Lay waste to your enemies without remorse. Decimate all threats with anything at your disposal. As someone deeply entrenched in the conflict between man and machine, you are one of the few able to command humanity against the threat that is artificial intelligence. Or else, technology will have been the human race’s greatest achievement but also the cause of its inevitable downfall.

That pretty much sums up your role in AI War: Fleet Command, a real-time strategy game that’s about destroying computer opponents. An interesting part of this game is that it is focused on cooperative play between players against the AI, not competitive combat between players. Given that, it makes gameplay in the deep pockets of space a tad different.

While sending my troops to conquer the scourge of the AI, I noticed I really enjoyed the game’s music. Music in most games doesn’t always strike me or get noticed. But, if the mood and theme are right and it hits the right chord (pun completely intended), the soundtrack can add to my experience. That’s the way the music in AI War came across.

In a real intergalactic space war — of which I’m sure there will be many in the future — I doubt there will be background music. But, if I were traveling through space on a mission to take on my foes, I think the melodies in AI War would get me ready for the craziness of battle among the stars.

Despite the great music, I feel like it takes a bit long to really jump into the gameplay. There are a number of tutorials that need to be completed. Tutorials are sometimes necessary to understand how to play a game. I get that. But, the tutorials for AI War seemed overly complicated. Coupled with a heads-up display that has a large amount of buttons, four types of resources to manage, and various alerts that pop up during a game session, it takes some time to learn this game.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy AI War. I realize there’s a lot that went into this game. After getting things figured out and raising an army to traverse space, battling and destroying my foes was fun, but as I played, I felt something was missing.

I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion that there isn’t much story in AI War. Sure, the back story that AI and humans are embroiled in a dire, all-out, no-holds-barred deathmatch works, but other than that, there’s no reason to fight the enemy. Kill or be killed. It’s the sort of thing that’s been used for a lot of games for a long time.

For me, I’d like each battle to affect the game world or the AI — something other than just notching up another victory. But then, the main focuses of the game are getting more advanced ships, gaining more ground and defeating your opponent. Story isn’t the focus of the gameplay, so it makes sense that the reason for destroying the AI compared to actually doing it would take a backseat. I might just be picky — or got zapped and destroyed too much by the opposing forces.

And the reason for getting destroyed by the opposing forces? The mighty AI. As the name suggests, AI War is, well, about fighting AI, but you’re able to scale up the difficulty if you want. That means for you experienced players who have played a lot of RTS games or get into them really quickly, you can expect a challenge early on by upping the ante.

But, if you just want a nice leisurely game in which you can easily make space dust out of the enemy, you can change the difficulty and make the AI your easily killed prey. Though, prey or not, you’ll need to keep your guard up. Those AI can be both sneaky and devastating.

AI War is fun, enjoyable and has pretty cool graphics. You’re able to zoom in the camera pretty close to all of the ships and watch them duke it out and blow up one another or cruise around space and such. I think that the look and feel of AI War really meld together; the theme really works.

With the theme, the graphics, the AI and everything combined, AI War is pretty awesome, and there’s a ton packed into it when you see everything it includes.

So, if you’re the sort of gamer who loves strategy games and figuring out exactly how to destroy enemies like a space-age Alexander the Great, then I’d say try AI War: Fleet Command. You’ll really enjoy it. AI War has a lot to offer as far as types of units and strategies go and has a large array of battles to be fought. If you’re not quite into RTS games and aren’t sure if you’re able to really learn how to play one, I’d try something else, like Asteroids.