Imperial Glory demo

The demo for Pyro Studios' Imperial Glory is available at an online location near you. I got mine from 3DGamers.

The verdict? It's pretty good. There are two battles, one in farmland in Hannover and one in North Africa. There's also some video of parts of the game not available in the demo - naval battles and the strategy map.

The battles look convincing enough and the interface is almost perfect. It's as if they just said "Rome: Total War is the look we are going for, let's just use their interface", though of course they didn't, since Imperial Glory has been in development for over a year now.

The demo did not leave me breathless in anticipation though like Rome's did, even though prima facie the IG demo has more in it. Maybe I wanted a better looking set piece battle or a chance to try my hand at sailing HMS Victory. But it has also done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for this game. It's near the top of my most wanted list and doesn't look to fall.

Crucial Classics

From the site that brought you the 50 Essential Games, 1up is now doing the 50 Crucial Classics - "50 Games You Must Play". I'm still not sure I get the difference between "essential" and "crucial", but it seems that the latter has more to do with quality and landmark status. In other words, "crucial" seems to mean "important".

So far they've done nine games and I have no problems with the list so far. SimCity is getting its due, but their justification for why it is crucial but not essential seems to be the height of lameness.

"SimCity's slow rise to success made it somewhat less impressive in scale than its progeny The Sims. And while it was a groundbreaking concept in gaming, SimCity was in many ways simply a testing ground for Wright's more impressive projects such as SimEarth and the upcoming Spore."

So, even though SimCity is what made The Sims possible and was a "testing ground" for these concepts, it wasn't the big hit that the latter game was?

So why is that Starcraft is deemed crucial but not essential because it didn't pioneer ideas but was derived from concepts taken from other games?

SimCity - innovative but not a breakout hit ergo not essential
Starcraft - huge hit but not innovative ergo not essential

I like the "crucial" list better because it, to me, seems more like a list of games that every gamer should be familiar with.

Lists are made to be argued over, so post your opinions here or there.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of 1up, I finally got around to creating a profile there. I use my real name. (I'm too old for pseudonyms or wacky nicknames. I have one on a couple of forums, and that will do fine.) Feel free to look me up.

Announcing a new affiliation

My first review for Game Method has just been posted.

Though I promised myself I would stay away from any more volunteer writing gigs, since time is a valuable resource and the checks from CGM are validation of my "skills", I am excited to be working with Game Method. They have a good team of young writers and a core staff that we can expect big things from.

The site manager, Will Jessup, and editor-in-chief, Tracy Erickson, have been very helpful and have high expectations for the site. They needed another PC writer, approached me, and I accepted.

I hope that this will be a long-term relationship, and I encourage all twelve of my readers to check out Game Method - the first multi-platform site I have written for.

Budget issues

I review a lot of independent games. (I could write a long post on what indpendent games are and what they aren't, but I'll just point you to Greg Micek's column in the April issue of Computer Games Magazine.) Many of these games have small teams, small budgets and sell for lower prices. My most recent review for DIY Games is for one such game, Civil War: The Battle of Bull Run by Mad Minute Games.

Their publisher, Activision Value, has chosen to sell Civil War for $19.99. This is an amazing price for what is really a very good game - flawed, but mostly excellent. This is the same price that you'll pay for any number of crappy "tycoon" games and for games made to capitalize on the latest pop culture phenomenon, be it Who Wants to be a Millionaire?or Survivor.

The thing is, most serious gamers - the ones most likely to be drawn to a heavily detailed simulation of the opening battle of the Civil War - expect games to cost forty or fifty bucks. If a title is priced below the magic $39.99 sticker, the immediate expectation is of poor gameplay and rushed development. When Dreamcatcher announced that they would be selling Universal Combat for $19.99, developer Derek Smart was outraged. As popular a target as Mr. Smart is, the prevailing opinion of bargain software is that it is dreck, making his fear that the price would ruin his franchise not entirely far-fetched.

