Joffre good show: Commander the Great War is here for iPad

Don’t Foch around.

After a couple of years in the making, Slitherine’s Commander: The Great War launched for iPad in the wee hours of the morning — it’s on the App Store right now for $20. We talked a couple of weeks ago why I’m excited about this release: it’s the first true grand strategy game on mobile, simulating the economic, diplomatic, and military aspects of World War I.

In many respects this is the biggest strategy game yet for the iPad, a game that’s going to swallow whole evenings on the couch and devour entire trans-continental plane journeys. I wanted to get my own hands on it today before I talked about it, and I can report that my first impressions are good.

The graphics aren’t retina-quality, I’m afraid, but that’s my biggest complaint so far. Maybe that wass too much to expect from a port of a PC game that’s a few years old already, anyway. But the controls are good and the game is stable. I played this game to death on PC a couple of years ago and so barring any catastrophic technical hitch that shows up later, I’m ready to give this Commander the PT seal of approval right now.

You can fight the war as the Entente or as the Central Powers, controlling each nation’s research and production individually, and commanding their armies and navies on an operational level. You can jump in at any year — right at the start in 1914, or later when the front lines have calcified and the Americans have finally decided to show up.

Commander is super large-scale: you’re controlling forces in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the North American east coast, and western Asia. In terms of scope, this game makes Panzer Corps look like an Angry Birds level pack. But this is still a pretty accessible war game. You can expect a full review from us next week. Now if you’ll excuse me, my Serbs are about to march into Zagreb.

Commander: The Great War is on the App Store right now, and there’s a trailer below.