Alexander is, before I go any further, not a memorable game by any stretch of the imagination. I hadn’t watched Oliver Stones movie of the same name prior to beginning this review, so I jumped into the game with no expectations (other than already existing historical knowledge). After playing it for several days, I came to the conclusion that I would need to watch the movie, since I just wasn’t getting it.
After watching the movie, I still don’t get it.
The game developer, GSC Game World, has produced some pretty decent strategy titles in the past, namely the Cossacks line that is the basis for the game engine in Alexander. Units build very quickly and relatively cheaply, allowing you to mass up huge armies in mere minutes – which was one of my first issues in playing the game. When you click on a building to produce troops, you don’t just queue-up a certain number of units and move on to another task while they build; instead, you click on the unit button just once and it continues to build until you tell it to stop. My first time playing through (without reading the manual, of course) gave me a shock, as I turned back expecting to see a handful of troops… and instead saw a huge mob milling about and staring at their weapons. I read the manual at this point, shame on me…
