I’ve realized that my massive game collection stems from the fact that I play games based on my temporary mood. If I feel like exploring a fantasy world I load up Kohan or Baldur’s Gate. If I’m feeling a penchant for using heavy military weaponry, I may start a game of Jagged Alliance. This requires that I have a variety of games available that cover as many subjects as possible. For this reason I eagerly awaited the release of Empire Earth. Imagine a game that could immerse you in over a dozen distinct periods of human history. Feel like some medieval warfare? No problem. How about going on a bombing run with futuristic aircraft? Sure. Empire Earth seeks to cover all of human history and beyond. To call this a mammoth goal would be an understatement, but the fact that I’ve been playing it for a while indicates this goal has indeed been attempted. So what are the results? Read on.
Empire Earth is obviously a real-time strategy game. With the lead designer of Age of Empires at the helm, Rick Goodman, all of that game’s elements have made the transfer. You’ll build towns, supported by the mining of iron, gold, and stone, the gathering of wood, and the harvesting of food. You’ll build barracks to train troops, docks to build fishing and war vessels, construct walls and turrets for defense, and upgrade your troops and vehicles. In fact, Empire Earth comes off as completely derivative when you first start playing it. Then the epochs come into play and you realize the sheer magnitude of the game. Basically, the game is divided into 12 distinct epochs, or ages, of human history: prehistoric, stone, copper, bronze, dark, middle, renaissance, imperial, industrial, atomic (which includes WWI, WWII, and modern), digital, and nano. Amazingly, each epoch has an entirely unique set of units—there are literally hundreds of them. In the Bronze Age you’ll train phalanx units, while in the Modern Age you’ll construct jet fighters and stealth bombers. The oceans of the Imperial Age are home to beautiful wooden Galleons and Battleships, while in the Nano Age the Hammerhead Sub rules the seas. They’re all here: musketeers, dragoons, marines, spearman, trebuchets, howitzers, mortars, and F-15s. Coupled with the presence of historical leaders such as Oliver Cromwell and Hannibal, this game is a history buff’s dream.
There are some issues, however, that need to be discussed. For one, each of the epochs is pretty much self-contained. There are four campaigns that focus on an individual country. The designers did an excellent job, however, of including all of the epochs within the campaigns. For instance, the English campaign has players fighting against France from the Middle to the Imperial ages, while the German campaign covers both World Wars. The remaining two are the Greek campaign, which covers the early development of Ancient Greece, and the Russian campaign—a purely fictional one that deals with its futuristic development into a superpower. Each mission within the campaigns, however, is set in one epoch. This is somewhat remedied by the ability to pick the starting and ending epoch in skirmish and multiplayer games. In effect, you could start a game in the prehistoric age and advance through the ages all the way to Nano. Most times, however, I was only able to advance two or three ages at most before the game ended in either victory or defeat. What I’m getting at is the fact that the game does not feel dynamic. There is no Civilizationesque trumpeting of your civilization from one village to a world superpower. Instead, Empire Earth feels more like a bundle of a dozen smaller real-time strategy games. To spice things up a bit, however, the game does let you choose a civilization in skirmish and multiplayer games. At the start of the game, you simply use a set number of points to choose from a variety of bonuses that shape how your civilization will fight. You can choose to specialize in aircraft, have stronger archers, or build ships faster. There are a number of ready civilizations to choose from, or you can create your own unique one. Still, your nationality is purely abstract. It would have been cool to have had custom flags on your buildings or ships or some other representation other than some bonuses. This is a welcome and unique addition nonetheless.
