An element of gaming which I cannot stand is tediously long-winded tutorials that seem to go on forever. In fact, the only thing worse than a dull, lengthy tutorial is the flipside – when a multi-feature-driven game gives absolutely no explanation of how to play whatsoever.

Four Corners gives you ninjas, witches, archers and samurais, and lets you loose on an opposing team, as you attempt to take a series of spires before they get the chance. Unfortunately, the game throws you straight into the action with little help, and it’s rather difficult to understand what exactly is going on. By the time you’ve figured it all out, any possible fun has been sucked out of proceedings.

GAMEPLAY

Play kicks off with each team possessing a fort at different sides of the map. A variety of units can be created and then told to guard the fort, attack the enemy or go on a suicide run. The winner is the player who manages to destroy the opponent’s castle.

Besides the battling, there is an element of building capture going on. Special units can be created which cannot fight, but instead float towards spires dotted around the map and capture them for your team. These structures light up with your colour each time one of your units enters, and you’ll need to get four of your guys in there before the central light will finally begin to glow your colour.

This indicates that the spire is now under your control, and you’ll start earning more cash to spend on extra units. Your floaty, spirit units can also be told to enter the mind of a golem – huge, stone creatures which can then be controlled directly by you and made to smash their way into the enemy’s territory.

There are plenty of different units to choose from and orders to give, but alas, I had absolutely no idea what any of them actually did. There is a complete lack of tutorial or explanation as to what each unit is capable of, and their strengths and weaknesses etc. There’s an Instructions option to select from the main menu which throws several pages of text at you, but this basically gives you the story behind the fighting, and then a couple of quick, basic pointers.

Everything is just far too vague for its own good. I took to experimenting with different units to see what the outcome would be, and after a while decided that there was barely any difference between them at all. Eventually, I created a huge army of a single type of soldier, plunged them all into battle, and simultaneously sent off the spirit units to conquer the spires. I won.

As you can gather, however, I didn’t exactly have much fun doing so. It’s also rather annoying that unit purchases cannot be stacked, and I had to constantly wait at my fort until each unit was created so I could then select the next one to be trained up. If I could choose the next few units to be created at the same time, that would allow me to concentrate on the rest of the battlefield more.

Two player battling is available, but due to the previously moaned about lack of tutorial, multiplayer battles consist of one player repeating ‘I don’t understand what I’m meant to be doing’ and the other player responding ‘neither do I’. If you can sit down with a friend and decipher the whole thing then fair play to you, but both myself and my companion decided we’d had enough.

STYLE

There’s a strange half-finished feeling to the graphical stylings of Four Corners. While some of the units, buildings and play arenas look fairly pleasant in a comic-style way, other parts – the interface, in particular – aren’t so great. Plain fonts and bored, static images are a common sight, and they really take away from the overall image the game is attempting to portray.

The soundtrack – or lack of – does not help matters. There is absolutely no music whatsoever at any point, be it the title screen or during battle, and when it first booted up, I thought something was wrong with the volume on my TV! As much as I bang on about how much I despise all these generic techno beats that the majority of XBLIG games seem to churn out, at least it’s better than none at all!

STORY

The four seasons are locked in battle, ready to conquer the others and become the superior time of year! Taking their unique fighters, they plunge into the fight, taking seasonal spires and destroying enemy capitols.

You are given the task of leading the army for whichever season you choose to support. The player does not control the units directly, but acts as an overseer, giving them orders and sending them on their way. The player can, however, possess a single unit at any one time, and walk into battle individually.

As far as stories go, it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen for a game, but it’s not the greatest either. Some of the units are a little strange too – why does Spring have ninjas and samurais, while Winter has strange, dark creature thingies? Bizarre.

OTHER

My main problem with Four Corners is that I have very little idea of what exactly I’m doing, or what any of the specific units do. If some kind of tutorial or extra explanation was given, I may be able to find some fun, but as it is I didn’t exactly have a swell time.

It’s worth noting, however, that the game is a mere 80 MS points ($1), so if you think you’d have a better crack at understanding it than I did, you won’t exactly be breaking the bank to give it a chance. Of course, there’s always the demo to download too, so you can have a quick 15 minutes with it.