Indie games are caught in the middle on this. Most of them sell for a good deal less than fifty bucks. Supremacy: Four Paths to Power goes for $24.99, Jeff Vogel sells his Spiderweb RPGs for around that price, and the amazing Gish is for sale from Chroniclogic for a mere twenty dollars. Because the production costs and production values of a small indie game are usually lower, it is questionable how many people would grab Gish despite its excellence if it wasn't priced to sell.

So how should the consumer - or reviewer - approach these games? It is common for people to say that X product "wasn't bad for the price" or "at least I got my money's worth." Should we expect less of less costly game and just be thankful that they didn't cost more? Should a game reviewer go easier on a game because it is easy for the consumer to drop a few bucks on a smaller title? If the game cost less to produce, should this influence the valuation of its gameplay?

These are not easy questions. The reflex action to rate worth according to a basic money/time ratio is understandable and even valid in some cases. If the original Superpower hadn't cost me any money, but was given to me, would my hate be less severe? Absolutely. Even at bargain bin prices, it was a stupid purchase driven more by a desire to see the car crash everyone was talking about than sound fiscal planning. The thirteen dollar price of President Forever makes it easier for me to recommend it to friends on a tight budget.

But there comes a point when the player and reviewer have to see a game for what it is, and not for what it costs. Games that have more money invested in them tend to be better games. It's not an iron clad rule of course. Every year is full of dozens of AAA turkeys. But what was the last small scale game to finish in anybody's annual top ten? This does not mean that there is no fun to be had in the cheap seats.

To be fair to the gamer, lower priced games have to be evaluated honestly when it comes to how enjoyable they are. When I played Supremacy, I couldn't get past the fact that there was precious little fun to be had, and the lack of enjoyment was in no way tied to the archaic graphics and old school game play; basic game design issues cramped my style. To recommend it to friends and readers, except under specific circumstances, would be wrong - in spite of the excellent price. As a reviewer, games have to be measured according to how they work as games, not how much money the developer had to spend or how little they charged for it.

But the example of Civil War should be pointed out by every strategy and war gamer out there. Great games can be found at the price point usually reserved for cash cow impulse purchases. Examples of compelling play and good fun can be found on all the shelves. Coverage of the bargain game market (like the children's game market) is pretty sparse, so any savvy consumer should find a reputable source to rely on in this area - Gamespot isn't going to be doing a bunch of previews for the next Geneforge game.

But trust me on this. Buy Civil War.

Haters

Gamerankings is an interesting site for more than the obvious reasons. Yes, it is cool to be able to see which games are reviewed by the most people and which get the best scores. I like to check the average review scores from particular sites or magazines to see which publications are the most out of sync with general critical opinion. Of course, I also like checking out my own reviews and where they stack-up compared to my peers.

My favorite part of Gamerankings though is the voting/review system. Lots of sites have these. Metacritic and Gamespot both have user review sections, for instance, but the Gamerankings one is my personal favorite. All of these user vote/review sections are a nice peek into the black heart of gamers. Especially those who have axes to grind against particular games, publishers, or popular hits.

Take the user votes for Rome: Total War. At this writing, 22 people have given this game a 1 out of 10. That's more people than have given it a 7. More than the 2s, 3s, and 4s added together.

Not everyone is going to like Rome - especially historical purists who want every game to mimic what actually happened. But there is no way that it is a 1 out of 10. If Rome is a 1 - the worst score possible - what does it take to be a 10? Clearly, many of these votes are backlash votes against a game that a lot of people love and a lot of critics raved about. On a number of game forums devoted to the development of other ancient themed games, you see these people talking about how Low Budget Rome Game X will be better than Rome because...well it's rarely clear why. None of these 1 voters write user reviews, of course, because to try to argue why Rome is one of the worst games ever made would make you look crazy.

I'm not trying to argue that everyone should like the same games. If you don't enjoy Rome it's no skin off my nose. But you can't play it and not appreciate that it achieves what it sets out to achieve. Give it a 4 or a 5, or at least defend your 1.

