Rising Kingdoms

We Didn't holdout much hope for Rising Kingdoms when the code plopped onto the desk, to be honest. A stubbornly 2D RTS set in the beautiful fantasy world of Equiada,' and filled with wizards, trolls and elves. Colour us decidedly unexcited.

And in truth, if you've become even slightly jaded with this kind of game yourself, there's absolutely eff-all (elf-all?) here to make you fall back in love with the genre. The inclusion of colonies and upgradeable, tougher-than-nails hero units is unusual, but not a huge departure from what we've seen before. The graphics, meanwhile, are nicely detailed and well animated - slightly Baldur's Gate ll-esque, oddly enough - but firmly mired in the past.

Several other annoying aspects rear their heads, with clichdd dialogue (Die, foul beasts!), unimaginative plotlines and sleep-inducing scissors-paper-stone-meets-pub-brawl combat are the worst offenders. If you can put up with these all too familiar RTS quirks, then you might find something here to keep you occupied. God knows there are far worse titles currently vying for your hard-earned cash, so if you fancy lording it up with some daftly named characters, a few dragons and a handful of, er, mages, you might get some joy out of Rising Kingdoms.