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With
surprisingly little fanfare for a Christmas Holiday release, Empires: Dawn of
the Modern World hit the shelves of gaming boutiques everywhere just in time to
satiate the lust of the RTS gamer. From the look of the pre-release information
and specs, this title seemed to contain many of the same qualities found within
Rise of Nations, including progressive army and tech development, multiple
real-world locations, and an extremely accurate historical rendition of battle
conditions across various theatres in
While
the developers at Stainless Steel Studios did a great job with the presentation,
they pretty much missed the ball on teach us how to actually play the game. From
the very start of the, we felt like a bunch of newbie RTS players, fumbling our
way through the controls and camera positioning trying to figure out what the
hell we were supposed to do. After pointing and clicking sporadically we were
finally able to get the ball rolling, so to speak. We were then left with the
daunting task of figuring out how to actually progress with a civilization: what
resources we should gather, what units we should build, etc. Very little in-game
help was available during the course of the English medieval levels, forcing us
to quit and restart over and over again in order to get our bearings. Yes,
tutorials can be a pain in the butt a lot of time (especially the forced ones),
but this reviewer is a firm believer in at least a bare bones walkthrough of a
games’ command and unit structuring system. Most gamers do not want to sift
through a 200 page instruction booklet just to start a game. Once
we were finally able to garner some control with the game, we found Empires to
contain at least the bare requirements for a decent 3-D RTS title. Five
different historical are playable in, including the Medieval Age, Gunpowder Age,
Imperial Age, World War I and World War II.
Each age contains its own set of playable units, goals, and strategic
possibilities and anomalies with in its gameplay, adding tons of diversity
overall. While combat tends to take to the forefront of the game, players will
also find some additional challenge with resource management, economic
shortfalls, and even a few RPG styled quests. Hero units also make their way
into Empires from time to time, adding a little diversity and challenge to many
of the scenarios found in the game. Once a player finishes up the single player
games, the gameplay can be continued over the internet or with a LAN server with
one-to-one gaming. While
its a decent game for the most part, Empires: Dawn
of the Modern World just didn’t have the same spark as with other similar
games within the RTS market. While the graphics and overall gameplay were good,
the control systems of the game felt muddled and extremely difficult to jump
into. The lack of a good tutorial only added to the problem, giving this game a
higher learning curve than necessary. On the other hand, Empires contains a
great set of graphics, a good gaming engine, and quite a bit of diversity with
its realistic historical campaigns. If you can actually figure out how to play
the game right, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World might be able to provide
gamers with a decent RTS experience. If you have the time, get to
it…otherwise, save your money for the Rise of Nations expansion pack.
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