Some people, of course, see the world of games in black and white. A game is either good or not - the old thumbs up/thumbs down approach to gaming. There is nothing wrong with this, and if enough people take the ten point scale seriously, these Siskels and Eberts don't do anyone's overall score any harm. But if you look at this particular guy's votes, a curious trend appears. All of the Age of Empires games get thumbs down. All of the Paradox games get thumbs down. Cossacks II gets thumbs down and it's not even out yet. In fact, most of the scores seem to based on little more than whether the game was popular or not and who published it.

I don't mean to single this guy out, but he is symptomatic of a breed of gamer who hates something that others like, especially if it is from a company that has disappointed them before. Part of this is the "I'm too cool for..." syndrome. For example, I have a good friend who refused to see Titanic on principle - it was popular therefore he had no interest. We all know people like this. They are too hip to buy into what others like. If the masses embrace it, something must be wrong with it.

In the strategy game arena, these are the people who hate all RTS games and want more TBS. They want more historical accuracy and more options at the same time. They want realism and customization and tanks that have armor the right thickness. These are the "more strategic than thou" people who believe that if a strategy game is a hit with the masses, it must be both shallow and unfulfilling.

RTS is, of course, more realistic than TBS, but the contradiction doesn't bother them because it's not about being right. It's about showing how different the "real" strategy gamer is from the crowd.

Check any random strategy game forum, or better yet, one devoted to a marginal game or minor hit. You will find no end of posts raving about how if you like this game, you are smarter than the average strategy gamer. Spartan players are better than the yahoos who are buying up Rome. If you can't figure out the Byzantine interface of Victoria, the problem is with you and your desire to play a "click-fest." (BTW, can we retire this word? I'm not even sure what it means, besides implying that if you use the mouse a lot you must be a loser.)

To end at the beginning, here is my user history at Gamerankings. I try to be as fair in my scores and reviews here as I do in places I publish. Make what you will of them.

Paradox expands its empire

Grand strategy masters Paradox Studios has just announced that it will be the North American publisher for Sunflower's medieval strategy game Knights of Honor. So Paradox is not only acquiring other people's IP (Diplomacy, ASL, etc) but is now publishing a third party's game.

This is good news regardless of whether the games they publish are actually worth playing. It is a clear sign that Paradox is more than viable, it is profitable enough to take risks.

Imperial Glory preview

IGN has a hands-on preview of Imperial Glory on their site written by Tom McNamara. Be sure to check out the videos.

The most exciting thing in this preview is the intimation that diplomacy will actually matter- that allies will help you out and that the game won't degenerate into the player versus the world (though that's what happened with Napoleon, of course.) Diplomacy has always been pointless in the Total War series, from the continual Hobbesian state of nature in Shogun to the easily broken alliances in Rome. So a Total War-like game - which Imperial Glory undoubtedly is - that makes it possible to survive thanks to your friends is something to applaud.

None of the videos show any large scale action for any length of time, but be sure to look at the battle scenes. The destructive power of artillery is obvious and the naval warfare certainly looks like as much fun as the ship duels in Pirates!.

Imperial Glory is at the top of my list for spring strategy titles, and is the one game that might make the summer worthwhile. With the glut of great games released last fall and winter, 2005 seems to have gotten off to a slow start. Age of Empires III is a long way off, and the wait for Legion Arena is more low key.

Imperial Glory will be hitting the shelves in the last week of April, just a little after my birthday.

CGM reviews update and a word on obscurity

Just updated my list of CGM reviews on the right hand side. Three in this month's - well, two and a half. Gates of Troy only got a few words. The other two were for Hearts of Iron 2 (on which I have already spoken here) and Dragoon, a new Horse & Muskets game from Boku and Shrapnel.

Dragoon is one of the few new wargames that can get away with being ugly. Ugly interface, ugly graphics, ugly documentation, ugly everything. It helps that it continues to use the intitiative system that Boku used in the first Horse & Musket games - a system similar to the one you will find in the Great Battles series that ate so much of my time a few years back.

But I wonder how much of my love of the game is wrapped up in the obscure subject matter. Dragoon is about Frederick the Great, certainly an important king and general, but he's no Napoleon. I'm a sucker for novelty in a game, and the insistence of Boku to address wars that no one else has is endearing.

