I had read some information about this game, and knew from the beginning that it wasn't a re-creation of the board game, so I wanted to keep an open mind and judge it on its own merits. And I'll be honest, I'm a huge Axis & Allies board game fan. I've only recently learned the game, but have taken to it rabidly, quickly buying all of the different versions, and spending many hours discussing and thinking about the strategies. For what would appear to be a "Risk" clone, the board game is surprisingly deep and dynamic. Alas, the Real Time Strategy concoction from Atari and TimeGate is neither.

The game has two main modes: Campaign and "World War II". Campaign takes the player through a set of linear missions, from tutorial missions, or through both the Allies (U.S., Britain, and Russia) and the Axis (Germany and Japan) point of view. Each level is based around an actual major battle from WWII, such as St. Petersburg or D-Day with the player controlling one of the member countries of the coalition. The map might also include a joint attack with one of your allies as well, with the forces being controlled by a friendly AI, who you control by "asking" it to perform certain actions, though it has a mind of its own. For example, you play the U.S. storming the beaches at Normandy along with three British allies, each with their own missions and inclination, but who will help if called upon.

Like most RTS games, this game follows the usual tactics of "build and battle." You must recruit new units by building a series of HQ's of varying types, while you use supplemental buildings to research new technologies that allow new units and make the existing ones stronger. You also have a central HQ that is used to create the other buildings, and is your command center. One flaw is that to create certain types of HQ's you have to build other, irrelevant buildings first. For example, to recruit tanks you need to build an Armored Division HQ, which requires that you build an Infantry Division HQ first. While this definitely slows down a tank rush, it's also extremely annoying to be forced to build HQ's for units you don't want to recruit.

Axis & Allies does introduce some new concepts, at least compared to most RTS games out there, and one of these concepts is the way you create new troops. You recruit new units via different Headquarters (HQ), i.e. Infantry comes out of the Infantry HQ, half-tracks out of the Mechanized HQ, and so on. However, you do not build every single soldier or vehicle; instead, you recruit "regiments" that are comprised of several similar units. Each HQ can only supply a limited number of regiments, so you are limited to the number of units you can create and deploy. (At least if you want to keep them in supply, but more about that later.) As you recruit a regiment, you can begin using the regiment as soon as the first unit is created, though they won't be up to their full strength for a few minutes. This gives the ability to get units quickly into battle if your defenses have been breached and your buildings are being attacked. Regiments can also adopt different formations, letting them balance between speed and strength, and can be grouped together with the ubiquitous Ctrl-# combo found in most RTS games.

Armies must always be on the move, and your buildings are no exception. Every building can be packed up into a truck, and moved to a new location. In some levels, this is a must as you reposition your troops against certain objectives. Of course, your buildings are vulnerable during the convoy, so be sure to protect them.

Besides the HQ's there are other support buildings that are used for supply or support. For example, there is a Motor Pool building that allows you to research different upgrades for your vehicles and an Engineering Brigade that opens up the ability to recruit Engineers. There are also the ever critical Supply, Ammo, and Oil depots that are used to keep your troops and tanks all full of the bullets and food they need to fight. This is another unique concept in Axis & Allies: the supply and resource system.

Axis & Allies moves away from the "peasant harvester" models and does not use map based resources. Instead, your troops are supplied with depots that are presumably filled based on the hard work and sacrifice of the folks back home. You also have a certain amount of money with which you can purchase troops and buildings. As you purchase items, each one either helps or hurts your supply. For example, an oil depot will add to the amount of oil you have available, and tanks consume it. Instead of having a stockpile of ammo and oil, you have an indicator of your surplus or deficit each minute, and must work to have the right buildings and units to keep these supplies as close to level as possible. While it sounds complicated, it's actually a dream once you get used to it, as you no longer have to worry about protecting your harvesters, and maps don't just turn into fights over strategic resources.

