Overall Rating

Empire Earth (PC) - story1"Empire Earth" is the most ambitious and complicated real-time strategy game ever made. This will make it a joy to devout fans of the genre, but an overwhelming mess to everyone else.

First, a little history: When Bruce Shelley and Rick Goodman began developing Microsoft's "Age of Empires" game, they promised to marry "Civilization"-style strategy with real-time fare like "Warcraft II." They succeeded, but the resulting game was much more like "Warcraft" than "Civilization." Goodman left to found Stainless Steel Studios and began work on "Empire Earth," a game that was to marry "Civilization" and real-time gaming, while Shelley and his crew went on to refine their game with "Age of Empires II: Age of Kings."

That history is important, because "Empire Earth" bears more than a passing resemblance to "Age of Empires." It's almost the same game, only this time it's almost as complex as a "Civilization" game, and covers almost the same time period.

"Age of Empires" began in the Stone Age, and you guided your people through to the time period of the Roman Empire. "Age of Kings" began at the same place, but you could move all the way to the Age of Expansion, just past the Renaissance.

"Empire Earth" trumps both games by beginning even earlier, in the Prehistoric Age, and having you guide your people all the way to a futuristic time period some 200 years past the present day -- that's 500,000 years total. It's crammed full of units, technologies, defenses, and new concepts. It's still based on the familiar resource, build, and upgrade model of the earlier game. Unit combat is the same: It uses similar keyboard commands, sound effects, campaign/scenario/random map/multiplayer options, and even the graphics are similar -- only this time they're in full 3D.

Empire Earth (PC) - story 2Resource-gathering and army-building

The game hinges on using your citizens to gather food, wood, stone, gold, and iron. These resources are scattered across the map and all of them remain in use throughout the game. Beware, though: If you deforest an area or kill off all the amusing-looking wildlife (hippos, walruses, elephants, and so on) they won't reproduce, which causes problems down the line. And yes, it's weird to be harvesting pumpkins and shooting elephants for food in the WWI era, but you'll do that here.

Building an army of citizens to fuel your army and civilization is crucial. You use them to build new buildings, which lets you build new units, upgrade old units and buildings, and research technologies that give you bonuses to gathering -- attack, speed, and defense, for example. It's a lot to take in, especially when you consider that you'll be competing directly against an extremely aggressive AI -- or rival humans who are quite content to make sure you'll never make it out of the Stone Age. You must decide whether or not to build more troops or advance to the next age, and weighing the terms of cost and time can make for tense moments.

There are also six wonders to build, and you can preset the random games to ensure a victory after any number of them are built. It's a nice alternative to mopping up all enemies, but it's also the only victory option available in what amounts to an extremely long game.

There are about 200 units available in the game. You've got everything from primitive rock throwers to knights, to tanks, to atom-bomb-dropping B-52s. There are also priests and prophets. The former wave their arms to convert enemy units, and the latter can call down the wrath of god on their enemies in the form of devastating calamities like floods, earthquakes, plagues, and firestorms -- which again, create more challenges for you to counter and worry about.

Empire Earth (PC) - story 3 Scenarios

Six scenarios are available that start you off in a preset era, playing as a historical civilization. But this game doesn't pretend any historical accuracy like AOE2's excellent scenarios. Playing as the Germans in WWI still involves gathering resources as much as it does the brutal warfare of attrition.

The scenarios are book-ended with in-game cut scenes that showcase just how blurry your units look up close and contain some fairly bad voice acting. Much better is the random game generator, as it lets you clamp down on some of the wild variables. Want to explore the futuristic nanotech age and spend your time building massive Mech-like Cybers and laser tanks? Go ahead. Or you can choose to play in the Iron Age, Medieval -- whatever you like. You can give yourself hefty bonuses of resources and units and tailor how many enemies you'll face. You can even randomize the whole thing, if you're really up for a challenge.

Graphics
The old "Age of Empires" gameplay graduates to full 3D here, with mixed results. The game just doesn't look that good. Animations look sloppy, and the animals and some units look particularly cartoonish. But it's a smart design decision. The graphics engine wasn't designed for beauty, but for functionality, and when you get a sense of just how unbelievably large these battles can get on a large map, well, you'll appreciate the fact that the game can handle it all without significant slowdown.

Fast-paced
The game is relentlessly paced. You're constantly upgrading, monitoring your citizens, gathering units, grouping them to attack or defend, and repairing broken defenses. You must constantly advance in the ages or vastly superior enemy units will come and trample you. But the game is also admirably balanced, often using a simple rock-paper-scissors mechanic to ensure that each unit is vulnerable to one type of enemy and advantageous to another. But then again, this ends up being another thing you have to pay attention to. Another high point is the AI. You'll be attacked relentlessly with whatever it's got, including sea and air support if applicable, but the computer does an excellent job of managing its empire, which means you have an endless challenge.

The game was purportedly designed with "Age of Empires" fans and tournament players in mind, and it truly succeeds on that level. Anyone who mastered the previous real-time games and hungered for more will be extremely satisfied here. But anyone new to the game, or merely a casual fan of previous games, will likely be completely overwhelmed and frustrated. This is wish-fulfillment for the hardcore.