One-Night Stand with Empire: Total War
One-Night Stand with Empire: Total War
Editor’s Note: Our One-Night Stand articles are mini reviews, where we spend one night with a newly released game and give you our thoughts of it after a few hours of play time (anywhere between 4 and 6 hours of actual gameplay).
When you first start playing E: TW, I highly recommend you start off with the Road to Independence Campaign. In the Road to Independence, you start as John Smith and the settling of Jamestown. It’s a good way to get the feel of the game before you start the Grand Campaigns - it’s also probably the most interesting single-player campaign of them all.
First you’ll fight the local Indian tribes around Jamestown, and then move on to combat the French in the French and Indian War. After you’ve made it through the first two battles, you’ll finish up on the frontlines, fighting for your independence against the British.
The main portion of the single player is the Grand Campaigns, where you choose one of 12 nations and lead it to victory. Each nation has unique victory conditions that require certain regions to be conquered. Campaigns start at the year 1700, and you have till the year 1799 to accomplish your goals. Creative Assembly has also streamlined the Grand Campaign. Instead of controlling your policies in each city like you do in Rome: Total War - you now control the polices for your overall government. So instead of selecting the taxes for each city, you will have only one tax slider that will affect all of your cities. Creative Assembly has also done away with diplomats, so now you don’t have to be near a country to negotiate with it. All of these changes make the game faster and smoother, and quickly get you to the best part of the game - the battles.
The land battles in E: TW are fantastic. Having armies of thousands fighting against each other is truly epic. There are three different types of units you can have: infantry, cavalry and artillery. You can control the formation of each unit, whether or not you want it to melee charge, and what type of ammunition your artillery uses. You can also garrison building on the battlefield giving you an advantage over your enemy. This advantage is quickly lost if the enemy has artillery, as they will shell the building until it collapses.
A brand new edition to the Total War series is real-time naval battles. The naval battles look amazing, but once you get more than about five ships on each side, things get hectic and confusing. You have to take into account the wind and the position of your ships relative to the enemies ships to win. There is no better feeling than getting a perfect broadside against an enemy ship. Once you’ve inflicted enough damage, you have the ability to board the ship and capture it. The controls for the naval battles are not the best - hopefully Creative Assembly can get them on the same level as the land battles for the next Total War game.
The graphics in E: TW are amazing - from the thousands of units on screen during land battles to the superbly detailed ships in the naval battles. You will see the occasional graphical glitch, but they are few and far between, and the sound is superb.
E: TW is a fantastic game and easily a contender for game of the year. If you have a computer that can run it, you owe it to yourself to pick up this game. If you don’t have a computer that is capable, start building it now. Empire: Total War was developed by Creative Assembly; the game was released March 3 and retails for $49.99.
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