Your buildings inhabit an area of supply, noted by a green border around your controlled area. This area radiates from your Corps HQ and can be extended with supply depots. Any units that are linked to an HQ, i.e. the HQ they were recruited from in most cases, can heal back up to full strength over time. This is an incredible advantage, and makes it absolutely necessary to keep your units in supply. This also leads to some strategy as you try to extend your supply lines as close as possible to the enemy, presumably limiting how well you can perform rush attacks. That said, I also found the "round robin" strategy to work well, where I'd have one group of units attacking, while another group was retreating back to heal up. Keeping this pace up will eventually wear the enemy down.

Along with your supplies and units, you also have an "experience" meter, which rises as you work through the level. This experience can be used to buy certain Special Operations such as my personal favorite, Carpet Bombing. These special ops are different depending upon which General you are commanding. Some can be extremely useful all of the time, while some are only useful in very specific situations, and others you'll never touch. It did not seem to me that "experience" carried from level to level, or varied depending upon how well you did, so it mostly just acts as a timer to keep someone from using these powerful options too early and too frequently.

Besides the campaign mode, you can also partake in the WWII mode which was meant to capture the history of the Axis & Allies franchise and try to replicate the board game version in some regard. It fails miserably, so don't even bother trying to compare. True, it has a board, and units, and combat, but nothing that follows the original game. Instead, you buy and move Regiment HQ's around a map trying to take over the enemy cities and territories. If your Joes happen to move into a territory that's occupied by the enemy, an RTS combat ensues after the end of your turn to see who wins the territory. As you enter the RTS battle, whatever regiments you had in the territory are represented as your maximum capabilities for that map. In other words, if you move an armor unit into combat, you'll be able to use infantry, mechanized and armored units in that attack's combat. You can then build and deploy troops and buildings as usual, playing the usual RTS game to find your enemy on the map and destroy them.

There are no naval units within the WWII game, so don't expect to lead any Wolfpack missions. You can only get into a battle once per turn, so no grand pincer or encirclement strategies here. In addition, you play only one country within the Axis or Allies, so you must rely on spotty AI in your coalition, and you can pretty much forget about any sort of cooperation between nations. Luckily, ALL of the AI is spotty as far as board game strategy goes so it's a wash in the end. For example, I experienced, not three turns in, Germany sweep into England leaving the Fatherland's entire southern flank open. Meanwhile the Brits retreated into an offshore staging area and then had resurgence the next turn to take back control over their homeland. On the very next turn, Germany invaded London again. Meanwhile, I'm spending the entire time getting Infantry across the pond while having to invade that South American terror, Brazil, to get the resources there.

The WWII game also has a "quick battles" mode, which settles each conflict with a behind-the-scenes dice roll. But turning this option on removes the only redeeming part of this game mode, the RTS. Consequently, if you do use the RTS for every combat, it can lead to extremely long games, although could tip the odds in your favor in some battles if you are skilled enough at the RTS game.

The graphics for the game are what I'd call "typical". Nothing really flashy here and pretty much the style you would expect from a WWII title. While this is a 3D game, the camera controls feel very clunky to me, and once you get the camera set, you likely won't swing it around very much. (It took me a little while to even realize I could rotate the cameras around at all, and it is controlled via a setting on the Option menu.) Another camera gripe is the inability to zoom out far enough. I spent a lot of time scrolling around, and wanted to zoom out higher on the map to get a better view of my formations. There is some zoom available, but it ranges between "barely comfortable" to "that guy has a zit", the latter of which is useless in a RTS. Couple the zoom issues with an overly large dashboard and even at the highest resolutions I couldn't seem to be happy with my view.

Overall, this is a mediocre real-time strategy title. If the RTS market weren't so full of really good games right now, I'd probably be mildly amused and interested with the new elements of strategy that this game brings to the table. While I tried to keep an open mind, this game really has little to do with the Axis & Allies board game, except that it's also based around WWII and uses a similar game map, and is a huge misuse of the license. Licensed properties can be a double-edged sword, and this game seems to fall on it.