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Empires: Dawn of the Modern World
by Jolex Del Pilar
Monday, November 24 2003
Activision's attempt at Age of Empire's coveted "historical RTS" throne is both spirited and fun.
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Title:
Empires: Dawn of the Modern World
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Platform:
PC Windows, Pentium II 600, 256MB Ram, 900 MB of HD space, 32 MB video card.,
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Publisher:
Activision |
Developer:
Stainless Steel Studios |
#
of Players: 1 - 8 |
Genre:
Real Time Strategy
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Origin:
United States
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Expected
Release:
November 2003 |
Grapevine:
It owes more than a nod to Age of Empires, but in turn, Age of Empires owes a nod to the original Warcraft, and so on. |
It's been a real good time for gamers these part couple of months. Starting with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, it's been hit after hit from various companies since the Summer months. On my desk alone, we have Ubisoft's Beyond Good and Evil, Activision's True Crime: Streets of L.A, and Activision's other major release in November, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World. I have been patiently awaiting for the latter one to arrive for a few weeks. After seeing demo video of the game in action, the impressions I got were that the game might be a worthy successor to the "aging" Age of Empires series. Empires: DOTMW features a fully 3D game engine, as well as up to 1000 units on screen, and campaigns spanning from the 11th century up until World War II, what respectable war gamer wouldn't be excited?
The game installed without a hitch, though taking 900 megabytes of hard drive space along with it, which wasn't too bad. Once installed, you are given the choice to play a single or multiplayer game, change options, or even create your own maps and campaigns. I started off by trying out the single player experience. There are 3 stock campaigns available when you start the game. One features Prince Richard's rise to the throne in England during the 11th century, Korean Admiral Yi-Sun's war against the Japanese in 1592, and General Patton's role in World War II. Each campaign takes place during times with greatly varying degrees of technology, though choosing a campaign is not so trivial. The campaign most gamers should start off with is the one that portrays Prince Henry's rise to the English throne. To me, it seemed to be the easiest in learning the ropes of the game, and featured the least frustration, in terms of difficulty. Of course, others who have more experience in RTS games may opt for the other campaigns, be forwarned, they aren't going to be cake walks.
When I finally took my role as Prince Richard of England, I was treated to a nice intro cinematic of Prince Richard and his brother Henry discussing their wishes for the throne of England. What was noteworthy was the entire scene took place inside of the game engine, and wasn't an externally rendered CG movie. That was my first hint that the game engine that Empires was using was at least on par visually with the one utilized in Warcraft III, no small task considering that Warcraft III was visually stunning when it came out last year during the summer. In fact, you might even say that Empires' engine featured slightly more complex models, and even higher texture detail than Warcraft III did. Given the one year technology gap, that was to be expected, but still it was a pleasant surprise.
Of course, as you might know, games are the sum of their parts, and visuals are only a single part of that equation we imagine to be a good game. The next question was, how did it play? Well after playing through all 3 campaigns, and 13 Cokes later, I had an answer. Although on first glance, Empires looks a bit like Age of Empires, it's clearly not the same type of game. While Age of Empires learned a lot towards resource management, it seems like Empires strays away from it whenever possible. This means that the gameplay is a lot more tactical than strategic, meaning each unit will have a lot more meaning because in some missions you won't be able to build a swordsman from a barracks building to replace fallen troops. While there are missions where you will need to mine gold, chop wood, and grow food to progress, they are far and few between. In fact, during the WWII campaign, there is only one mission I remember where I needed to resource gather to fulfill the mission goals. For those who hate the concept of having to gather resources to field an army, then worry not with Empires, most of the units you need are either given to you at the beginning of your quest, or you can find them during the mission by way of liberation, or conversion (requires priest). Personally I like this new "less micro-management" approach. With the plethora of RTS games on the market, few are willing to deviate from the established gameplay formula, and it's great that Stainless Steel Studios decided to here.
Still, anyone playing through Empires will notice a lot of similarities with Age of Empires, most notable is the general game interface, and technology progression tree. In fact, many of the technologies themselves (town halls, and farms are handled in the exact way the Age of Empires handles them) are directly taken from Age of Empires. Even the way combat is handled is reminiscent of AOE. You have almost identical formations, a general A.I behavior tab, and unit special functions accessible by a single right click. You can't blame Stainless Steel for deriving this from AOE, it's a good system, so I can't really fault them on this point.
Empires: Dawn of the Modern World features a beautiful game engine as is exemplified by this close up of some Russian troops from WWII.
Combat itself seems pretty balanced between the 8 civilizations included. Each civilization, from the Chinese, Russians, to the French, and Germans have their own unique units, and special buildings that they can build, again, much like AOE. Each civilization also has special traits the others do not have. For instance, the United States has the special power of "Heroism", which gives combat units on the field a moderate stats boost while in effect. One thing to take note of is that certain civilizations are only available during certain time periods. If you choose an earlier time period in history, you won't find the United States, or the United Kingdom, because both were created later, and after civilizations such as the Chinese Qin Dynasty, or Feudal England. So while it might seem fun, you won't see fighter aircraft bombing knights on horseback in Empires.
The mission selection is fairly varied and features some diversity besides the "resource gather, and crush your enemy" variety. Some missions will ask you to escort "hero" units to places on the map, while other missions will ask you to defend towns, or important landmarks from enemies. With the unit variety, a big strength of Empires, the developers were able to create a great selection of missions for gamers to complete. With more resources with which to work with, gamers can be expected to accomplish even more complex goals, although I was never able to use the British SAS Units quite effectively. That's more my incompetents than anything else.
The game's audio experience is nearly as good as the visual experience that the game presents. The music is of generally high quality, featuring moody, stringy compositions that reflect the tides of war as well as time period. The game also features a wealth of voice acting which is hit or miss depending on your viewpoint. I thought Prince Henry was voiced incredibly well, though General Patton was a miss in my opinion. Still overall, it's impressive that effort was taken to include voice overs for major plot moving scenes.
One thing that is disappointing, and this may have been due to time constrants in trying to get the game out for the holiday season, is the inclusion of only 3 campaigns. While each campaign contains from 7-8 missions, that's still only 21-24 missions spread between 3 civilizations. What about the other 5 included civilizations? I would have loved to have played a campaign that featured the Vichy France of WW2, or the Chinese of the Ming Dynasty. There are options to load campaigns into the game, and perhaps an enthusiastic modding community may utilize the other 5 unused civilizations. However this reviewer sees a different reason for the lack of more than 3 campaigns; a moderately priced expansion pack coming soon from Activision in the near future.
The multiplayer experience is pretty entertaining. Custom maps are available, with standard player vs player, and team vs team type gameplay. On an average broadband connection, you can expect up to 3 players to play relatively lag free. Still, I would recommend setting the unit limit to below 500 as lag starts to dominate the game at anything above that number. TCP/IP, and LAN seemed to be the way to go, although internet play is offered through GameSpy Arcade which has been hit or miss with most games we've tried on the service.
On the whole, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World features a balanced combat system, great visuals and sound, and an intriguing potential for expansion of the series. Though Empires is a little light on content, and may owe more than a passing nod to Age of Empires, the game is a solid effort and will keep the war gamers occupied for a while with its mod and multiplayer potential, at least until Age of Empires III comes out.
--- Jolex Del Pilar
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