There are many of us who fondly remember the first time the Bydo Empire invaded. It was the genesis of a fantastic series of games that bore the now famous name of R-Type. But what of this latest offering? Surely a handheld format - especially one as potent as the PSP - is an ideal dwelling place for this granddaddy of side-scrolling shoot 'em ups?

The first shock of the day (which will lull you out of the doze that's induced by the yawning loading times at the start) is that this is indeed a side-scrolling shoot 'em up, but not as we know it, Jim. You see, the developer has taken the somewhat unexpected step of turning the fast-paced and impossibly hard R-Type formula into a slow-paced but still impossibly hard turn-based war game. That's right; R-Type Tactics is a turn-based, hexagonal gridded, micro managed, slow moving, thought provoking, terrain watching, unit building, resource managing strategy game - not exactly what long-term fans might have been expecting, then.

The thing is, in a weird kind of way it actually works; once you get your head around the fact that this isn't as fast-paced as it looks and that you don't need to make decisions quickly at all, you might end up quite liking it. Think of the original R-Type fighting ship; sleek and powerful, with immense engines, weaponry to die for, and a unique upgrade path. The first games were like that; they looked the part and they played as good as they looked. Now imagine something that looks just like that original spaceship but when you open it up you find that it's filled with intricate mechanisms. You might jump in expecting a rapid take-off and instant action, but what you actually get is a melodic chime and a small cuckoo. Different, but still fun. Okay, maybe that analogy doesn't really work, so let me explain what I mean.

The first few times you play Tactics, if you're not already in the strategy game mindset, you'll be slaughtered - even on the opening levels. You'll probably line everything up in one big, erm, line, and then move directly at the enemy with the sole intent of blasting them to smithereens. But it won't work. Despite appearances, this is not a side-scrolling shooter and you can't just play as though it is. You need to balance your forces, perhaps putting your fighters at the front and your bombers behind, with your flagship (the craft that must, at all costs, be protected) somewhere in the middle or even at the back. When you begin a battle, you might spend the opening moves getting your forces into the positions you wanted them to have all along (there are only a limited number of hexagons that you can place your ships on in the setup phase, of course). There are decoys to consider and resupply routes to work out and protect, as well as opening attacks and counters to undertake. You'll want to build up your fighters' attack power without taking any hits, so that they can perform a much more powerful shot when the time comes. You'll try to manoeuvre the enemy into a line so that you can send a barrage attack directly through the lot of them. You'll be keeping an eye on debris, positioning, and the state of health of many units (both yours and the enemy's). Occasionally you'll sacrifice a ship so that you can bring in more units behind. All the time you'll be aware that, at any moment, an unforeseen weakness in your position might be exploited and boom!, it's game over.

There are loads of different units to create and control, with a real mixed bag of weaponry. Right from the outset you need to think carefully about which ships you send out against the varied enemy - it's no good sending a recon craft up against a fighter, for example, but if you can get it near to the enemy's flagship then you might get a few turns' worth of minor damage in before the closing stages, which could give you the edge. The basic guns do hardly any damage but other attacks include the charged-up pulse from the original games, long-range missiles (guided and unguided), battering attacks, shields, and even decoy ships that explode for massive amounts of damage to anything in the vicinity. Sounds like fun, right? Well, that's because it is.

The presentation helps, although it's not without its flaws (mostly just the fact that everything looks so small on the PSP screen). The graphics are colourful and look really solid, the backgrounds are beautifully crafted and the explosions are suitably chunky. The music is great, too, foot-tapping beats and rhythms with a driving repetition that grabs you and doesn't tend to annoy, while the sound effects follow suit, with weedy weapons sounding suitably whizzy while the more powerful guns and attacks really push the PSP's speakers to the limit. You're better off playing through a decent pair of headphones of course. The controls are simple and intuitive as well; simply select the unit you wish to move or manage and press X, then follow the menus that pop up from there.

What's more, there's a decent ad-hoc multiplayer mode, which when combined with the fairly lengthy single player campaign and the challenging difficulty level, will keep you going for a quite a while. In single player the AI isn't perfect (occasionally, when faced with multiple potential targets, your enemy makes a choice that seems a bit daft), but it's pretty intelligent and certainly good enough to pull you in and make you want just one more go when it beats you.

Like all good things, however, there is a catch - and in this case it's mostly to do with the system upon which the game appears. The PSP's screen is really too small to easily differentiate between all your different units without actually selecting them and while the little cut scenes that appear from time to time when an attack is performed (which remind me of Advance Wars, although in a much less cutesy way) are a nice touch, but they take a bit longer to load than is really acceptable and they break up the flow of an already slow-paced game. In fact, the pace is really my biggest problem with R-Type Tactics; if you sit down in front of the telly to play a 'big' console game then you're probably happy to spend several hours there, but if you're playing a handheld title then you're probably not so inclined. You can save your game at any point during a mission but if you play in short chunks like a lot of handheld gamers then you'll end up spreading one fight out over several sessions and each time you'll have to work out where you were up to and remember your strategies. All this makes it doubly frustrating when you're beaten and have to start again.

It's nice to see something different being attempted with a sequel and R-Type Tactics is a success on so many levels. I loved it, yet I can't help feeling that, if only it were on the PSP's big brother or one of the other 'under-the-telly' machines, it would be so much better. If you're a fan of fast moving, side-scrolling 2D shooters then you're going to hate this - unless, of course, you also happen to like turn-based strategy games. If you're a fan of strategic gameplay and you don't mind spending hours staring at your PSP's screen then you can't go wrong with R-Type Tactics.

Reviewed by Dom Turner for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).