Empire Earth II

"You need a super computer to run this game"

Empire Earth 2, the sequel to Empire Earth. An RTS spanning from early prehistoric times to the distant future where robots and lasers roam the battle field. Now is Empire Earth 2 all it's hyped up to be? I'll point out its failures and successes.

Graphics 9/10
The graphics are superb, the units move in a very realistic fashion and the planes fly fast enough for them not to look sluggish. The weather affects aren't as impressive though, they just get in the way don't look very good and are just an overall annoyance while playing. They've greatly improved the graphics since Empire Earth, you can zoom up on units without them getting too blurry and they still look good. These amazing graphics are what pushes up the minimum specs greatly, and is probably one of the best bits about the game.

Sounds 3/10
Some of the sounds in this game are a joke, everything sounds very fake from sword fights, to arrows. Bombs are too quiet, they don't sound very 3D there's no echoes! In some scenarios that came with the game the narrators voice also sometimes goes quiet then loud, which is a great annoyance while playing. Mad Doc should've just taken the sounds from EE1, they sound real and more 3D than this low quality rubbish.

Music doesn't fit with the game AT ALL, old Age of Empires music would work better. The music mostly consists of slow calming boring looping sounds which don't make you feel tense while you're at war. On some occasions the music can actually get annoying, but that's why they've added a volume control for the music so you can mute that boring loop of sounds and put your own music on!

Gameplay 6/10
The biggest problem is the slowness, even on Very Fast speed everything is slow. Every unit takes a long time to build soldiers walk too slow and can send you into a distant dream of a fast EE2.

Sometimes the buttons around the border can become overwhelming, there's so many functions to remember and would certainly scare away any young gamers trying to get to grips with the game.

The new Battle Plan feature isn't all that great, the time to make the battle plan is lengthy and it's difficult to use with all different icons and buttons everywhere on screen.

There's too many different types of resources, wood, stone, oil, food, tin, uranium and many more, it does your head and can be confusing at times and having so many different types really isn't necessary, gathering resources isn't the most fun part of the game let alone gathering so many different types.

Many things are overpowered and underpowered, for example missile silos don't do huge amounts of damage to buildings, nuclear bombs are the same. The game has many balance problems, all the buildings seem a bit too strong especially towers. EE2 lacks the simplicity and speed of EE1.

Multiplayer 2/10
Ok, this is the worst part of the game. You login with a Gamespy account which is easy to create; the lobby where games are created is appalling, the layout is all wrong. You can only chat to specific people and “Add to Buddies List”, compared to EE1's lobby this is indeed a joke. There's STILL no Skill-Rating system, nor any help documents using the lobby, these will scare away many experts and probably buyers too!

The amount of power you need to play this game is huge, your PC should be way above the minimum spec if you want smooth play. Even with a top performance PC and graphics card the game starts jerking when you get to around 50 units, it's very disappointing and many EE1 players will be taking back EE2 because their PC just won't be able to handle it!

Overall: 5/10
Empire Earth 2 is far too complex for young gamers, misses some of the popular features of Empire Earth 1 and has a shoddy multiplayer mode, though the graphics are indeed great there are too many let downs to keep you hooked. Empire Earth 1 players will be bound to be disappointed as it fails to resemble its predecessor in anyway at all. The biggest feature to be missed is the Custom Civilizations.

EE2 will only succeed with experienced gamers with top performance PCs. A disappointing game which MIGHT be improved in future updates from Mad Doc, only time will tell…

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/10/06