It always pains me when I can see the value in a game, yet it completely and totally doesn't click with me. Such is the case with Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. It's a turn-based strategy. It's quick but nuanced. It's simple to grasp and incorporates “light” elements from many turn-based and even real-time strategy war games. It's easy to link up and play other people. What's the problem, here? I think it's my background, really. I like deep strategy games. I like pretty much all of the Matrix Games I've played thus far. It's the very complexity in these games that attracts me, and thus, a fun, streamlined game like Days of Ruin comes across as something of an unsatisfying appetizer.

First, let me deal with presentation. Sound is universally average, but that's (obviously) on a universal scale. For a portable game, it was notably decent and never got repetitive enough that I had to kill the music. HALF of Days of Ruin looks very nice. The cutscenes have interesting art, and the animations within the storytelling are crisp. The game itself uses icons that are basic to the point of being ugly. They're very functional, but I felt like their look was probably achievable back in the Gameboy days. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but the in-combat visuals never blew me away. The story itself is kind of sickeningly moral with ridiculously perverse evil bad guys, good guys who are splendidly pure and their flawed, conflicted side characters. Sure, it's apocalyptic and there's only SO much storytelling that can be done with that backdrop UNTIL you get all moralistic, but they didn't even try!

The combat itself has a variety of units, but they break down into infantry, vehicle and air — as in many games. The combat between these types is very rock, paper, scissors with further balance tweaks handled by unit cost. Clever readers will recall that I LIKED that flavor when I reviewed War Front — Turning Point and might anticipate a similar endorsement. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Where War Front was fast and well-served by the disposable nature of units and the deadly flavor of combat, Days of Ruin is turn-based and slower, and constantly losing units to their natural complement just feels like a pain in the butt. Recognizing and adapting to your enemy on the fly was quick and fun in War Front, and here, it's honestly just a chore for me.

My other issue with the game was that it managed to trip some long-buried compulsive gene of mine that rarely ever rises to the surface. Days of Ruin provides ranges on all units you can see, both motion and gunnery, so you can get a very concrete grasp of what any given unit's range of motion is going to be and what kind of damage it can do. This makes ME feel like I can sit there and figure out exactly where the battleline is if I'm willing to count squares out turn after turn. Once someone decides to DO this, it becomes a matter of dancing back and forth until someone (A) runs out of room or (B) charges, figuring that something must be done.

There's actually a good bit more detail to the combat in Days of Ruin. I'll not get into it because I feel that it's just that — detail. The base combat suffers from the “problems” that I note above, which is enough to kill it for me. When I actually feel like I can spend a bit of time and map out entire turns in a battle, it loses something for me. This may appeal to others, and if you dig the sound of that, the game may very well be for you. This gamer, however, likes to create a plan that seems good and give it a whirl WITHOUT worrying about, considering and reconsidering specific game mechanics that serve to streamline a battle to the point where it lacks substance.