Empire Earth III (PC)

An RTS with feet of clay, as well as legs, a torso, arms, hands and a head of clay
1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 3

Visually, the whole thing is a polygon stew. The coarse cartoony graphics and cut-rate animation make it hard to tell what's going on. Whose units are those? What kind of building is that? Are those tanks or trade route trucks? Which of these little guys is which? Everything is clunky, awkward and ugly. Units often just slide into place, as if the game can't be bothered to animate movement, so it's going to simply jam a unit into the place and hope you're not looking. This is particularly bad with naval units, which are big enough to constantly get in each other's way. Woe to the poor player trying to manage a large navy. Aircraft and missiles helpfully stay out of the way until you buy a one-shot strike. But if you really want to fuss with flying units, you can buy awkwardly hovering helicopters or VTOLs to join your army.

As a multiplayer game, the servers are deserted (when they work), so you'll have to persuade a friend to play. Of course, why would you want to afflict your friend with an RTS this bad? Better to suck it up and play Empire Earth III as a single-player game. Which isn't going to do you any good, considering the AI is all but incapable of playing the game. It's not uncommon to finish a skirmish only to discover your opponent never expanded into a second territory. You might find clots of units stuck against each other. Maybe a bunch of useless ships crammed into a lake. It's like a Cracker Jack box of inept AI surprises. The only consistent AI trick is that it's incapable of building a functioning economy, as you'll note from the stats screen after a match.

The only way to get much single-player gameplay out of Empire Earth III is to puzzle your way through the intriguing but underdeveloped World Domination mode. Here you fight a series of battles to take control of territories on a globe. You assign your territories to produce military, commercial, imperial or tech resources. You then spend these on armies and powers, including technological upgrades and spy abilities. It's a cool concept, with the important caveat that you have to play a terrible RTS game when you get to the battles.

Unfortunately, there are too many cheesy loopholes in World Domination. You can jump into a no-risk skirmish against some natives and unlock all the units for your era by just letting the battle run for a while. Buying off natives without having to engage in combat is far too easy, except for the pointless busywork of actually starting a battle and waiting to amass enough money. The AI doesn't know how to use amphibious armies, so you're guaranteed a safe border along an ocean. The confused list of world technologies makes no sense. In fact, without better documentation, most of the World Domination mode makes no sense until you've plowed through some trial and error. Even then, it's a messy sprawl of territories spattered with icons and poorly explained special powers that may or may not work.

And then there are the weird little bugs that remain unfixed nearly a month after the game's release. But you know what? Never mind. There's really no point going on. If you're served a big steaming turd on a platter, is there any point complaining that the garnish is wilted? I can describe Empire Earth III in three words: sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.