Empire Earth, A Fun Way To Spend Some Time

I'm 14, and a few months ago I found myself wandering the isles of pc world looking for a new game, and had heard empire earth was the one to go for. I've never really done the whole control a civilization and choose its destiny scene, but I decided it would be a fun thing to try. I bought it, installed it, and upon playing it I realized just how engaging the game could be.

For those that don't know, Empire Earth is a game that is completely user-controlled, where you pick which epoch you want to battle in, build your civilization up, and, ultimately, defeat the other civilizations you are competing against or have them defeat you. This may have pros and cons, but the jist of it seems simple enough, right? That's what I thought too, but there's an entire other side to war craft that is much more challenging than I thought it could ever be.

In my mind when I started, I thought, "well the basic idea is to get a big army of who and whatever, then go and outnumber the opposing side." That's where I was wrong, this game is brilliantly designed in terms of realism and dealing with cause and effect of your actions. The first game I played I was absolutely massacred. Even now, months later, I still struggle with what I should do for every situation that is presented to me. The game is tough for someone who is new, and tough being quite an exaggerated understatement, nuff' said.

In terms of graphics, smoothness of play, detailed settings, etc., this game wouldn't be confused with something you would find on, say, an xbox 360 format. It's for the most part rough, and simple. The primitiveness of this isn't as much of a factor as you would think during game play though, as the vast majority of the time you aren't marveling at how good your civilization looks as how you are going to keep it from crumbling over the next 10 minutes. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are mediocre at least, and for the most part have at least some pretty good detail, it's just not something you're going to be amazed at. Taking into consideration that this is an older game, they did an all around good job, and even by today's standards, the game still has pretty good detail.

As for the smoothness of the game play, it severely depends on your computer. You can set the unit limit on games, thus making it faster and smoother playing, but in a huge multi-civilization game where there are going to be 1000 units, if you don't have a pretty good processor chances are it's going to skip and freeze up. This was a much bigger problem on my laptop then on the home pc, and when the game is freezing up every ten seconds and you're in a heated fight, trust me, it can be very frustrating. For these reasons, I think it wise to make sure that your computer can handle playing this game before you buy it.

There are a lot of things that you will probably discover after experience comes with the game, most of these are fairly minute, such as being able to zoom in on the game by using the scroll on your mouse. Empire Earth uses auto-saves, and the name says it all. While it is automatically saving every few minutes however, it has a tendency especially on games with a lot of units to slow down game play for a few moments. This didn't bother me at first, but it gets to be a bit of a nuisance, and you can turn it off under settings, (something to consider).

The game comes with a large variety of options, assorted maps, and settings. It is nice to be able to decide how many civilizations you are going to fight and where you are going to fight them, as is being able to have such options as allies, tournament style, regular style, how many resources will be available on the map, what type of setting the game will be played on, etc..

In terms of strategy, what can I say, this is a STRATEGY GAME. The only way you will win is to know what you are going to do when any possible situation arises, and I guarantee almost anything can and will happen, and more often than not will happen at the moment you're least prepared.

I bought this game for about $20, but I'm sure it could be found for around $10-$15. Will you enjoy it or not? Depends, if you have a good strategy and conquer anyone that tries to defy you, then you most likely will, but if you go into it like I did and just try to play it as another leisurely game of I win, then you're in for a surprise, but as you practice and your general knowledge of what to do and when to do it, having a plan, knowing what your enemies are thinking, etc. develops, then you will start to enjoy yourself. Remember, practice in this game pays off more than most anything else, especially more than just trying to wing it through the game to learn. Study what happens when you do this, that, and everything else, and vice versa what happens with the enemy.

Epochs, siege weapons, soldiers, archers, cavalry, flanking the enemy, taking the high ground, holding your army, aggressively seizing whatever you please, at a glance it is without a doubt overwhelming, just keep having fun in mind and know these things and more are just some of the adventures that wait for you whenever you decide its time to take control of an empire, empire earth.