Several developers have tried their hand at bringing the RTS genre to the consoles by developing their games specifically for the keyboardless systems, and even managed to come up with an adequate experience or two. Some nice examples might be the fully voice-controlled Tom Clancy’s EndWar and last summer’s release Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution, which just won a BAFTA for the best strategy game of 2008. Now we have another contender–the Creative Assembly-developed, Sega-published Stormrise–that looks to bring their own little twist to the must-make-RTS-on-consoles-viable mania by taking things a little bit vertical.

We’re not sure if it’s something they’re going to pull off effectively but by the looks of it they’re giving it a good shot, as demonstrated in this new “Verticality” trailer. In Stormrise, it’s possible to position your units as several layers on the battlefield as opposed to having them all on a flat surface for the opposing force to see–for example, you can hide your attacking force under a hidden location beneath the ground while scouting for the enemy force with another unit from up above for a little surprise attack. Needless to say, something like this opens up new options for the strategically minded, but of course requires the promised “effective control system tailored specifically for consoles, which allows easy unit selection, rapid navigation and precise deployment” to perform as advertised.

I guess we’ll find out once it’s released later this month the 360 and PS3.