Field Commander is a military turn-based game made by the same crew behind Untold Legends for the Sony PSP. It was tough to look at this game and not make comparisons to Nintendo's Advance Wars games. While the overall feel is the same, the game does look a bit different, as Field Commander doesn't have the anime-ish look that Advance Wars has, instead  opting for a more gritty, futuristic, military style. It's sort of like GI Joe meets Transformers, but the Hasbro comparisons don't end there.

Yo Joe!!! Over the past month a secret terrorist organization calling itself "The Shadow Nation" has been attacking many military and civilian targets. Their reasons for doing so are currently unknown, but the world's leaders must put a stop to these attacks, and  called upon the Allied Nations organization known as "ATLAS," which specializes in such things. Your job as field commander is to come up with the best strategies and lead the troops into battle to put an end to the evil Shadow Nation.

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Yeah, yeah, I know it sounds a lot like GI Joe. It's obvious that the cartoon heavily influenced the developers. I'm pretty sure if SOE acquired the license, many serious strategists would have passed it over thinking it was just a kiddy game. That's too bad. Those of us who still have our GI Joe Fan Club dog tags can just pretend that the Shadow Nation is really Cobra and that Atlas is GI Joe. If we only lived in a perfect world…

C'mon! Haven't ya made your move, yet?!
The single player campaign consists of more than 30 missions and an editor to create your own campaign to post online and share with everyone. Attack via the land, sea, or air using 15 different army divisions.

Multiplayer is where it's at, though, and Field Commander doesn't disappoint in that category. There are four different ways to play against your pals:

  • Hotseat Mode – You can share a PSP between you and your buddy, handing it off between turns.
  • Ad-hoc Mode – Connect to other PSPs locally for some good ol' mayhem.
  • Infrastructure Mode – Play with your friends online or use Sony's matchmaking service and go up against a complete stranger.
  • Transmission Mode – This one is for the truly hardcore! Carefully plan your strategy then upload it to SOE's servers for your pal to download at his leisure. Your pal can then take his time planning his counter attack and upload his move back to SOE's server and so on. Sorta like watching those meeting of the minds chess games. I can see battles taking weeks to finish using this method. Neato!

I typically like my turn-based strategy games to be of the 2Dish variety, as I find it easier to plan out attacks. Field Commander does a great job with the fancy 3D graphics and I had no problem viewing the playing field. The fire and fog effects along with the vehicle animations really add to the atmosphere and excitement of the game. This is gonna be one snazzy lookin' strategy title!

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And knowing is half the battle
I wish I had gotten more playtime with Field Commander as it's shaping up to be a great alternative to Nintendo's Advance Wars. Games like this need hours (and hours) before you  get a real feel for their depth and some good friends to play with (preferably ones dumber than you if ya wanna win). I look forward for its release this April and reliving some classic GI Joe battles with my old buddies!

-NakedBob