Spellcross

There are two kinds of turn-based strategy games. The first is your hex-tile affair, heavy with stats and life-sapping in more ways than one. Then there are those that sheepishly demand just a cursory glance at the manual and that seem to, against all the odds, get under your skin and you end up quite liking it. Spellcross is one of the latter.

On paper it's nothing special. The story involves the forces of darkness rising up against the Earth, and you, as commander of a small group of human resistance fighters, must take a growing army through 60 missions. You can't choose which side you want and there are no multiplayer options - as I say, it's nothing special. Czech developers Cauldron have obviously been playing a lot of Warhammer as most of the units are recognisable from the fantasy battle game, including orcs, demons and magic, although the human units are based on more contemporary armies.

The sides slug it out through a simplistic X-COM-style battle system. The maps and graphics are hardly state-of-the-art, but the fact you can research into new technologies between battles livens up the latter part of the game considerably. The first few missions get quite slow as you hunt down pockets of resistance, but a few hours in and the game becomes a lot more strategic.

If you want a light strategy game and have an aversion to Warhammer, perhaps you should think about acquiring this. It runs on a 486 and if you've played X-COM to death then this could be your next stop. But it's nothing special, you understand.