SkynetV4
Mildly Dipped
I don't know if reading too much Somethingawful game reviews have turned me bitter or if it's the fact that most of the time, the reviews are dead on target...I'm becoming more difficult to please regarding my gaming needs and now I feel as if a happily expected child has died.
I recently picked up Empire Earth 2, as in my work-induced ignorance (nothing to think besides how I would like to disassemble customers with a butter knife) I hadn't become aware of the fact that Empire Earth 2 had been released. I gotta admit that I loved the first game. The games I had to compare it to (strategy wise not theme-wise) were quite a few: Starcraft, Total Annihilation, World War 3: Black Gold, Earth 2150: The Moon project, and the list went on. The game performed spectacularly while tearing apart some misconceptions I had regarding the game. I had thought: What? No unique units? WTF? This game has to suck! Then I remembered that Total Annihilation was rich but the sides were very similar and I had loved it despite that and I still do. For those who haven't played Empire Earth I, all the sides use the same units and the differences are in how you allocate the bonus points (units have more range, planes have more fuel...etc) and with that, while the game was similar regarding the sides......it still rocked. The graphics were pretty good for its time, it had a good, unclunky interface and the AI could give you a run for your money specially on big maps. Now I picked up the sequel and saw my testicles rolling on my floor when I finished the tutorial. The feeling was unlike anything I had experienced before: it was a combo of rabid disbelief, bitter dissapointment and a sort of gallows cheerfulness (the kind of playfulness that you feel when they tighten the noose on your neck and you figure nothing matters and shit, fart, pee and vomit just to annoy the executioner.). I'll cut the touchy, feely crap and say outright what's wrong with the damn game: interface is too advanced for such shitty graphics and sounds. The interface got some happily-received updates: you can now scribble a kind of war plan and share it with your ally/ies, you can control the amount of villagers/citizens without having to select them one by one and you can assign multiple different orders to a large number of different squads and have the orders carried out simultaneously (which means you can now crush an enemy from air, land and sea if you play your cards right) and a very good update is the ability of using a PiP interface to have bookmarks of the map set and see them in real time by just pressing a key while being somewhere else...you can also issue commands in that PiP so you don't have to completely break off an attack if a player you are about to hand his ass to decides to send a piddly amount of units in a vain attempt to counter and distract you. The game now also features some unique units for each side (ala Age of Empires 2 where all civs use the same units but each one has it's own different set of unique units), so the positive add-ons to the game are pretty strong if you look at them as a whole.
Now for the bad part: this game eats resources for lunch. My rig is a 3.2 P4 with HT, 1 GB of DDR400 and a GeForce 6800 GT OC and it lags. I am running only the game and 30 more processes and the game lags. I disabled all startup items and the game still lags. I update the BIOS, drivers and the game itself and had it run from a virtual drive from an ISO image and the game still FUCKING lags. I played a lot of recent RTS games with GOOD graphics and none of them lag this bad. I played Battle for Middle Earth (nice concept but poorly balanced and executed), Act of War (nice but needed more sides) and Warhammer: Dawn of War (nice but 2 sides are essentially the same) and while running them at the max resolution that my monitor supports (19' LG Flatron CRT) and none of them lagged as badly as this one. And mind you: at Warhammer, there particle effects and dynamic lighting all around; at Battle for Middle Earth, there were beautiful details and at Act of War the game itself was extra pretty and it didn't lag like this...just an occasional hiccup while I was running too much crap in the background. Empire Earth 2 has graphics that are much worse than the original in some respects, and the game still manages to suck more dick than Jenna Lewis at resource handling. The sounds are very cliche and don't seem to have much effort put in them. This morning when I was going to work, it was raining very hard, the sky was black despite it was 6:30 AM and I was napping with my sunglasses on (to act as a shade) on the company bus and suddenly a lightning struck less then a kilometer away. My heart stopped, I suddenly felt a gentle thumping when my balls entered my throat and even through the sunglasses, I saw everything turn red then white. That's how I think a weather effect should be implemented but Empire Earth 2's rendition of a thunder (from the settings options to test the sound volume) sounds a bit like a fart from a constipated violin played by the Smurfs. The weather has an effect on the game yes, but the weather is rendered VERY poorly.
