One day the world will recognize the superiority of Turn-based Strategy games over Real-time strategy games. When it does, the future will look very much like Field Commander.

Field Commander has fairly liberally cribbed Nintendo's now classic Advanced Wars, and brought some PSP-based joys like wireless multiplayer - almost including a full online multiplayer option, if you have a wireless router. More on this later.

The game is a joy to play - it looks beautiful, sounds beautiful, plays great - and even the loading times off PSP's notorious UMD drive are not disastrous. There are a generous collection of multiplayer and single player maps, and lots of different squad to choose from (who basically have bonuses and weaknesses in different areas of combat).

Missions have different objectives, but the majority require you to destroy all enemy units or capture the enemy's HQ building. Players earn money through civilian buildings which can be captured for the side by infantry, and build units using factories which must also be captured.

The bulk of the strategy comes from two things - unit balance and offensive bonus. Every unit has up to two weapon which are effective against different units. For instance, Anti-Air Batteries are devastating to Air-Craft, Tanks devastating to infantry, etc. This causes you to have to think carefully about which units move to which area to keep them out of range of deadly units.

The second area is particularly satisfying. A unit's attack strength is directly related to its own health. Every attack triggers a counter attack if the enemy has a weapon capable of hitting the attacker. Therefore if you have two identical units shooting at each other, the first one to fire will do more damage. In the case of Anti-tank planes VS Anti-Air batteries, whichever fires first has the capability to destroy each other, leading to deadly games of cat and mouse. Add to this the defence bonuses offered by different terrain style and you have a very strong tactical war game on your hands. Add to that sea-based units (including submarines which can submerge for stealth), hidden snipers, fog of war, mines, control rooms (once capture can reign destruction on the map every few turns) and its a very pleasing package.

The main view is top down, allowing you to see clearly where you are going and enemy units. Attack switches to a very attractive cinematic camera showing the scrap between the two units, turning the tight battle arenas into seemingly vast cities and fields of combat.