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Some games appear on my door and I genuinely have no expectations of greatness or failure for them. I see them and think, ?ooo another game that looks like such and such?. In the case of Anno 1701: Dawn of discovery, my thoughts centred on, ?ooo another game that looks like Settlers. I hope it plays ok!? I hoped for this as I love Settlers and get really annoyed with second rate games imitating it!

You will be hard pressed to find a better example of the genre on any handheld out there!

On starting up Anno you are presented with 2 single player options, story and continuous mode. Continuous mode is a kind of open ended, sandbox affair, where your aim is to expand and survive indefinitely. Story mode follows the tale of 3 Captains sent out to settle surrounding lands to gain power and influence for their Queen. You are, of course, one of the three. As the story progresses you will need to expand your colony into the surrounding lands, whoever may own them!

You are assigned an advisor who will hold your hand through the first steps of the game (the first couple of missions being training missions). He will tell you how the game works and what you have to do. As with all games of this type, you must gather and process raw materials, build houses and churches and schools and so on, generally keeping your people happy. You must also deal with other leaders and keep them sweet, unless they are the indigenous, Indian like locals. In their case you must eliminate them all!

So this all sounds quite familiar, and it is. This screams of the likes of Settlers and Civilisation. But this does not make it a bad game. The DS is very well suited to this kind of strategy game. The top screen displays relevant information relating to the current actions you are taking on the bottom screen. The bottom screen is where the action happens. The interface is one of the most intuitive I have ever seen. Nothing is more than a couple of taps away. Soon you will be building windmills and mines as easy as writing your name! The fact that this game has been recreated for the DS, rather than just ported from the PC version, is evident throughout.

The presentation is also first class, with well drawn , bold graphics and perfectly balanced sounds and music. You quickly get drawn into the atmosphere and start to feel like a true frontiersman.

There are a lot of strategy games around for the DS, Sim City and the afor mentioned Settlers both spring to mind. What Anno brings to the table is a fresh look at the genre. You will be hard pressed to find a better example of the genre on any handheld out there!