I like anything that plays like a board game. So when Commanders: Attack of the Genos was released I jumped at the chance to review it. While the Live Arcade offers a diverse range of games, turn based sci-fi war games aren’t piling up like coin-op classics.

Commanders: Attack of the Genos takes place in an alternate earth’s history. Basically mankind was so smart we were able to crack the human Genome. This allowed us to create a race of stronger, faster and smarter super beings. Think the bionic woman but instead of a cute British chick with a fake American accent the new super race look like Japanese Anime characters. The regular humans being, well, human got jealous because these super beings were getting all the good jobs. So we shipped them all to another part of the world (I like to imagine Amsterdam) where we all live in a very tentative peace. However apparently the Super Genos have a plan and are about to take revenge on their creators, the people who cast them out. Let the fun begin.

This is a turn based strategy game and if you’re familiar with the Nintendo DS series Advanced Wars then this game is pretty much a clone of it. Sure the setting is different but the mechanics, the pacing and even the bad music is so similar that if you’ve recently played that game you’re going to enact some Neo déjà vu upon starting mission one of Genos.

In the single player campaign you control the Humans and the game is boiled down into a series of missions. Before each mission you will be given a commander, sometimes you will have a choice of commanders. Commanders ride around in much larger ships that look like a cross between spiders and those terrible machines in the recent War of the Worlds remake. Besides having a cool ride, the commanders also have special abilities. One can attack all nearby units in a berserk like mode, another can sabotage all nearby enemy units making them lose a turn and so on. The commander’s role in the battle becomes increasingly important later on so your choice will often be dictate by your play style.

Your battle force is comprised of units that you start with and in later missions produce. Light and heavy infantry, tanks, artillery and more are at your disposal. The games early mission start off with you getting a few units, then you learn how to produce units and as the missions progress more unit become available. The pacing is just right for beginners to the genre, but if you’re an experienced player then the early stages of the campaign can be tedious.

Producing units is a matter of capturing a factory and then spending available cash. Cash is acquired by capturing other buildings or resource points. The more you control the more money you generate per turn. Regardless of how much money you have you may only build a single unit in a factory per turn.

Each unit has specific characteristics, for example artillery can rain down tons of damage from a long distance but has almost no defense. Terrain also plays a role, so a unit sitting on an open road is going to take more damage. What the game excels at is this information is easy to access and always at your fingertips, it almost like a “My first strategy game” UI. Each unit also has an available number of action points, moving and attacking cost points. When you run out your turn is done. Again the UI shines here as there is no guessing how far you can move, select a unit and a grid show up with where you can get to. Move your cursor over the enemy a good distance away and your move is plotted and if the target cursor is white you can get in range and attack. In fact the only thing I can find missing is the ability to put your units in Opportunity fire mode. For the non-versed this would basically be putting your unit at the ready instead of moving and if an enemy came into your line of sight you would get an attack. That would have been a nice addition to the game play.