Empire Earth (PC)

Combining elements from Age of Empires and Civilisation, this RTS game falls into the familiar resource gathering/prodding the buttock of the bad guys style of play that will be familiar to anyone playing Microsoft's classic (Not Windows XP...)

Put across in processor hungry 3D (which isn't needed as the default camera is the only one you'll use), the game soon falls into the pattern of making a base, defending it, then going out to look for the CPU and burning it to the ground.

However, a few tricks are up the sleeves of EE, to brighten up what may have been a run-of-the-mill strategy game. The sheer volume of units available to play with over the 14 epochs of the game give it enough scope to satisfy the most hardened gamer, and allows you to play through all of the major historical events in Earth's history.

However, combat is a slightly dull affair, partly because that although the paper/scissors/stone style of combat means that you can use your head when you commit troops to the fore, its very difficult to distinguish between the units so you end of throwing everyone forward and hoping for the best.

The graphics and sound are both superb, and add greatly to the atmosphere of each epoch, although the difference between say WWII and the Roman epochs could be said to be little more than a cosmetic difference.

The inclusion of hero's also adds a new dimension to play, as is the ability to upgrade your unit along various different paths according to what role you want them to play.

Campaigns over various epochs are interesting and involving, as well as being quite informative to anyone will a passing interest in history, and they always throw up new challenges to change the style of play.

Overall then a good strategy game, with lots of interesting ideas to bring it up from all the usual dull and tedious RTS games that are drowning the market at the moment.

The advance publicity promised a lot and I must say I was not disappointed in any way. RTS fans will be familiar with the usual create villagers - gather resources - build an army routine. Empire Earth presents this process with graphics and sound which are in a different league.

One point that may be of interest to people without the latest multi-megabyte pentium 4 computers is that I find the game runs fine on my Celeron 466mhz and 8mb ATI Rage Pro equipped machine. I find I can choose the highest detail level and have no problems running an 800x600 resolution.

Anyway, eventually I got torn away from my prehistoric adventures by the need to go and have a mech war. So i did that. And it was 'kin amazing. Lasers shooting everywhere, gorgeous explosions, amazing sound. WOW!!!
I played for hours and i could go on for ages about the amazing units that litter the World War epochs and the middle age Epochs and every other Epoch, but u haven't got time, u have to go and buy this game now!!!

The scenario editor is also really cool. U can mix units from different Epochs so u can make really cool missions about Mechs going back in time and destroying the Roman Empire.

I do have one tiny complaint but it isn't worth anything. Do they really think that in the future people will still be mining iron ore with pick axes and wheel barrows?