A second issue is resource gathering. By taking a very traditional route—train villagers, send them to collect resources—much of the wonderful atmosphere the wealth of units create is ruined. Why, in the Nano Age, am I still sending villagers to pick from pumpkin patches (of all foods to gather— why pumpkins?) and mine gold deposits. Each epoch has distinct technologies that can be researched to help you, but they don’t have any impact on the game’s visuals. For instance, in the Industrial Age I can research the steam engine to increase gold gathering by 15%. But there is not a train to be seen. My villagers are still out there sweating it out with their pickaxes. It would have been wonderful to have been able to build railroads tracks to the deposits or in a later epoch, such as the Modern Age, have been able to see that hydraulic mining I researched in action. Also, you can hunt various animals for food, but steering my giant robots around a bunch of hippos is a bit silly—perhaps we should be hunting alien species? Still, I understand that you have to leave some elements to the imagination or add a few more years to the development time. One interesting aspect of resource gathering, however, is that each deposit of gold, iron, or silver can only be mined by about five civilians, so if you want to increase your input you are forced to expand across the map If you can get past the many derivative aspects of Empire Earth, you are left with a fun, detailed game. Each epoch brings about new units and new strategies. Once you start rolling out the tanks and building airports, you’ll fight in entirely new ways. One unit that remains consistent throughout the ages, however, is the prophet. This unit is the one “fantasy” aspect of the game. It can conjure up volcanoes, earthquakes, disease, storms, and more. They can often be the deciding factor in a game. I know some people may be turned off by this—I am a little. But hey, I’ve been instantly converting units in other RTS games for years (also present in this title). You can opt not to use them, or just view them as representing natural disasters that have often changed the course of history.
Besides the previously mentioned campaigns, players can set up multiplayer games over the internet using the game’s dedicated servers. Skirmish games can also be played against AI opponents that are extremely aggressive. Even on easy, they expand and attack like crazy. This can be a problem for beginners, and I’m hoping more difficulty levels will be added in a future patch to remedy this. Veterans of the genre will no doubt be pleased. Skirmish games can also be set up with a variety of options such as starting resources, map type and size, number of opponents, and as I mentioned earlier, the starting and ending epoch.
Graphically, I found the game to be pretty good. The engine is 3D, so you can rotate and zoom the map. Each unit is made up of polygons, and it is obvious a good deal of time went into the design of each. The uniforms and “feel” of the units is spot on. Zoom in close, however, and you’ll be surprised to see some pretty strange faces. Basically, they look like rag dolls up close, with basic ovular heads and stiff expressions. But zooming in allows you to appreciate the historical flavor up close. It is thrilling to be at eye-level as you send a horde of knights and pikemen at the enemy as arrows whiz by overhead. Dogfights between aircraft are also enjoyable to zoom in on. The most magnificent visuals, however, occur during naval battles. Massive engagements will treat your eyes to dozens of broadsides being fired and smoke filling the air. It helps that the water effects are excellent. Overall, the animation in the game is impressive. Horses trot realistically and cannons recoil as they fire. Similarly, aircraft are not just elevated units that hover and fire on the enemy. They actually strafe units and engage in dogfights as they try to line up a shot. Sound effects for units are wonderfully done as well. The crack of the musketeer’s rifle and the whine of biplanes really lend to the atmosphere. The music is fine, but the same tracks play in each epoch. It would have been great to have had a unique track for each. Voices in the game, however, are mixed. The unit acknowledgements are decent, but the voice acting in the campaigns is somewhat offensive. All of the cutscenes are in-game, so to see awkward looking faces paired with exaggerated, awful accents is almost comical.
The game’s interface is standard real-time strategy fare. There is a toolbar on the bottom that gives you access to everything from upgrades to units formations and stances. The top of the screen, as usual, shows you your resource stockpiles. The camera is very easy to manipulate and there are plenty of hotkeys for those inclined to use them. Everything is laid out in the excellent documentation. Not only is there a hotkey reference card, but also a full tech tree and a full 238 page manual that is well written and contains some nice historical background info. One problem is that units are sometimes not very responsive. They will be very close to a battle and simply stand there, even when set to an aggressive stance. This is not a widespread problem, but it happens every so often to annoy.
Empire Earth is a game real-time strategy fans and history buffs will want to pick up. Everyone else should definitely try the demo and see if it is to their liking. One thing is clear though. The designers of Empire Earth have created a real-time strategy game that, while unoriginal in some departments, contains a mind-boggling number of units that give it variety not yet see in the genre. Simply put, this is one massive and enjoyable game that lets you appreciate how much the human race has developed. If that was the designers’ intention, then they have wholly succeeded.
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Reviewed by Anthony
Micari
Empire Earth