This love of the obscure could also account for why I think Europa Universalis is one of the finest games ever made and Hearts of Iron does nothing for me. One is about the long history between Columbus and Napoleon- the stuff we never see in games - and the other is about Nazis and GIs - the stuff we always see in games.

I doubt that I am alone in this. A lot of reviewers seem to put a premium on novelty in setting and subject matter. If someone could make a good game about WWI or an update to the old Koei Asian empire games, I would probably rave about them too.

The problem with this, of course, is that most gamers want to play in familiar settings, preferably settings where they already know what the objectives are. So it is clearly unfair to penalize games for giving people what they want. And I don't. I do think I reward originality in subject matter though, and this may be deceptive for readers who expect that games will give them all the background information they need to appreciate what is going on.

Think of the aforementioned Great Battles series. Each one had excellent documentation - and the Collector's Edition had most of it in-game. So it was very easy for the player to get a feel for ancient battles, and, more importantly, understand what was at stake in each of the historical moments captured. I think that designers can do more to help players out of the "give me what I want and nothing else" cycle, and hopefully this would mean greater variety in battlefields for me to play on.

Republic the MMO

One of the truly great disappointments of the last five years was Elixir's Republic: The Revolution, a political strategy game that promised so much in the years of development but shipped as a pared down linear strategy role-player with many fewer options and a bloated 3D engine that most people used as rarely as possible. It was billed as the most ambitious political strategy game ever, but had clearly bitten off more than it could chew.

Elixir Studios, with new partner Nicely Crafted Entertainment, has returned to the Republic name for a MMO sequel to the post-Soviet political sim, but this time it is former Commies in space. Republic Dawn: Chronicles of the Seven will cast the players as citizens of a distant galactic republic on the verge of collapse after a devastating attack. Player actions will determine the fate of the government - will they help build up a new and stable government or will they hasten the end of the national infrastructure?

This is not the Republic you remember. In fact, I have no idea why the move to outer space was necessary. A terrestrial fictitious nation would be both more manageable and accessible to those players who want to play in a political sim. In an interview with CGM's John Callaham, Ben Simpson of Nicely Crafted Entertainment said that Republic was more of a concept than a game, so the change isn't a big issue. Besides Elixir and NCE were working on similar separate projects, so sticking the Republic name on a game they build together seemed obvious.

MMOs rely on giving the player a way to measure progress daily. It is not immediately clear how this would work in a game whose driving engine is political survival. Simpson talks about PvP and PvE, but I'm not sure what the E would be. He talks about players forming political parties and political/economic conflict. NCE has already built a MMORTS, Time of Defiance, and will certainly use their experience here to inform Republic: Dawn.

With a scheduled release of 2007, the mere existence of this game is speculative. The dominance of MMORPGs in the online world is demonstrated by my failure of imagination in trying to conceive how Republic Dawn would work in the real world. Will players flock to a game where everyone can't be president? What if one party takes over the Senate and starts using it benefit its own members, to the detriment of everyone else in game? How will NCE navigate the tricky line between "All's fair in politics" and "Why should people keep playing this?" Will there be one Republic, or one on every server? How would casual players be hooked into a world where their input into major decisions is handicapped by their infrequent play?

The small scale success of A Tale in the Desert is certainly informative here, and I hope the NCE takes its lessons to heart. ATITD is not your usual foozle-whacking MMOG and still manages to keep subscribers. The success of a Republic: Dawn will depend on finding a player base for a game for which the model is a player run world with no real combat at all. It would be nice to have a MMOG that did not have elves and orcs and that asked players to really try to affect the world they lived in.

Like the initial Republic, I am really looking forward to what comes of this. Hopefully I won't be let down again.

The Ultimate God Game

If you haven't heard about Will Wright's latest project, Spore, do yourself a favor and check out his plans. As the Bard said, ambition can be a grievous fault and this design plan is high on ambition.

We've heard ambitious stuff like this before, mostly from Peter Molyneux, who sells each of his games as if it is the ultimate world simulator. Remember how Fable was supposed to have trees that grew dynamically? And how Black and White was supposed to be fun? The Movies promises to allow unprecedented freedom of action but even the claims made for it seem to have been scaled back in the last few months.

