The first Empire Earth game was an outstanding success. Gamers loved it since it allowed them to advance through many different epochs (ages) in one game. Each era granted players new buildings, technology, and units to use against their enemies. When Empire Earth II was released, it retained many of the features from the previous game that players loved but faltered in other areas. These areas included poor path finding and modest graphics contrasting with the high system requirements to run it. The latest game in the series has hit shelves and it has taken a drastic leap from its predecessors in many areas.

When players first load Empire Earth III they will be treated to a very nice CGI intro, and will be escorted to the options menu. First is a tutorial mode that will teach players the basics, and it is highly suggested to run through it as much has changed since the previous game. Next up is World Domination, which is a new single-player campaign mode (this will be explained further down in greater detail). There are two different modes here, first is the main campaign, which allows players to choose the region they want to start off with and try to take over the rest of the world. Another option allows gamers to play a custom game, where they can customize many different options until it feels “just right." The last single-player mode is skirmish, which allows players to just get into a game and fight to their heart's content.

Someone wasn't prepared for giant mechs.

As stated earlier, the newest mode for Empire Earth III is World Domination, which takes its inspiration from Rise of Nations Conquest mode. In this mode, players fight for control of the various territories that are scattered across the world map, and the end goal is to conquer the entire world. Each territory produces income for players to spend on new armies, upgrades, and various other things. While it is nice to have freedom to conquer the world any way the player deems necessary, more structure would have been greatly appreciated. The objectives range from helping and eliminating minor tribes that have no bearing on the world (or even history) to defeating other major civilizations on the world. When players do conquer the entire World, it is a very shallow victory because the motivation for them to do so is lacking. This is a major contrast to the Rise of Nations Conquest mode, which always gives players the feeling that they are moving forward with interesting objectives, and featured a solid story.

Another new addition to this game is there are only three unique civilizations to play as: West, Middle East, and Far East. The West is very technology heavy and their units will cost more to produce. The Middle East is about mobility, which means hit-and run tactics. The Far East is about putting as many cheap units into the battle as possible. There is enough variety here to keep most people happy, but overall the differences are relativity minor (especially later on in the game).

Out numbered but outclassed?

The AI for this Empire Earth III is pretty bad. Most of the time the AI will not even put up a worthy fight, and other times the artificial “intelligence” kicks in and players will be in a long fight that makes the Hundred Years’ War look a short battle. The other major issue with this game is the pathfinding is truly nonexistent, which leads to hair-pulling madness, especially if players are in the midst of a large battle. The problem goes something like this: when clicking on the units to go to a location, they will either stand motionless, or take the longest possible route to get to the destination. The minor “work around” is to select smaller groups of units and not the entire army, but honestly this doesn’t seem to be truly effective either. This issue really ruins any potential fun this game has because if players cannot get their troops to the battle, what point is there in creating them in the first place?

The graphics alone are decent, but there have been numerous games released this year that make this game look sub par. One big mistake is that the animation for the units is really horrible and not as detailed as players expect. This is most noticeable with the siege weapons and the way they “glide” across the map. To add insult to injury, the performance of this game is horrible, even after downloading the version 1.1 patch the performance still hangs up and is extremely jerky (honestly I didn’t see any performance increase with the patch at all.) All of these issues are really horrible to have, and ruins the playability.

The world is yours for the taking.

The soundtrack for Empire Earth III is decent, but easily forgettable. What is not as easy to forget is the actual dialog used and voiceovers for all of the units. One thing that all real-time strategy players can agree on is starting a new game and hearing the one-liners spoken by all of the units for the first time. Many times the development teams puts out hilarious quips that are very memorable. Apparently the development team for Empire Earth III didn’t receive this memo, as the dialog and the actors did a horrific job. Most of the dialog is plain distracting, annoying, and will have anyone hitting the mute button for this portion of the audio just to play the game.

Empire Earth III is rated teen and contains blood and gore, language, suggestive themes, and violence.

The system requirements are as follows:
Windows XP or Vista
1.7 GHz or greater processor
512 MB of RAM
DVD drive
6.5 GB of disk space
128 MB Video Card
Direct X 9.0c

Gameplay: 5.1
The many bugs and oversights prevent this game from being as fun as it should have been. 

Graphics: 6.1
The development team is at a huge disadvantage since other developers have found a way to one up them with the graphics, especially games that were released more than six months ago. It really boils down to competition between developers. There is better out there and more people will be prone to look for the better from the graphics angle rather than to settle for sub-par graphics, funky animations, and overall performance issues.

Sound: 5.5
The voices in this game are really annoying. Usually the soldiers have really funny quips when players click and move them around, instead the one-liners are stale, redundant, and will grate on their nerves. The musical score is decent but nothing outstanding.

Difficulty: Medium
The difficulty for this game is not as finely tuned as it should have been. At times the AI will be a complete pushover while other times it will put players in a constant state of defense praying for a minute of peace. The thing that makes this so bad is that it happens on each difficulty level and is not consistent.

Concept: 6.1
Players will enjoy the way resources are handled in this game, and it will allow them to spend more time trying to get their military power up or even offer the resources to your enemies to convert them as friends.

Multiplayer: 6.2
The online portion of this game includes the standard fanfare, and it really doesn’t try to break out of the normal mold.

Overall: 5.6
I was really looking forward to Empire Earth III after viewing all of the trailers and information I could find on it. I am really disappointed with the final product as it is really buggy. I tried running this game on multiple computers and no matter the various system specifications I received the same problems. It is obvious that this game needed a little more nurturing before it was released.