Code Name: STEAM review – accessible strategy adventure

(3DS, Nintendo, cert: 12, out now)

Boasting an exaggerated comic-strip presentation, steam-powered weapons, Abraham Lincoln, Queen Victoria and a host of literary characters, it's clear that the diminutive size of the 3DS was no bar to the imagination behind Code Name: STEAM. But what appears to be a fantastical and flippant adventure also conceals a well-engineered, finely balanced, turn-based strategy game.

Here, developer Intelligent Systems revisits the detailed battles of its Advance Wars series with a new first-person perspective, real-time elements and a game-changing overwatch feature - in which saving enough "Steam" action points offers the opportunity to counter-attack enemies during their turn.

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