Empire Earth

One of the most ambition real-time strategy games to ever hit the shelves and flying under the banner of Rick Goodman, Lead Designer of the huge hit Age of Empires, Empire Earth serves up 500,000 years of human history - past, present and future - in an epic strategy adventure. Developed by Stainless Steel Studios and packed to the gills with a huge variety of unit types, civilisations, graphical features, and a stack of other options, Empire Earth sets out to grab itself a stake in the hard-fought RTS market.

First of all, we'll just have a quick look at some of the specific features of the game, because they look awesome on paper. The game offers the ability to replay any segment of time in human history - or the whole thing, if you so desire, even going into the future. 14 different Epochs (analogous to the Ages in Age of Empires) provide the basis for a variety of different technologies to play with. There are over 200 different types of units - land, sea, and air - each of which can be customised by tweaking such attributes as speed, range, or attack strength. There are several heroes that you can aquire which will boost your military abilities.

In terms of game technology, Empire Earth boasts advanced AI, an impressive 3d engine complete with special effects, a day and night cycle, and a variety of other features. Gameplay is enhanced with several different paths to victory, complex unit interactions, and several innovative additions such as the use of temples and universities.

And that is just a brief list. On paper, the game sounds awesome, and it is easy to see that it is truly revolutionary in terms of the scope of the game. Of course, the game is replete with the standard real-time strategy elements, such as single player campaigns, multiplayer capabilities, resource management, technology researching, and all the other bits.

Upon opening the box, you're impressed - the game ships with a giant (by today's standards) manual, weighing in at an impressive 230 pages. A quick glance through shows you the depth of the game, and is definitely enough to get you interested right from the word go - if a little daunted.

The Gameplay - General:

Touted as the latest offspring from the mind of the lead designer of Age of Empires, gamers will definitely notice some similarities. In fact, a lot of similarites. This is a good thing in terms of being able to quickly get into the game - you know your standard hotkeys, and you know the basic research and resource management flow. The interface is comfortingly familiar and the differences are well-documented and easy to pick up. The general gameplay follows the same lines - build a town centre, from which you build workers, which then build all your buildings, which then build your army, which you then use to take over the world. Gamers looking for a new, innovative look at RTS games probably won't find it here - the gameplay similarities to Age of Empires are very noticable.

That said, there is a vast amount of other stuff in there to keep you interested. The sheer scope of the game is one of these things - the giant variety of units and buildings is enough to keep your initial interest up and is in fact a great drive to keep playing the game - discovering and playing all the different unit types is pretty cool, watching the advancements as you go through the ages.

Gameplay Types:

There are a bunch of different gameplay types available - the standard single player campaigns, random map games, single scenarios (eg, custom and user made scenarios), and multiplayer. There are four single player campaigns that can be played - Greek, English, German and Russian campaigns are available. All of them have a loose storyline which uses some in-game cut-scenes to lay down some plot elements. In addition to this, there are several training missions which are definitely worth doing so you can learn all the differences between other RTS games and this one - its easy to start playing Empire Earth and think you know everything about it because of its similarities to Age of Empires, but this is definitely not the case.

Each campaign begins in its own time period. The Greeks begin in the Bronze Age, the English in the medieval, the Germans towards the end of the 19th century, and the Russians in the future. As a result, each campaign gives you good exposure to a variety of the different epochs and technology available in the game. The campaigns are fairly well designed and have definite objectives that make this aspect of the game one of its better features. While the cut-scenes are really nothing more than a token effort to add in some storyline into the missions, it does add to the overall feel of the game.

Next: Resource Management, Technology, and Combat...