Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War
I’m well ahead of you Mister Horse Archer. I installed the demo of this months PC Gamer cover disc!
Ok so since I’ve played the demo I might as well give you all a brief summery of what it was like. Being able to personally lead your hero/general in third a third person prospective into battle breaths new life into the RTS genre but don’t expect Lara Croft levels of functionality as this is first and foremost an RTS. The action is basic aim your character at the general mass of enemy troops, run at them and frantically start bashing the LMB and watch you hero (in this case it’s Egypt’s Cleopatra) chop huge swathes through enemy lines. Cleopatra can also swim across rivers which is useful if you need to keep a low profile to enter enemy camps without arousing to much attention. But watch out don’t think you can just jump into hero mode and crush the enemy Rambo style because you hero only has so much stamina and if your hero’s stamina runs dry he/she is all kinds of trouble!
Moving away from the Hero mode you still have the basic RTS game mechanics to concentrate on such as resource management, building supply drop depots, shrines, temples etc. In this regard Rise & Fall will be very familiar to players of Age of Empires, as you have to mange the basic resources of wood, gold and glory (used to level up you hero). Wood and gold are all collected by your peasants who are created from the town centres, you will also need to build barracks to build infantry, along with stables and other military buildings. I have to say found this side of game a little bit basic, as mentioned before this will be very familiar to gamers who have played earlier versions of Age of Empires and I feel the developers haven’t added any originality to this side of the game as focus.
I might as well warn you now I was running this game on a P4 2.8Ghz, 1Gb of Ram, with a GeForce 6600GT graphics card and I experienced quite a bit of slow down when the battles got really intense (this is when I was in hero mode 1024*768 32Bit). The graphics are colourfully and bright, units are well detailed (but don’t expect RTR levels of realism). I do have some gripes though, there were some path finding bugs and moving the boats around the map was a bit troublesome, they would collide into each other, they wouldn't dock properly and in general were a pain in the proverbial back side.
Pro’s
- Unique third person hero mode
- Good graphics
- Easy to learn
Con’s
- the RTS element doesn’t push the genre forward (no originality)
- Pathfinding bugs
- Can get repetitive
I most point out though I was playing the demo so hopefully some of these issue will be ironed out.
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Originally Posted by Turkeys!
. If a game uses starforce don't buy it, publishers when then be forced to drop it because they are getting hit in the only place they care about which is the bank balance. 
