The player's role is to populate and exploit land, gathering resources and refining them to produce mercantile or military wares, and to stockpile or distribute these end products as they see fit according to need and priority. If you've not played any of the series before, Anno is fundamentally a game of trade and production, with a little exploration and a soupçon of combat adding a delicate frill to the edges of the sensible economic tablecloth. In accordance with this laid-back, tropical experience, Anno generally makes very few time-sensitive demands upon you as you amble towards particular mission objectives, all of which involve settling islands and carving civilisation's name into their unspoilt trees and fields. I'll be surprised if a better-looking RTS comes along this year. Trees sway in tropical breezes, sea birds wheel overhead, crops sprout and are harvested. In keeping with the beautiful ocean, the rest of Anno is quite the looker too, with deliciously detailed 3D building models giving a solidity and genial rurality to your settlements, whilst well-animated citizens bustle from place to place. Considering that all of the game's territory consists of picturesque islands, surrounded by this tantalising liquid, playing it in the heat is absolute torture. It looks cool, refreshing and thoroughly inviting - lapping gently upon the beautifully rendered beaches and cliffs of Anno's islands, swirling around my fleets of trade ships and sloshing against abandoned cargo and shipwrecked unfortunates.
See, as pretty much everyone who's wandered past my desk this week will tell you, Anno's water is very, very pretty indeed.
Don't get me wrong, it's not because I haven't enjoyed the game, it's because of the water. During my time with Anno 1404, however, these office-bound hours have proven especially difficult.
With a desk fan running full blast in my face and Bertie's eternally sunny disposition warming my right flank, it's almost like being outside anyway. The point is that normally it's not that bad. Even living amongst the fresh sea breezes of Brighton I've been gradually sublimating into a rarefied cloud of grease over the last few days, so shuffling back into the airless Eurogamer offices after lunch on the beach, even when all I have to do when I get there is play games and write about them, has been pretty difficult. Those of you not living in the South East of England might not have noticed, but recently it's been real hot.
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