Bob-o's review of Empire Earth

Well the guy who made the original Age of Empires (it sucked so much, but it was a step in the right direction back then), he was lurking in the shadows for about 5 years and now he comes out with this hell of a game that we call Empire Earth. It's led to about 6 hours of my life wasted thus far, and many more hours are going to be wasted in the future.

Gameplay:
Standard strategy gaming here, nothing special in the combat/building systems, if you're the master of AOE2 then this will be your game. The thing that sets this game apart from all other RTS's is that it advances through 14 ages, from cave men to cyborgs. It's very difficult to master and I can only play competently through the bronze age and that's it. Maybe I just suck, but to me this game takes at least 2 hours to get the hang of. It doesn't play EXACTLY like Age of Empires, the use of heroes differs in the fact that they're actually useful, and the inclusion of disaster casting prophets adds a lot to the gameplay.

Graphics:
This is where I'm torn, the water and terrain effects are amazing, and the units look nice from far away. But, with the zoom feature (using the mouse wheel) up close these units are terrible. I suppose that they were modeled that way was to make more of them available on screen without killing your system, but the cutscenes use these horrible looking models and it's and it makes me wonder how much time was put into it. Another topic that brings up is system requirements, my Athlon XP 1.7 GHZ runs it very nicely, yet my Duron 900 struggled with it at times, so you should have one nice system to play this.

Sound:
What you'd expect from a RTS. Satisfying death yells and unit acknoledgements, sometimes they get old and mundane, but it keeps the game in motion.

Replay:
Best part of the game in my opinion. You can create your own civilizations, maps, random maps, and so on. The campaigns are nice, but somewhat easy, they go through all the ages, good practice. I haven't tried the multiplayer, but just the fact that it's there adds to replay.

Summary:
Gameplay - 95
Graphics - 85
Sound - 90
Replay - 100
Total - 94 (not an average)