Set at an indeterminate future date, it pits the human race against their genetically altered offspring, the Genos, in a turn-based strategy game. Players wield the standard tools of war—infantry, tanks, artillery and aircraft—led by a handful of uniquely powered commanders. Rendered in a art-deco-meets-manga style, the game's main story unfolds through a 15-episode basic story filled with pulpy reversals and cliffhangers.

Gameplay is a simplified version of that found in other turn-based and real-time strategy games. Players conquer a number of specialized buildings, such as barracks, which produce infantry, and garages, which create tanks, and use them to field a military force with which to conquer their enemies. Troops and vehicles are paid for with credits produced by oil wells and other energy installations. The resource-management side of the game is minimal; unlike Age of Empires and similar games, all resources produce the same kind of generic credits.

Special commanders lead the factions, each of which have passive and active abilities that are crucial to winning the game. Passive abilities include bonuses to defense, extra healing and enhanced artillery damage, while active ones allow commanders to attack every enemy unit within sight, make friendly units invulnerable for a round or grant allies an extra action.

In addition to the basic campaign, there's an unlockable advanced campaign and a battle mode featuring 10 scenarios against computer opponents. Multiplayer supports 2 to 4 players, with 10 battle maps to chose from. Players can set one of three conditions—destroy all, capture capita, and destroy commanders—toggle what sort of fog of war is used, and set a number of turns and the turn time. Opponents can battle online over Xbox Live or fight locally using the hotseat option.

A welcome throwback

Commanders is a welcome throwback to the earlier turn-based era of video games, evoking the fun of Civilization and Master of Orion without the intense, hours-long play sessions those games demanded.

The game plays quickly, with scenarios lasting 30 to 40 minutes, and it should appeal to anyone who enjoys a good strategy game. Most combats between units turn out to be a glorified version of rock-paper-scissors, but there's enough variation between units, particularly among commanders, to keep things interesting. The varied goals of the campaign keep things from devolving into a slugfest, and while the story may be campy, it still provides far more story than some A-list titles, like Shadowrun, have given their players.

The most surprising thing about the game is how much players get for their money. Commanders is a budget title that costs about $10, but it packs enough gameplay into its campaigns, battle scenarios and multiplayer options to rival games costing five times as much. And, even more surprising, the game's fast and friendly play style will have players actually wanting to take advantage of all that content.

The game is not without its faults. It has an annoying habit of reiterating the current objectives at the start of every turn, and there's no way to set waypoints for newly produced units to travel to. Commanders' single music track, while catchy, can get old after a dozen hours of play. The grading system rates players on speed, tactics and power, but it doesn't give enough feedback on what good tactics are.

Commanders' multiplayer runs surprisingly fast for a turn-based game. Timers keep things moving along nicely, and while games tend to turn into artillery battles, other units are still needed to capture military objectives. It's possible that the artillery pieces will become less important as players adapt their tactics, but for now they seemed a bit overpowered.

Imperfections aside, Commanders is a great example of the power of Xbox Live Arcade and its counterparts on the Wii and PlayStation 3 to provide compelling alternatives to the big-name games dominating the best-seller charts. Commanders is undoubtedly a niche game, and it won't appeal to everyone, but anyone who happily wasted hours upon hours playing Masters of Orion or Civilization should go out and download it now.