Empire: Total War is "Astonishing"


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PC Gamer UK has published an exciting, gushing review of The Creative Assembly's latest RTS, Empire: Total War.

According to PCG the new instalment is "astonishing. A strategy masterwork." Well worth the 94% and rare 'Must Buy' badge they've dished out, then.

"This is the grandest, most spectacular work of strategy gaming on the PC," the mag gushes. "If you've not tackled a Total War game before, or assume that they're not for you, I challenge you to play Empire and not be impressed, or even fundamentally changed by the experience.

"There had been rumblings about Total War being simplified for the US market, especially with its introductory mini-campaign 'The Road to Independence'," the review continues. But "The Creative Assembly do not seem to have shirked their responsibility, or ever stepped back from including more features, or more detail," it says. "Empire is the opposite of dumbed down.

"While it feels familiar, Empire manages to deliver more nuance on the campaign map than ever before. What's most immediately obvious is the effect of international trade.

"The sheer weight of ideas produced by the Creative Assembly team is in evidence. The battlefields are vastly more detailed than ever before, especially around towns, with the smaller scale details now coming into effect in the form of battlefield defences, use of buildings by troops, and accurate cover. Battles play out more convincingly than in previous games. There's still some errant unit activity, but I've seen little evidence of units sitting around waiting to be killed, or getting lost entirely. Not perfect, perhaps, but certainly more robust.

As if RTS nuts weren't excited enough already. And by the sounds of this, non-RTS fans should be too.

Total War is out next Friday, March 4. Full review in PC Gamer, on sale NOW!

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=209390

Also, IGN, 9.5 - http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/957/957883p4.html

Anno 1401 is out soon as well - Damn the PC strategy scene kicks ass, I gotta go buy a new graphics card for things like this :(

Edited by Audioboxer
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Just played it, Oh.. My.. God.. This game is the buggiest piece of crap that's ever graced the PC... Expect to spend a lot of time staring at screens. Also be prepared to stare at the first screen right after loading this game up, because the game will likely freeze and sit there for five minutes.

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Awesome, don't expect to change resolutions either, because it freezes when you do, well, it doesn't freeze, it just takes about two minutes to load after changing resolutions.. That confuses me... is that the menu isn't anything extravagant! It's not like it's loading an entire battlefield IN the menu, the menu has no effects at all, yet it takes about five minutes from first screen to main menu, and then it amps all the settings on high, your spending another two to three minutes on a black screen while it changes your settings!

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What are your specs like?

AMD Athlon X2 2.2Ghz Dual Core CPU

2GB DDR2 Ram

nvidia geforce 7600 512MB VRam

If they were trying to load a preview of the battlefield in the menu, then I'd expect it to be a little laggy.. but it's nothing but images.

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They aren't the most amazing specs in the world, but I suppose it should be able to play games 'decently'ish.

Yeah I don't believe in paying a few thousand dollars every three years cause PC manufacturers bring out new hardware too quickly. That's probably why I went and bought a console, because PC gaming is too expensive and isn't worth it in the end.

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Medieval II is one of my favorites, but even with a quad core and 8gb system memory, large battles will chug along at miserable frame rates. Hopefully they have optimized Empire for multiple core computing and made the code more efficient.

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They aren't the most amazing specs in the world, but I suppose it should be able to play games 'decently'ish.

The demo does kind of suck in terms of performance, as Hiroshi said, the first screen when loading up takes forever to end and all that comes after it are a few trademark/producer videos. I also had the slow loading time after changing video settings, the first time it crashed -.-

I'm happy playing with M2TW, so I'm in no hurry to buy this while it is buggy :)

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Just played it, Oh.. My.. God.. This game is the buggiest piece of crap that's ever graced the PC... Expect to spend a lot of time staring at screens. Also be prepared to stare at the first screen right after loading this game up, because the game will likely freeze and sit there for five minutes.

I'm sorry, but unless you somehow got the full game early, then you didn't play "it"! You played a 2 map demo version based on unfinished, unoptimised and possibly beta code. And StealMySoda is correct, your specs don't set the world alight.

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I'm sorry, but unless you somehow got the full game early, then you didn't play "it"! You played a 2 map demo version based on unfinished, unoptimised and possibly beta code. And StealMySoda is correct, your specs don't set the world alight.

If it is that dreadful, they aren't going to fix it all in time for release. You'll be buying another half-finished game, and will be waiting for a myriad of patches just to be able to play properly.

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If it is that dreadful, they aren't going to fix it all in time for release. You'll be buying another half-finished game, and will be waiting for a myriad of patches just to be able to play properly.

I missed the part where I said it was dreadful. The demo runs nicely for me.

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Seeing as IGN reviewed the game at 9.5, along with other glowing reviews I seriously doubt the gold code runs as bad as some of you are suggesting. If anything some of your specs are killing the game, games like this are complete hogs.

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Well I bought Medieval II and still haven't really played it. I don't know why I think I'll enjoy this any more than I did medieval but we'll see. I'm fairly sure that my rig will be able to play this game and make it look good at the same time.

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I'm sorry, but unless you somehow got the full game early, then you didn't play "it"! You played a 2 map demo version based on unfinished, unoptimised and possibly beta code. And StealMySoda is correct, your specs don't set the world alight.

If it had been a beta then the bugs would be ironed out, thats the point of a beta, but the demo which is released like 4 weeks before the release date? I don't think it would be possible for them to optimise it that much.

I always thought demo's were supposed to attract buyers anyway?

The demo is good, the performance is fine in battle, its just stupid if you have to wait 5 minutes to just get the game started.

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I always thought demo's were supposed to attract buyers anyway?

I have to agree with you there. Demos should be based on the most stable and optimised code they can use. I personally think that demos should be released on or shortly after the game's release. A demo is supposed to demonstrate (hence the name) how the game will run on a person's system. Release it early on older unoptimised code doesn't give a clear impression of the game.

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