Tower defense games, we've all played them at work, during class or at home when we're bored out of our mind. Prior to the days of free flash based tower defense games, you had to shell out your hard earned money for them on the PC. The Stronghold games have much more going for it then having your men defend a castle from wave after wave of enemy soldiers. Since all the Stronghold games have similar game play and recycle a lot of the audio (or at the very least use new voice actors to record new lines) I'll just explain it once and mention any new additions or deviations in the following titles.

Order of War is a game that takes place during later WW2 in the European theater that allows you to command the American, Russian and oddly enough the German forces . Square Enix is known throughout the gaming community for churning out formulaic Japanese RPGs following adolescent protagonists out to save the world from some menacing super villain. So, it's refreshing to see a company breaking away from their bread and butter to try something new with western developers.

Take back the tower.

You know you've got a good game on your hands when it hooks you in and won't let go for hours and hours on end. Such has been the case for me this weekend with a new one from Ubisoft called Dawn of Discovery. Dawn of Discovery is, as my collegue Patrick pointed out in his review of the PC version, a sequel or continuation of the Anno series of real time strategy games (only this time under a different name in America). I wasn't sure what I was getting into when I first fired up Dawn of Discovery, but it's been the most addictive game I have played in many weeks.

Dawn of Discovery is a very fun but involved island hopping civilization game that focuses heavily on resource managment, rather than combat.

Whoever said "war is hell" may have been playing this.

Brownie Brown takes another crack at real-time strategy on the DS, this time with even more of an RPG twist.

To fight the bug, we must understand the bug.

RTS games are still considered most at home on PC, but Ubisoft Shanghai has taken a bold step in changing that with Tom Clancy's EndWar. With the PC version of the game not due out for several more months, EndWar rolls its way onto the Xbox 360 and PS3 packing several console friendly features, but is it deep enough for purist RTS fans?

Though it’s a dream of any DS fan, we still have yet to see a truly traditional RTS on Nintendo’s dual screen handheld. Current RTSs on the system are already few and far between and the ones that exist are either terrible or somehow make it work by hybridizing RTS with some other form of gameplay. Most notably, the current RTSs include 2 titles by Square Enix including Heroes of Mana, and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, as well as Glory Days 2 by Eidos. Other than this, not many people have taken much of a stab at the series (which surprises me, as it seems so obvious and perfect for the capabilities of the system. Still we wait for the true RTS to put another notch in the proverbial belt of what the DS is capable of accomplishing.

I remember many years ago, watching and listening to my friend collect and play the table top Warhammer 40K game. It was an interesting hobby, whereby you purchased these plain pewter figures and accessories and painted them up and then put them into battle. Outside of that, playing the great Dawn of War games on PC is as close to the Warhammer universe as I have gotten, until now. We received the Mark of Chaos expansion pack, Battle March, in for PC. It's also out now for the Xbox 360. This expansion pack includes a significant amount of extra content for the Mark of Chaos fan, but doesn't really do much in the way of improving the drawbacks of the original.