So forgive my caution when I hear about Spore. On the upside, this is Will Wright - not a guy known for his hyperbole. Not all of his games have been successes. In fact, when I read about Spore the first game that came to mind was SimEarth, an ambitious environmental/ecological/evolution sim that was more textbook than game. If Spore will allow me to mess about on the cellular level and check out what is going on on other planets, this will be the ultimate god game.

I doubt any game has serious theological implications, but this could be as close as we get. Players might be able to be either detached observer gods - cosmic watchmakers - or interventionst Old Testament deities that micromanage star systems. As the game progresses, players will be able to do more and unlock greater content.

This is yet another game to look forward to, but, by the sound of it it could be a couple of years off. It is a big gamble for Wright, and EA, if they choose to publish it. If it works it could prove as difficult to duplicate successfully as The Sims has proven to be - are there any good Sims clones out there? - and could cement Wright's place at the very top of the game god Pantheon.

Gish and Wik clean up at IGF

Last year's best independent game, Gish from Chroniclogic, and Wik and the Fable Souls from Reflexive won the big prizes at this years Independent Games Festival. Gish won in the open category and Wik took top honors in the Web/Downloadable category. A complete list of winners can be found here.

Big congratulations to Reflexive Entertainment. The Web/Downloadable category is so packed with small brilliant games that it can be hard to really stand out. Gish was in the Web category last year and came away with nothing. But to win with an action/adventure game - albeit a very pretty action/adventure game - is quite an accomplishment. I haven't had the opportunity to give Wik a spin yet, and it should probably be left in the hands of someone more competent with tongue-grabbing Gollum like creatures.

I am less excited about the Gish win, even though I love the game, mostly because Gish was there last year. Yes, it was robbed last year - winning zero awards. Oasis earned its win in the web category in 2004, though, so I can't complain too loudly. But with all the new games to IGF there, the victory of Gish comes at the expense of products that few had seen in competition. Besides; Gish has been recognized as almost everyone's indie game of 2004. What does winning one more award in a show that you've been to before (albeit in a different category) prove?

I'm not so much of a communist that I think that everyone should get awards. If Gish was the best game in the category it certainly deserves to win. The real question is whether a game that was nominated in a previous year should be eligible for re-entry. I would tend to argue against this possibility. The IGF showcase is about more than giving prizes. It's about giving independent developers a chance to show their new projects; not the same projects that they have been working on for the last two years.

Still, give credit where it is due. Gish is the best platform jumper ever made for the PC and you do yourself a disservice by not playing it.

New Games Journalism

These recent articles about New Games Journalism have a lot of bloggers blogging and chattering classes chattering. The gist of it goes as follows: Most games journalism is little more than PR hype, fanboy ravings, previews and reviews. Even the features usually run the same stale gamut from "women in gaming" to "violence in games". NGJ is a more reflective style of writing, not quite self-referential, but more focused on how the player reacts to the game; it's less about whether the game is good or not. Gaming is discussed not as a series of products or release dates, but as a cultural activity to be explored.

Some of the criticisms of this approach are in very tongue in cheek. They mock the idea that anyone really cares about what a game writer is going through or how many cultural touchstones they can hit. Considering how many game writers like to reference comic books, Star Trek and Chuck Palahniuk, I don't see why people should get so bent out of shape. Sure it can sound pretentious, but that's certainly no worse than sounding like king of the nerds all the time.

Matt Peckham, who writes for Gamespy and PCGamer among others, has posted a more thoughtful critique of the idea of NGJ, but I think he gets a little lost in the idea of whether or not a game can be artistic. I don't think that NGJ requires an artistic game in order to produce artistic writing. Think of all the good writing out there about horror or science-fiction. Most of the stuff being discussed is certainly not on the order of a Tolstoy or a Shakespeare, but it can produce genuine feelings within the reader/viewer. Same with gaming. Which brings us to Matt's best point.

It's all about the writing.

