In Machines, Acclaims new "3D" RTS you take on the role of a race of silicon based life forms on a mission to seed and dominate new worlds. While Machines bears close resemblance to the great Command & Conquer series and StarCraft in terms of gameplay the presentation is somewhat different.

In terms of gameplay Machines offers a pretty standard take on the whole RTS genre, you have units that construct buildings, which you in turn are used to conduct research, construct more units, mine BMU's (mineral resources) and so on. Then there are units for transporting the resources from one place or another in order for them to be stored and later used to build new things.

There are grouping possibilities similar to what we find in StarCraft and C&C. Patrol functions, guard functions, stand ground and so on, but there is one thing that I have not personally seen anywhere else, an initiative function where you can set the units initiative to low, medium or high. When set to low the unit doesn't do much except return fire when an enemy approaches, on medium the unit will actually move towards attacking units on it's own to later return to base when the enemy has been annihilated. On high the unit does even more, it may even pursue a weaker enemy in order to take it out, or flee if opposition is too great.

There's also potent sabotage and espionage in the game that can be carried out by spies, you can lay mines inside enemy buildings, steal research and so on. There's also the possibility to go first person in the game, so you can actually dive in to one of your units and blast away in a fashion similar to BattleZone, beware though that your units handle quite poorly.