While EndWar continues to promote voice-command as the way forward for console strategy, it seems like the analogue stick may have some life left in it yet. While clearly a poor replacement for the mouse when it comes to drawing selection boxes, Creative Assembly’s Australian branch has hit upon a way of using a gamepad to control units demonstrably faster than even the speed of speech.

Given the slick, PR-friendly term of ‘whip-select’, the feature is put into practice for us by QA tester Sanatana Mishra, who also happens to be one of Australia’s top WarCraft III players. Pushing the right stick in a direction brings up a dial radiating from centre-screen. Rotating the stick then swings it round, like the arm of a clock, to point at the icon of the desired unit. Alternatively, a quick flick of the same stick transfers control to the nearest unit in that direction, allowing you to rapidly leapfrog across your army without the need for the more precise selection ‘whip’.

It seems to work for Mishra – perhaps too well for the purposes of a clear demonstration – and we’re left wondering if only a world-class WarCraft III player could distinguish one unit icon from another at speed, particularly when the orientation of the camera keeps changing. Sega Australia’s man on the scene, Vispi Bhopti, is quick to emphasise that the visual design is far from final – particularly the way information is displayed on the HUD, but also unit and environment design. This is something of a relief, as it would be a shame for the control scheme to be the only remarkable thing about this game – currently sporting a somewhat drab post-apocalyptic setting.

Somewhat inevitably, more people will buy Halo Wars but, shopworn stylings aside, it may well prove to be Stormrise that has the smarter ideas on how to bring down strategy’s platform-specific stigma.