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Empire Earth at E3 2001

The Specs

You'll go from caveman to George Jetson in this RTS game that starts with the stone age epoch and ends with nanotechnology. In between you'll span over 500,000 years and play with about 300 different units. Start with cavemen, advance to siege artillery, then aircraft carriers, then mech units that can push enemies off the map by sending them forward in time. Empire Earth sports a nice 3D engine, an editor for creating your own campaigns, complete with a cutscene editor, and multiplayer options. Other new wrinkles include heroes such as Napoleon or Patton to help you empire; the ability to customize your military units by improving their attributes, such as attack strength, armor, and hit points; and the choice of playing with one of 20 civilizations or creating your own.

The Speculation

Mark's Comments: This was another game I actually got some hands-on time with. It's a refined RTS, though it's a bit heavy on the spell-casting units. Don't expect a real-time Civilization. This is Age of Empires with a 3D engine barging around like it's on animal tranquilzers. There seems to be so much in this game. Rick Goodman, who was the designer on Age of Empires before breaking off to form his own company, seemingly decided that more is always better. From the little I played at E3, I can't really come up with a strong argument against that idea. I loved the mecha units. I loved seeing the 20th century aircraft bank and turn in the 3D environment. Everything just looked right. In one sense, Ensemble veering off and doing a mythology-based game means that we gamers are getting the best of both worlds -- an unofficial sequel to the Age series with Empire Earth and a new RTS game from the Ensemble, to boot. I am worried about the spell units, though. They are always tricky to implement in such a way that they don't frustrate players by making them micromanage.

Tom's Comments: The progression through the game's four epochs is handled just like Age of Empires, in which you spend resources to move to the next epoch so you can build a new set of units. As the fellow demoing the game told me, if you fall more than an epoch behind, you may as well just give it up. So it seems each epoch shift is a chokepoint everyone has to squeeze through. These sorts of mandatory hoops can break a game. "Screw the cavemen," the game balance might shriek, "Make a beeline for the Modern Age!" Then you have an hour of building up and half a game that'll go unplayed. Being a spin-off of Age of Empires developers, Stainless Steel Studios is no stranger to fine tuning a game system -- even if it did take Ensemble two games, two expansions, and a long patch dance. At its best, Empire Earth will have all the whimsy of Red Alert 2 with all the manageability of Age of Empires and all the finesse of Age of Kings. But at its worst, Empire Earth could just be a messy romp through time.

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May 22, 2001