Now for the ugly: I don't know how to say this. The shame that I felt when I played through the tutorial and was looking for the option to switch from newbie graphics mode (you know, primitive...badly, southpark-likely-animated) into advanced mode (you know without the simple, non-obstrussive graphics so that I could enjoy the power that my rig could have with this game....and I didn't find the option to change graphics mode. In fact, the max resolution I could get from this game is 1024*768 with 32 Bit color. And the game lagged as I said before. From the top of my I head, I saw the helicopters from the sequel and compared them to the previous game...and they look ugly. So ugly and badly animated that I was wondering if somehow I got an alpha CD with the draft-graphics engine instead of the final game but alas...it was the final, updated version. Characters almost don't walk...they kind of jump like in Southpark episodes, but in Southpark this probably is intentional.
Summary: if you can play a very old game and enjoy it thoroughly despite the old graphics and shitty sound, get this game as you will enjoy it. If you are like me and expect things to evolve not de-evolve and don't want to reward mediocrity, then stay the fuck away from this monary shitburger (I say monary because there isn't a shitless state, THAT'S HOW MUCH THIS GAME IS WROUGHT FROM SHIT). How this can be fixed: put the new additions in the old Empire Earth graphical engine and add some decent sounds and the game will be more than playable. This isn't just about the eternal dilemma between form and content, not the stone nor the shape. There are times where despite crappy form, the content itself is enjoyable like reading Kafka's Metamorphosis: the form of the book is almost unreadable because of the style but the idea it portrays fucks with your mind. Empire Earth 2 is not this case because the reason why the content impresses you is probably its originality. Empire Earth 2 is an example were a nice game with good graphics, solid gameplay and a good execution of the elements got dumped in favor of a few gameplay improvements. Since I played a game with good form and good content, I cannot be enticed by the sequel to play a game with shit form and pretty much the same content with a few new quirks. Graphics and Sounds are not the end of a game...they are means to entice the player to give the game a shot and in doing so, to discover all the playability that the designers included. Instead of forcing myself to play a game that I consider mediocre (and you have no idea how much it hurts me because I loved the first) I will wait until an enlightened soul chooses to included said features in a different format or as a standard with better graphics, better sounds and fresh gameplay.
I recently picked up Empire Earth 2, as in my work-induced ignorance (nothing to think besides how I would like to disassemble customers with a butter knife) I hadn't become aware of the fact that Empire Earth 2 had been released. I gotta admit that I loved the first game. The games I had to compare it to (strategy wise not theme-wise) were quite a few: Starcraft, Total Annihilation, World War 3: Black Gold, Earth 2150: The Moon project, and the list went on. The game performed spectacularly while tearing apart some misconceptions I had regarding the game. I had thought: What? No unique units? WTF? This game has to suck! Then I remembered that Total Annihilation was rich but the sides were very similar and I had loved it despite that and I still do. For those who haven't played Empire Earth I, all the sides use the same units and the differences are in how you allocate the bonus points (units have more range, planes have more fuel...etc) and with that, while the game was similar regarding the sides......it still rocked. The graphics were pretty good for its time, it had a good, unclunky interface and the AI could give you a run for your money specially on big maps. Now I picked up the sequel and saw my testicles rolling on my floor when I finished the tutorial. The feeling was unlike anything I had experienced before: it was a combo of rabid disbelief, bitter dissapointment and a sort of gallows cheerfulness (the kind of playfulness that you feel when they tighten the noose on your neck and you figure nothing matters and shit, fart, pee and vomit just to annoy the executioner.). I'll cut the touchy, feely crap and say outright what's wrong with the damn game: interface is too advanced for such shitty graphics and sounds. The interface got some happily-received updates: you can now scribble a kind of war plan and share it with your ally/ies, you can control the amount of villagers/citizens without having to select them one by one and you can assign multiple different orders to a large number of different squads and have the orders carried out simultaneously (which means you can now crush an enemy from air, land and sea if you play your cards right) and a very good update is the ability of using a PiP interface to have bookmarks of the map set and see them in real time by just pressing a key while being somewhere else...you can also issue commands in that PiP so you don't have to completely break off an attack if a player you are about to hand his ass to decides to send a piddly amount of units in a vain attempt to counter and distract you. The game now also features some unique units for each side (ala Age of Empires 2 where all civs use the same units but each one has it's own different set of unique units), so the positive add-ons to the game are pretty strong if you look at them as a whole.
