Chris Haythornthwaite enters the Domination universe to find himself in the middle of fierce, furious and intense interplanetary battles...

'Domination' is a turn based strategy game set in the future where you take part as a commander directing your troops over the different parts of the map to complete objectives.

This has some very interesting ideas, it's like a twenty-first century version of the old 1980's film 'Wargames' with Matthew Broderick. The 3D map takes the form of a continent which is then split into parts, each part representing a country. These countries are either a member of the 'Free Nations Union' or of the 'Phantom League', if you are familiar with the Command and Conquer series you will know exactly what these two sides are about, if not then think, 'United Nations' and some sort of super terrorist organisation threatening the world. The game plays like a fancy game of 'Chess' mixed with the units and firepower of 'Command and Conquer'. Each unit you control gets a set move, they can then fire which causes a set amount of damage on the opposing unit. Units have their own strengths and weaknesses and are split across ground, air and sea and add enough variety and strategy to make the missions interesting as well as open for you to solve in your own way rather than there just being one set way and you losing until you find out which way that is.

The graphics are very good and set up the game nicely especially as they do not need a top of the range graphics card to run. However the sound and presentation of this game suck! The voice acting is so bad you really cannot believe your ears, I almost believed for a second that the voiceover was done by computer simulation, but even that could not be as bad as this actually is, the music is o.k. setting a nice feel but the way the missions are presented leaves a lot of room for improvement. The games industry left drawn, non-animated characters appearing in boxes talking to you years ago, why Dreamcatcher have felt that this was the best way to do it defies belief, the least we could have expected was some nicely animated 3D sprites ala, 'Space Colony'.

The game boasts 150 hours of gameplay and to be honest although I haven't put this boast to the test it cannot be far off. There are single player and multi-player options. Amongst the single player options are; training, campaigns, scenarios, career, world war and assault, each offering a variety of different options and missions. On the multi-player side you can play internet games, LAN games or a 'Hot seat game'. If you enjoy a good turn based strategy game then this will keep you going for months.

This game has a very good premise and plays very well indeed, if you ignore the story and take the time to learn the key strategies, they will help you win a victory and you will have a lot of fun playing this game. It also rewards the players with an immense amount of satisfaction as well as some good in-game cut-scenes for when you take out one of the main opposing units.

If you like 'Risk' and the odd 'Command and Conquer' game then this might just be for you, however if you like your games to have a good story and be supported by at least passable voiceover acting and presentation then you might be holding your nose to this one.