents. But - and it's a big but - the computer players just aren't smart enough.

As long as you stick to a sensible regime of resource collection and research, building up a decent-sized army and protecting your borders with castles, you can't fail. Even on the highest settings against Attila the Hun (who's a vicious bugger), winning is just a matter of time. This is a real shame as it spoils the game's lifespan - although some of the bigger conflicts can last several hours, so it still presents a fascinating challenge.

To Be This Good Takes Ages
True, you've got the multiplayer modes, but as any Advance Wars gamer knows, these can often end up in stalemate and playing turn-based games is actually pretty tedious - especially when you've got dozens of units to control, making the gaps in between each turn painfully long.

But despite these shortcomings, Age Of Empires: The Age Of Kings is still a really entertaining game. And by the time its flaws really become noticeable, you'll have had a good couple of weeks' fun out of it. So don't worry too much about its failings - buy it and enjoy the feelings of megalomania while they last!