BIOS: Technology Means Business

Microsoft Game Studios and Ensemble Studios have worked relatively hard on the latest version this real-time strategy (RTS) game. Age of Empires III (£19.99) is the latest landmark release in the franchise that has sold a staggering 16 million units worldwide, but does it offer gamers anything new and compelling? Unfortunately it doesn’t, but it does look and sound fantastic.

Age of Empires III offers yet another next level of realism, with relatively advanced battle physics and high visual detail. It’s no Rome: Total War in terms of the size of armies and battles, and the battle scenes can hardly be called realistic (have you ever seen a warship move with such agility?), but it’s tremendous fun to build armies through the ages and watch the relatively detailed animations as your men reload weapons and manoeuvre mortars into firing position.

The new game picks up where Age of Empires II: Age of Kings left off, placing you in the position of a European power determined to explore, colonise and conquer the New World (via the tried and tested formula of base building, resource gathering and enemy crushing). This time period features new scenes, from towering European cathedrals to courageous tribes of Native Americans, and spectacular combat with Industrial Age units like rifled infantry, cavalry and tall ships bristling with cannons.

The game works really hard to set a new standard for visual quality and you’ll often find yourself scoping details rather than completing your tasks. Age of Empires III will also excite strategy gamers with new gameplay elements, including the concept of a Home City, new civilisations, units, technologies and an immersive new single-player campaign that spans three generations. Age of Empires III places you in the time period of roughly 1500 to 1850. As you work to establish your empire you will find new civilizations to discover and random maps to conquer. In single-player mode you’re presented with a list of main objectives, along with secondary objectives for amassing extra gold and the like.

You can play as the British and have a stellar economy, or play as the French and easily ally with Native Americans. You can even choose to play as the Spanish and have more support from your home country in Europe. Relatively realistic physics effects affect how your army fights on a variety of landscapes and on water, and you have the option of engaging in battle with blades, gunpowder or both. Victory, of course, depends on your strategic battle plan - you can’t just build an army of Pikemen and hope for the best!

You also need to develop and strengthen a unique, customised Home City. The Home City represents your capital back in Europe and plays a supporting role in the attempt to control the New World. The better you perform in the New World, the more powerful your Home City becomes. You can even customise your Home City to reflect unique personality traits, making the Home City a useful character in the game and a constant source of reinforcements - both in terms of characters and resources.

Much like the persistent character from a role-playing game that encourages you to keep playing, your Home City is an important support system to your efforts in the New World. During a game, your Home City can regularly send you supplies or military reinforcements. You are the leader of your colony, but your success brings glory back to Mother Europe. The more games you play, and the better you do, the more powerful your Home City will become. Every few games, you gain the ability to both upgrade and customize your Home City.

For instance, you can upgrade your city by unlocking new types of soldiers or buildings, or improving those you already have. You can broaden your tech tree in whatever direction most fits your play style (invest in warships, native alliances, cavalry, artillery or economy) and you can customise your Home City by changing the appearance of buildings, the weather or even the types of people who walk, work and perform in its streets. Throughout a game, as well as in between games, you can visit your Home City to watch its citizens go about their lives, get an opinion on how you’re doing, plot your next move or just marvel at the beautiful sunset.

Another neat feature of Age of Empires III is that you can take advantage of elements of the colonial time period, including the ability to ally with Native Americans (you can even tame wild beasts). You can also explore and find new resources in the Amazon rain forest, recover buried treasure from Caribbean islands, hunt bison on the Great Plains, compete to establish trade routes, and fortify the coast of New England.

Age of Empires III looks and sounds wonderful, and the classical music that accompanies you throughout the game is really atmospheric. New lighting effects and shadows help to immerse you in a world that feels bright and sunny, yet which has a softness and depth that is a joy to view. And thanks to the new physics engine, which allows you to zoom the camera, you will struggle to see the same scene twice.

Tone mapping, a photo imaging technique, is used throughout the game to balance the colours in a scene on the fly. The end result is a rich, warm game where bright colours are vibrantly rendered alongside darker counterparts, such as shadows. The sun is always shining in Age of Empires III too, so units and buildings cast shadows according to a real sun position, and even cast shadows on each other. High Dynamic Range rendering even helps to represent the shiny glints of sunlight that bounce off highly reflective surfaces.

And thanks to bump and specular mapping water glistens like water and metal shines like metal. These advanced techniques serve to provide an extra level of rendering detail unseen in an RTS game. Ensemble Studios even devoted a full-time programmer just to work on realistic water effects. And boy was it worth it! You’ll find the water rich with details like foam near the shore, accurately modelled water motion, flotsam in rivers and realistic water colours. Plus, reflections change with the viewing angle, the angle of sunlight and the motion of the water.

Those looking for a relatively complex and interesting RTS game with fantastic good looks and some historical flavour will find just what they want in Age of Empires III. Its battle scenes won’t really please hardcore militants due to the fact that your army tends to either sit idle (even when your town is being burn within earshot) or destroy everything in site, and there’s nothing to revolutionise or even refresh this style of gaming. Graphics and sound are top-notch, cannon fire is particularly dramatic, and when one force or another wins a skirmish, it’s exciting to see all the men stand and cheer. Age of Empires III is definitely worth owning, just don’t expect it to change the face of RTS.

[9] - Editors’ Choice

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