War. War is hell. Since the earliest recorded history, man has waged war against his enemies, with horrifying, devastating results. There are books, songs, movies and plays both condemning and reveling in the brutality of battle. Man's inhumanity to man never ceases to amaze and disgust even hardened cynics'but we don't have to worry about that, because thanks to Jaleco Entertainment, it's all Goblin on Goblin violence, so let the green blood flow in comic rivers!

Goblin Commander, as you clever clogs have probably surmised, is all about generaling little green Gobbo's around the field of fantasy war, doing battle with- yep, you guessed it- other little green Gobs. Real-Time Strategy titles on the Xbox are about as rare as intelligent comments from George W. Bush, and with good reason: they tend to suck. Does Goblin Commander manage to strike a blow for the cause?

Goblin Commander tells the tale of Grommel, a Goblin chieftain with a bit of a problem. His master, the wizard Fraziel was found murdered and all the other Goblin chiefs put the blame squarely on his shoulders. Rather than sitting down like reasonable folk to discuss the matter, or submit to a jury of his green-skinned peers, Grommel decides to wage war against the ungrateful bastards and subjugate the tribes, one clich' at a time.

You begin the game with only your loyal Stonekrusher kinsmen, who are a sort of all-purpose bunch with no extreme strengths or weaknesses. As you slog your way through the fourteen-mission campaign you will challenge and conquer four other tribes, who you can then command in battle. Each of the tribes has their own pros and cons: the Hellfire clan has some great ranged units but little offense, while the Plaguesplitters utilise poisons to weaken and incapacitate foes to expedite their execution.

Each of the five tribes has five individual units available: four combatants (usually 3 melee and one ranged or vice versa depending on the tribe) and one support unit with some kind of area-of-effect ability like healing or extra defense. Each tribe also has 3 upgrades available to them, as well as one emplacement/tower and a powerful Titan unit. Sound familiar? It should be: Goblin Commander takes the most basic of RTS formulas- the kind that was cutting edge on PC's a decade ago- and gives it a console friendly spin. And for the most part, it works in its favour.

The simplistic (some might say primitive) mechanism is well-suited to consoles, because you don't have an entire keyboard's worth of shortcuts to access or the finesse of a mouse-driven pointer. But it suffers from all the glaring flaws that defined the teething period of the real-time strategy genre. To begin with, although there are 25 basic units available, you'll use no more than 10 on a regular basis. Some are just vastly superior, while others are virtually useless in later battles. Secondly, the lack of defensive emplacements (coupled with high costs for the ones available) virtually force players to take an aggressive offense, which of course leads to that dreaded word: rushing.

Despite all the lamers out there shouting at their screen that it's a 'legitimate tactic', Goblin Commander falls flat on its face because it's the *only* tactic. Your opponents have infinite resources, so the only way to win is to rush their bases and take out as many of their buildings as possible to stem the never-ending flow of enemy units. It's fun for the first half dozen missions, but then it just gets frustrating.

On the plus side, you won't be fighting the controls as you battle your way through the singleplayer campaigns. Possibly the biggest hurdle in bringing RTS love to the Xbox would have to be implementing a logical, intuitive and usable control scheme, and Goblin Commander does a great job. Each of the coloured buttons is mapped to one of the three tribes you're controlling at the time, with the A-button being reserved for confirming commands and issuing orders. The thumbsticks are used to move the map as well as position the cursor, and by holding down one button you can toggle the thumbstick between moving the main-screen view or quickly scroll using the mini-map in the corner. To make it even easier you can set quick-jump waypoints at key locations.

For the most part you will be controlling your Gobbo's in groups rather than individually, though the option to do so is there if you want to use it. When in individual control mode, you can rotate the camera and make fine adjustments to suit the scenario- a feature that is sadly lacking in the omnipresent Commander mode. At any rate, the controls are responsive and feel much more natural than those in Alien vs. Predator: Extinction: (XBW: 65%), which felt like a constant battle against the controller. Instead, your biggest challenge comes from dullard A.I. that is slow, witless and downright ornery at times.

Goblin Commander is not a particularly good-looking game- even blatantly stealing the style and art direction of the 'Warcraft' series couldn't redeem these blocky, low-res units and levels. Of course that's up close: from a distance it actually looks pretty decent, but the problem then becomes discerning the difference between your multicultural troops, not to mention the enemy ones. During the larger battles, it really just becomes a hopeless situation of sitting back and hoping that you're the one winning, watching the status bar to see how many of your green guys are left. Sun Tzu would be rolling in his grave. At least the framerate is consistent.

No prizes in the audio department either: using gibberish for voices is a cheap substitute for actual voice actors, and while it might work for The Sims (XBW: 85%), it really doesn't work for Goblin Commander. Nor does the dreary soundtrack and bog-standard sound effects- all it does is make the game feel like a budget title. Not surprisingly, there's no option for custom soundtracks included, so you'll have to either make do or play in silence if you find the musical score distasteful.

The singleplayer campaign is pretty short, weighing in at around 10-15 hours playtime all told. The first half dozen missions are extremely easy too, so expect the bulk of your time to come from the harder levels towards the end of the game. Your objective is almost always to wipe everything off the map, but there are subtler goals along the way too, such as scouting locations, finding certain people, or defending your base for a certain amount of time. The game gets much harder when you're controlling 3 tribes, as their bases are often in different locations, forcing you to divide your attention and often fight battles on three fronts at once.

When you're done with singleplayer, Goblin Commander has a multiplayer mode that is barely worth looking at, as well as a singleplayer skirmish option that extends the life of the title by a bit. Multiplayer on the other hand is an absolute waste of time: splitscreen RTS titles are about as enjoyable as playing battleship without a partition to hide your enemy's ships- you know exactly what to expect, when and where it will be coming, and also the final outcome'that you won't be playing it ever again. Not that it matters all that much with only 2 players and a handful of maps to choose from; without Xbox Live or some sort of level editor, this was never going to be the selling point of the game.