Advance Wars: Dual Strike is the cheeriest take on war you are likely to encounter all year. Certainly it is a good sight sunnier than anything on CNN, although Fox News occasionally comes close. It will bring a broad and warm smile to your face, entertaining you thoroughly with great numbers of collapsed buildings and downed helicopters and little trucks that go putt-putt. You will like it very much.

The game is a lot like the classic paper-and-dice war board games. Risk, in particular, comes to mind, as does Axis & Allies. But if you are a player of a certain age, and if you are at all interested in handheld video games, it will mostly remind you of Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2. This is good news, because those titles were outstanding and so is the new one. Still, you might want to sock one of the classics away in the cupboard for the next extended blackout.

Like its predecessors, Dual Strike takes place in a sort of alternate Earth, with continents arranged in unusual (but nonetheless familiar) shapes, and silly names for everything. At the heart of the action are five kingdoms (or nation-states or what have you) called Orange Star, Blue Moon, Yellow Comet, Green Earth, and Black Hole. Black Hole is the evil one. Its soldiers wear cool black uniforms and helmets with glass shields that hide their eyes. The other four also wear naffy colour-coordinated suits, although none of them has the Matrixy good looks of the villains.

Anyway. Black Hole launches a powerful attack against the four rainbow states. They respond by forming the Allied Nations, figuring that their collective military might will manage what none of them could alone.

Now, here's the thing about military might in the land of Advance Wars. It is no match for adolescent pluck. All the commanding officers of the Allied Nations are eager teenagers who ask each other whassup and agree that, after the battle, they should totally go get some grub.

This is not to say that eager teenagers are incapable of military leadership: Joan of Arc, etc.. But there is a peculiar cheerfulness here that makes it tough to believe anything serious is at stake. Of course, nothing serious is at stake. Dual Strike is a strategy game, not an allegory for our times. Its art is in its play and its play alone. The good news is that this is a singularly polished and delectable kind of play.

Each battle is turn-based. We see a big grid, with each square marked as a particular sort of terrain: water, road, grassland, forest, mountain, or city. Our team has pieces on several of the squares, and so does Black Hole. When the fight begins, we can move our pieces according to their individual profiles. Infantry units can go a short distance, tanks can go farther, and helicopters can cross half the map.

If a move brings us into striking distance of an enemy piece, we can open fire. This brings up a short clip of cartoony explosions, as the enemy's forces (and our own) suffer casualties. Then we see the map again and we can move another piece. Once we have moved all our pieces, the turn ends and Black Hole gets a chance to do its own moving and shooting.

Despite the turn-taking, the action is breathtakingly fast. At any moment, we may have several vulnerable pieces and several positions of strength; the challenge is to rescue the weaklings and make sure we hit hard wherever we have decent firepower. You will be tempted to ignore the far-flung pieces and concentrate on the big guns, but you should resist. If you can't learn to juggle, to keep all your pieces alive and supplied and reinforced no matter where they are on the map, you will lose. And then the speckly teenager running the Black Hole army will taunt you.

Don't let them get to you. The Allied Nations will rise again.