A good writer who knows what he/she is talking about can make their experience(s) come alive. It can have very little to do with how good the game is. Check out, for example, one my favorite examples of good game writing, Tom Chick's Shoot Club columns. Take "Trevor, Angel of Death" as an example. Your standard piece of comedic fiction in which the bombastic Trevor's expectations for a game are laid low by the fact that no one can really figure out how to play it. Sound familiar? How often has your first session with a new game been complete chaos because you had no idea what the hotkeys were or what was going on around you? And it's not like Swat 3 is some giant piece of art.

This is what, I think, a lot of the critics of NGJ are missing. New Games Journalism is not about the art of the games, but the experience of the play. It's not about the writer being the smartest guy in the room, it's about the writer saying, as we often do to our fellow gamers, "A funny thing occured to me while I was playing Civ." What makes NGJ different from casual conversation is the skill involved in making me care about the outcome whether I know the game or not.

Matt is right. NGJ is not new. It's just what we used to call good writing. There be precious little of that in the game journalism world, but frankly, there's precious little of that in any journalist world. If we could all be Tom Chicks, Erik Wolpaws or even Matt Peckhams it would be a much richer world for me to work in, and it might help advance the image of gaming as something that serious people do.

Still breathing

Troubled Canadian publisher Strategy First has announced that it will publish Battle of Europe, yet another combat flight sim set in World War II. It is being developed by MAUS Software (no relation to the classic graphic novel).

This is, of course, good news for Strategy First. There have been rumors of its imminent demise for quite a while now. There was a time not so long ago when they were publishing almost every major historical strategy game on the market plus a number of minor titles from every genre.

They were, in a way, victims of their own success. Number of titles seemed to become more important than quality and the volume of titles to publish and promote made it unlikely that it would ever turn a profit on all of them and require a huge hit to cover the losses.

And Strategy First never had the huge hit.

Not commercially at least. They had their share of critical hits. Europa Universalis I and II. Rails Across America. Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns. Waterloo. But no best sellers.

According to Mobygames, 27 of the 56 games they've pubished were in one year (2002). That kind of production in a single year requires a huge budget and with no breakout game to pay for it, it must have been hard to make sure that all the bills were paid on time.

It's good to see them up and running, but publishing a flight sim from a developer no one has heard of is a long fall from their glory days of only a few years ago. I wish my fellow Canucks all the luck in the world; we'll see if they get the success that they sorely need.

Supremacy Gold

IGF finalist Supremacy: Four Paths to Power has gone gold at last. This sci-fi turn-based strategy game looks like it could be the sleeper hit of the year, the game that all the cool kids are talking about come spring.

It is also another game picked up by Matrix Games, quickly becoming the indie strategy developers' publisher of choice. Though I still prefer a retail box to a digital download, the convenience of their game delivery system and smoothness of updates (and press relations) is making Matrix a personal favorite.

Not that all their games are good. In this month's CGM, you will see my dismissive review of Gates of Troy, for example. But they show a willingness to take on indie projects from companies with a wide range of experience.

I am really looking forward to Supremacy. It has tactical ground combat a la X-Com and the space conquest thing going for it. When I get my copy and write my review, I'll happily share my opinions.

Koster's Keynote

I couldn't be at the Game Developers' Conference this year, but apparently I missed a helluva keynote speech by Raph Koster, one of the giants of online game design. His address (transcribed here) was largely derived from his recent book Theory of Fun and Game Design.

You can read the transcription for yourself, but I'll say that I think it's pretty good. Though I disagree with his assessment of Bookworm, he's right on the nose that the trick of game design is to present a pattern that players can recognize but not defeat too quickly. Total randomness means that it's not a game at all; total repetition is a bore.

His discussion of the place of art in gaming is also on the nose. From the transcription:

Art and entertainment are terms of intensity, not terms of type. The difference between Cheers, Friends, and a medieval morality play are NOT THAT BIG. They are predictable. They are for reassurance, they are building cognitive schemata through repetition - seven seasons worth - and then sometimes you get Lolita. That makes us nervous. It's challenging. Breaks the routine. As long as we as designers and developers come into the process knowing everything our games say, games will be doomed as mere entertainment. We have to make something like Lolita. Schindlers list. Catcher in the Rye. That's the sign of a mature medium, a game that makes you think 'I don't quite know what this might mean..'.

