Goblin Commander: Unleash the Horde Review

Goblin Commander: Unleash the Horde for the Xbox is the first Jaleco title that Game Freaks 365 has covered or that I have ever played. While for the real-time strategy (RTS) genre, Goblin Commander seems to be much more slow-paced, it is a perfect console execution for a genre that fails to impress on home consoles. Goblin Commander has two game play modes, campaign and skirmish. The campaign is single player, while the skirmish is a free-roaming game, which puts two players against each other. Goblin Commander would have been a perfect title to play on Xbox Live and would have been serious competition to PC RTS games like Warcraft 3, since they are really only known for online play, taking advantage of Battle.net.

Goblin Commander begins with a basic tutorial, that is featured in many other RTS games. Each clan is headed by a commander and has a specific set of objectives to complete. The commander, who is a blue glowing dot, is who you use to obviously command, telling people where to move and attack. The list of tasks can be displayed and a check mark signifies that a mission is complete. The game involves going around the board and completing missions. You will obviously have to purchase goblins to do your bidding; you purchase them with gold that can be obtained by destroying buildings. You can control three different clans at once, but since there are so few units, combat becomes dry in a swift manner. You don’t have much choice when it comes to the three clans that you choose either, since there is only the option of five different clans.

A thing that I like about Goblin Commander is the ability to have the choice between the traditional “point and tap�, like when using a mouse, or the ability to take control of a character and go directly into action controlling that character, while all of your other fighters tag along. As you would know, if you follow sports, offensive is as important as defense. While your titan (only one is allowed) is useful for attacking large buildings and demolishing melee attackers, turrets are great for defensive purposes. Goblin Commander has a few different character types, including light, medium, and heavy melee, long-range, and a healer, along with your titan.

Goblin Commander’s graphics are not quite as great as a Xbox title is expected, but they get the job done. Unleash the Horde has rich environments, full of assortment and nice animations. The camera is from a “bird’s eye view�, but does not have the ability to turn it 360 degrees. Instead, you must either move left/right/up/down or zoom in/out. The overall feel of Goblin Commander is a good one; this is the best RTS on any console, ever. Give it a rental, but had Xbox Live play had been added, a purchase would have been recommended.