The range of orders you can give to individual units is testament to the game’s flexibility. Tinkering with the icon-commands lets you set up groups of units to attack from long or short range, to retreat after heavy damage or sacrifice themselves in an attack.

While tank rushes (building up a large force quickly and swarming onto an enemy position) can be effective, you’ll need to take into account the quality and condition of your troops. Veteran units last longer than greenhorns and protecting these will improve your chances of success in the long-term.

The secret to succeeding in Warzone, as in most strategy games, is to develop your home base. Your enemies know this as well as you do and constantly probe your defences, attacking outposts far from your base to draw you out, or flying sorties of VTOL craft to bomb your patrols.

You can imagine the kind of fun you can have trundling around the game’s massive 3D maps in an eight-player game using Mpath or Wireplay. The smartest PC in the world still can’t betray you as effectively as a fellow human being at the end of a telephone wire.

True enough, Warzone has its share of foibles. Getting your troops to follow the exact path you want can be tricky, and in constricted settings the AI seems to lose its head. VTOLs can be awkward to handle as they seem to have a constant desire to land just where they’ll draw maximum enemy fire.

Yet for every problem there’s also a neat touch, like the ability to tell your factories to send newly manufactured units to where they’re most needed or the chance to transfer the experience of veteran units to beefier, souped-up vehicles. It may lack the charisma of C&C but overall Warzone is a balanced, well-engineered package.

Min Specs: P266 16Mb RAM