Alexander, the new flick in which Colin Farrell and Anthony Hopkins play the lead, is soon to hit European theatres. As is common these days, there will also be another videogame to promote the film. This real-time strategy game is being developed by Ubisoft and should appeal to both the experienced RTS junk and the complete rookie. We’ve played the preview version and are dieing to tell you about it.

When you boot up the game you will have to make a first choice between four well known modes: Skirmish, Missions, Campaign and Internet. You can organise a battle over the Internet or via LAN. When this preview was written, no servers were available, but this will undoubtedly change when the game hits retail.

But let’s start at the beginning. Alexander contains four very extensive campaigns in which you can battle along the side of the Persians, Indians, Egyptians and Macedonians respectively.

The story behind each campaign is explained through dialogues at the start of each mission. After that you can go to work with some peasants and/or a troop force. You use your peasants to create some buildings, after which you can start expanding your army. The game contains a wide variety of units going from archers and spear throwers to heavily armed cavalry and catapults. At the head of your army, you have your hero. The hero is an historical person and exercises great influence over your armies. Here are some of the long list of available heroes: Socrates, Ptolemy and of course Alexander himself. You can summon multiple heroes per game whom all have specific qualities.

The military aspect of the game, however, also has its disadvantages. For instance, the battles are very disorderly and chaotic. You can divide your troops into formations, but even then, your soldiers will run around like chickens without heads. Most of the time, victory depends on whom has the biggest army. Another disadvantage is the fact that your special units, the mercenaries, are invisible and only show up on the minimap, which makes it quite hard to select them.

Also the fact that the interface takes up a lot of space is clearly a disadvantage. However, after a few hours you begin to see past these little flaws and really get the hang of the game. On top of that the game offers a wide variety in missions and most maps are very detailed. This inevitably brings us to the graphics. Though not spectacular, the graphics certainly aren’t to be described as bad. The animated seas and waving grass seem very realistic and the units are all quite detailed.

Conclusion: