How can humanity be saved from dying of sheer boredom? With a reality TV show of course! But not another reality show where the contestants have to eat raw animal parts or vote each other off an island, this show stars convicts who control squads of gladiators fighting for their freedom (if there is no crime in the 44th century, then how can there be convicts?) But who cares about this glaring hole in the storyline, right? Maybe the gameplay will make up for it…or maybe not.

The opening movie is action-packed and shows a fast-paced arena battle with lots of explosions and great action sequences. It will have you sitting on the edge of your seat and it gets you pumped up for the upcoming battles. Then comes a loading screen that seems to take forever to load, and you may forget what game it is you’re about to play by the time it’s done. The load screen should have the message "go make a sandwich and come back later" flashing across it.

Since Nexagon Deathmatch is a real-time strategy game, there’s a lot to learn before jumping into the pits of battle. You will need to know all the ins and outs of the game such as choosing the members of your "Horde" and how to give them commands in the heat of the battle. Lucky for you there’s a tutorial mode to teach you the way of the warrior, unfortunately this tutorial is about as enlightening as a 10 watt light bulb in a snowstorm. I was in the tutorial for over 10 minutes before a help screen popped up giving me some vague information about how to play the game. I was beginning to wonder if I was actually in the tutorial mode before the helpful hint appeared, and to be honest I was still wondering after the help window popped up.

The game manual that comes with Nexagon Deathmatch is not much help either, although it does illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of each unit type.

When starting a game you will be given a choice between four different teams, known as "Hordes" in the game. Each Horde comes with four classes of units or "Thralls." The Thralls are broken out as: Moles, Drones, Golems and Brains. The Mole is a support unit that caries a big stick (a biomatter Gore Club that shoots out gooey corrosive spores) and is also capable of manning mortar cannons. It is also the only unit capable of healing the other Thralls in your Horde. Drones are the offensive players in your Horde as they are the fastest and most agile fighters in the game and the Golems are big, bad and very slow defensive units. The Golems pack the most powerful attacks of any other Thrall and can take more damage than a Sherman Tank.

Lastly, there are the Brains, which can use their powers to strengthen their fellow Thralls or to disarm traps and bombs, and thus they are best suited as a support unit.

The battles in Nexagon take place in Sanctums, or "Maps" as we old school FPS fans call them. Your main goal is to protect your Horde’s precious Nexus (no, not the herbal shampoo product) while trying to destroy the enemy’s. The Nexus is your home base and serves as your Horde’s spawn point (sounds a lot like capture the flag doesn’t it?).

Probably one of the coolest parts of the game is setting up your Sanctum before battle. You can place walls, traps and decorations around your Sanctum. And you’ll use these items to help keep the enemy away from your flag… I mean Nexus. The decorations will jazz up the joint for the millions of TV viewers who will be tuning in to watch the big show. The more the viewers enjoy the battle the more money you gain to buy more Thralls, traps, barriers and walls.

There are a couple ways to win the game: you can infiltrate the enemy’s Sanctum and destroy their Nexus, or score more points than the other Horde buy knocking out or killing enemies before time runs out.

You can control up to six Thralls in the pit at once, and as the game progresses they will gain experience and become better fighters. When one of your Thralls is injured in battle it’s a good idea to let them sit out the next battle to heal and bring in a substitute. Trying to keep your Thralls from being wounded is no easy task considering the control scheme and unit AI are both horrible. Trying to navigate your units thru the mazes of walls and traps make Nexagon feel more like a job than a game as there are some simply horrible pathing issues. The Thralls get stuck on walls, get caught in the line of friendly fire and it’s next to impossible to control a group of units at once. While the game is played out in real time I think it would have been better served in a turn-based format.

Unlike a lot of new titles that rely on Gamespy’s online products for multiplayer, in Nexagon, the multiplayer option uses its own game server browser. The only problem I had with the multiplayer game is that after many attempts I could not find anyone playing Nexagon online, that’s right zero servers and thus zero games.

The graphics in Nexagon are not up to par with today’s standards. The textures look bland and a little out of focus although some of the play models look pretty good. Frankly, the fighting animations are boring, and both the explosions and lighting effects are nothing special to look at.

When it comes to the audio, the game sounds in Nexagon are outright dull. The announcer makes you want to throw your speakers through the nearest window with his annoying commentary. The game does give you the option to play your own MP3 files for a soundtrack, and I would highly recommend that you use this feature because it’s pretty much the only thing this game has going for it.

Unless you are extremely hard up for a new RTS game or find Nexagon Deathmatch in a bargain bin (and I’m sure you will soon) I really would recommend looking elsewhere for your RTS gaming fix.