Despite its dripping homage to said gold standard, it still manages to distinguish itself with a mature game system, a prodigious (albeit predictable) story, and a few modest innovations that make this one of the better RTS affairs of 2004. This year, however, there's a new kid on the block, and its name is Exigo - as in Armies of Exigo. What's got three well-tweaked races, a lulu of a real-time 3D engine, and more fantasy melodrama than Viggo Mortensen and Liv Tyler in a Gondorian sauna? If you said Warcraft, you're forgiven - it's the gold standard, after all. The game's dual battlegrounds pose new challenges even as they suggest new tactics.

Wood, gems, and gold, the game's three main resources, are found both above- and below ground, and each of the three factions has units and abilities to allow its troops to move through either realm. Players can choose to lead the humans, the beasts, or the fallen, and the single-player campaign gives them a fair turn at each. On the surface of the land (and in the skies above), battles of swords and sorcery play out in a recognizable fashion, while beneath the earth, armies plan ambushes and mount surprise attacks. Armies of Exigo offers nearly all the contemporary conventions of the RTS style - a fantasy setting, three distinctly different factions, and online competition for as many as eight players - but it also offers something relatively innovative to 3D RTS gaming: warfare both above and below ground. Gamers wage war on dual fronts in this RTS from first-time developer Black Hole Entertainment.

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