Product Reviews

Warfare Incorporated isn't new, but it has been updated to work on Windows Mobile 5 as well as older Pocket PCs. Nearly three years after its initial launch, it's still one of the best games to make it to the Pocket PC platform.

Warfare Incorporated is a science-fiction real-time strategy game that is based on interplanetary mining operations. You are tasked with fighting off rival factions to keep the company on top. What makes this game so good is not just that the play is so engrossing, but also that the gameplay itself works so well on a handheld.

A lot of PDA-based games

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use text and graphics that are incredibly tiny and hard on the eyes. Warfare Incorporated has been intelligently created to make everything relatively easy to look at, but still visually impressive. It's fascinating to watch the screen as you build mining operations and gather resources, with all your various troops and vehicles moving automatically as soon as you direct them to a particular task.

Stylus control on a PDA works far better than mouse control on a PC when you are selecting and moving objects on the screen, so interacting with the game is intuitive. The only slight disappointment is that you are always fighting similar, all-human armies, each with the same array of infantry, weapons and vehicles, and there are no horrific aliens to spice things up.

There are three difficulty levels to choose from. Most of the missions take an hour or so to complete, so it will take quite a while to get through them all. If you're really dedicated, you can create your own using the free PC-based mission editor. If you enjoy strategy games ©and this one is easy to learn, thanks to the built-in tutorials © then it's worth giving Warfare Incorporated a try.