Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command for Nintendo DS Reviews by Gamers

This is a great turn-based military RPG. It's really easy to play on the bus to work since you can pause at any point and pick up later. You start off with only soldiers, but later on get tanks and other vehicles. Multiple weapon types.

My only complaint was that the level of difficulty goes way up really fast. It took me a couple of hours to get through the 3rd level. Still the game was really fun so it was worth trying. Some levels feel simply impossible to complete, but if you are willing to work at levels then it feels good to complete levels when you finally get through them.

If you've played some of the THQ Warhammer Dawn of War RTS games on PCs, then you too might be drawn to the alluring notion of whupping Chaos Space Marines on your DS. Well, I'm here to tell you that while it's not the most fast-paced game on the DS, it's still very playable.

The sound is average to just below average. If you listen with headphones you'll quickly tell that the soundtrack has been overcompressed and downsampled to save space, but at the cost of sounding like music played inside a tin can. The sound effects are decent, if limited and repetitious.

Visually, the game suffers from a lack of perspective. Once again, for players of the PC-based Dawn of War series, this is a big letdown. It might be a limitation of getting the game to work on the DS, but the isometric perspective of maps is fixed, meaning you can't rotate the camera to any angle in order to properly target enemy units. They do offer a "camera tilt" feature that let's you temporarily swing the viewpoint by a limited amount, but it's not enough to be useful.

Usually, when one of your units, or one of the enemy units is behind a wall or structure, that obstacle goes partly transparent. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work! More than once I had to fake it and hope my aim was good enough, because the unit I was targeting was behind a column or wall that refused to be seen through.

If you can overlook those shortcoming, the game is enjoyable, and as you progress you can change weapons on your units to emphasize certain tactics (including the chainsword, my favorite!) You also get to play with infantry units (like Predator tanks) to pound the bad guys with artillery! The game is also reasonably re-playable, since you can alter tactics and destroy just about any structure on the map to change how the AI responds. Didn't score so high? Try it again and see how different actions can finish them off quicker!

Overall, definitely worth a rental for most of you, and a buy for Warhammer fans.