Finally, someone who gets the distinction between art and form. There are always those people that will say that anything people create is art. Koster gets that art requires a little more. (I'd intended to keep this blog "games as art" free, but I guess there's no escape.)

Some of my favorite sentences:

"Every game is destined to be boring so we can routinise it."
"The dressing however is incredibly important. Remember that the rest of the world sees the dressing."
"Games are the cartoon version of real world sophisticated problems."
"The console manufacturers are currently recommending 8 hours of gameplay rather than 40. "
"Players try to make gameplay as predictable as possible. Which means it becomes boring. Exciting can get you killed."

If you were there, let me know what you thought of the speech. I'm still digesting it, but, like much that Koster has to say, there is a lot here to mine.

Legion Arena

Three interviews with the makers of Legion: Arena have gone up in the last month or so, so this is as good a time as any to post my early impressions based on the coverage.

As I have said before, Slitherine's games leave me a little cold. Though lovingly made, they never stay long on my hard drive. And, to this point, all their games have been pretty much the same. Legion, Chariots of War, Spartan...fraternal triplets with little to separate them beyond their settings and unit descriptions.

Legion: Arena looks to be a complete break from that. It is being described as role playing strategy. You build an army that must serve you through the wars as you work to become the most powerful general in the world. SimMarius, I guess. Though originally conceived as an online ladder game only, it looks like Slitherine has bowed to customer pressure and included a pure single player game to go with it.

It's hard to tell from screenshots what exactly will be included and what won't, but screenshots like this one make me giddy with joy. First, it looks like there are historical campaign setups, but not purely historical since the Romans seem to have elephants in the Samnite War. Second, the unit descriptions have that whole RPG feel to them that will make your troops more than a bunch of redshirts to send to their deaths.

So far we've only seen the Romans and Gauls in action, but in the interview with Merlin, Iain McNeil says that players will be able to play through the Battle of Cannae. So there could be more armies and nations coming. All of which makes sense since Legion: Arena is supposed to be the dry run for their upcoming grand strategy game Legion II.

It used to be the case that any ancients type game would have me dropping a deposit on a pre-order, but the flood of recent titles plus the soul-eating experiences of Pax Romana, Celtic Kings, and Alexander are enough to make me cautious. This in spite of the not-so-bad Tin Soldiers: Alexander the Great and the amazing Rome: Total War.

Legion: Arena has me officially enthused.

It is a finalist in the IGF awards, so expect more news from this month's Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco.

Empire Earth 2 demo

Mad Doc Studios has released a demo for its upcoming sequel to Empire Earth, Gamespy's game of the year for 2001. The original was designed by Stainless Steel Studios, but they handed the franchise off to Mad Doc for the expansion. Now they are doing the sequel.

Color me underwhelmed. I wasn't a huge fan of the original game - it was too big and unwieldy for me to get a firm grasp on, and the rock/scissors/paper system that has become standard in all RTS games of this type became confusing when the game got to the later ages. There were so many ifs-thens-buts that planning became mind-numbingly painful. The mix of historical units and sci-fi stuff didn't work especially well.

The EE2 demo reveals a very pretty game. The graphics are outstanding, with excellent water effects. The winter storms are very convincing, and unit animations are more than satisfactory. But, even for a "same-old RTS" formula, EE2 is boringly familiar. The graphics are great, like I said, but add nothing to the game play. The crown victory condition system does little to encourage the combat that makes these games fun, and in fact pushed me to go into tortoise mode. The AI is great on defense at the default level, but still prefers to send out small squads to attack, eschewing the combined force armies that make Rise of Nations the king of historical RTS.

Yes, it's only a demo, and you are limited to a few ages. And, EE2 has adapted a lot of concepts that RoN perfected - especially borders and multiple cities. In the end, there doesn't seem to be much here that makes EE2 a must buy. When I get my hands on a complete copy, expect a more complete review. But at this point, I'm not rushing.