Now for the bad part: this game eats resources for lunch. My rig is a 3.2 P4 with HT, 1 GB of DDR400 and a GeForce 6800 GT OC and it lags. I am running only the game and 30 more processes and the game lags. I disabled all startup items and the game still lags. I update the BIOS, drivers and the game itself and had it run from a virtual drive from an ISO image and the game still FUCKING lags. I played a lot of recent RTS games with GOOD graphics and none of them lag this bad. I played Battle for Middle Earth (nice concept but poorly balanced and executed), Act of War (nice but needed more sides) and Warhammer: Dawn of War (nice but 2 sides are essentially the same) and while running them at the max resolution that my monitor supports (19' LG Flatron CRT) and none of them lagged as badly as this one. And mind you: at Warhammer, there particle effects and dynamic lighting all around; at Battle for Middle Earth, there were beautiful details and at Act of War the game itself was extra pretty and it didn't lag like this...just an occasional hiccup while I was running too much crap in the background. Empire Earth 2 has graphics that are much worse than the original in some respects, and the game still manages to suck more dick than Jenna Lewis at resource handling. The sounds are very cliche and don't seem to have much effort put in them. This morning when I was going to work, it was raining very hard, the sky was black despite it was 6:30 AM and I was napping with my sunglasses on (to act as a shade) on the company bus and suddenly a lightning struck less then a kilometer away. My heart stopped, I suddenly felt a gentle thumping when my balls entered my throat and even through the sunglasses, I saw everything turn red then white. That's how I think a weather effect should be implemented but Empire Earth 2's rendition of a thunder (from the settings options to test the sound volume) sounds a bit like a fart from a constipated violin played by the Smurfs. The weather has an effect on the game yes, but the weather is rendered VERY poorly.
Now for the ugly: I don't know how to say this. The shame that I felt when I played through the tutorial and was looking for the option to switch from newbie graphics mode (you know, primitive...badly, southpark-likely-animated) into advanced mode (you know without the simple, non-obstrussive graphics so that I could enjoy the power that my rig could have with this game....and I didn't find the option to change graphics mode. In fact, the max resolution I could get from this game is 1024*768 with 32 Bit color. And the game lagged as I said before. From the top of my I head, I saw the helicopters from the sequel and compared them to the previous game...and they look ugly. So ugly and badly animated that I was wondering if somehow I got an alpha CD with the draft-graphics engine instead of the final game but alas...it was the final, updated version. Characters almost don't walk...they kind of jump like in Southpark episodes, but in Southpark this probably is intentional.
Summary: if you can play a very old game and enjoy it thoroughly despite the old graphics and shitty sound, get this game as you will enjoy it. If you are like me and expect things to evolve not de-evolve and don't want to reward mediocrity, then stay the fuck away from this monary shitburger (I say monary because there isn't a shitless state, THAT'S HOW MUCH THIS GAME IS WROUGHT FROM SHIT). How this can be fixed: put the new additions in the old Empire Earth graphical engine and add some decent sounds and the game will be more than playable. This isn't just about the eternal dilemma between form and content, not the stone nor the shape. There are times where despite crappy form, the content itself is enjoyable like reading Kafka's Metamorphosis: the form of the book is almost unreadable because of the style but the idea it portrays fucks with your mind. Empire Earth 2 is not this case because the reason why the content impresses you is probably its originality. Empire Earth 2 is an example were a nice game with good graphics, solid gameplay and a good execution of the elements got dumped in favor of a few gameplay improvements. Since I played a game with good form and good content, I cannot be enticed by the sequel to play a game with shit form and pretty much the same content with a few new quirks. Graphics and Sounds are not the end of a game...they are means to entice the player to give the game a shot and in doing so, to discover all the playability that the designers included. Instead of forcing myself to play a game that I consider mediocre (and you have no idea how much it hurts me because I loved the first) I will wait until an enlightened soul chooses to included said features in a different format or as a standard with better graphics, better sounds and fresh gameplay.
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