Age of Empires III [PC]

After their brief whimsical jaunt into the fabulous with Age of Mythology, Ensemble has returned to the real world with Age of Empires III, a game that puts the hardest of the hardcore economics back in real-time strategy.

Casual players might have fun dinking around with the single-player campaign, which presents three sets of story-based missions revolving around different generations of family members trying to keep the Fountain of Youth from falling into the hands of an evil cult. You'll find the typical missions here: build up so many units, hold off so many attacks, jump through so many hoops.

Casual players will also certainly appreciate the effort put into the visuals. Graphically, Age of Empires III looks awe-inspiring. Shimmering water, flocks of geese, the autumn colors of New England... not to mention the real-time physics that come into play when you're bombarding structures with cannon fire. But that's ultimately beside the point. When the shots start firing and the cavalry start charging, it's all formation, schlormation. You're looking at a mess of units that might as well be a Jackson Pollack painting.

This is true of most real-time strategy games, but it's particularly disappointing that Age of Empires III comes down to the same old mob rule presentation as any RTS since Dune II. In fact, the sound does a much better job of evoking battles of the period. The muffled rumble of distant artillery, the splinter of wood, and the neighing of horses are all superb. You might enjoy it more if you just close your eyes.

But the bottom line in Age of Empires III is, well, the bottom line. This RTS is a throwback to the days of the genre being driven almost exclusively by economic management. In multiplayer games or skirmishes against the AI, the winner is usually going to be the guy who made the most villagers and used them to gather the most resources. Although you don't have to herd your villagers quite so much, this is still a game that's all about the peons. For this reason, it's very much a sequel to Age of Empires II. But also for this reason, it doesn't bear up well next to recent innovative RTSs like Dawn of War, Dragonshard, Kohan, or even Warcraft 3.

In fact, you can look at the two biggest innovations in Age III -- the home city and the Native American settlements -- to see the economics at work. The Native Americans, who are scattered around the map, add unique troops to your armies and minor tweaks. At first, it seems like this could be an important element of the gameplay, but they play out like minor asides rather than anything substantive.

Ironically, the Native Americans don't come into prominence until the later ages, when everyone's army is maxxed out and you can take advantage of the fact that Native troops don't require population support. Otherwise, they're mainly cool for the visuals of seeing Comanches charging across a plain or Tupi archers slaughtering villagers.