Age of Mythology : The Titans : Web Wombat : Games

There are two types of expansion pack. There's the type where somebody (probably the work experience kid) has cobbled together a few maps, maybe a recoloured orc or five, and, if you're lucky, one badly rendered weapon.

Then this certain somebody has compiled it all, in BASIC, no less, before unleashing it on the unsuspecting public like a dose of the bubonic plague, only with less gaiety.

Thankfully, we're not getting too many of these anymore, but once upon a time (think 1996), they were a common blight on the landscape.

Then there's the type of expansion that looks as if there was actually a modicum of interest paid to its contents.

There'll be some bug fixes, some new graphical enhancements, the usual map round-up, wrapped up with a nice new and shiny user interface, the game equivalent of a big red bow. Nothing amazingly revolutionary, but then that wasn't the point, now was it?

An expansion pack is there to do what it says on the packet: Expand. It makes the world seem a little bigger, the polygons a little brighter, the music a little louder. It gives us more time with those characters we'd thought had gone down with the ship, more time in those locales seemingly forever cast down and forgotten.

I'm pleased to announce that The Titans is firmly a member of the second category, and immense fun at that. Beginning ten years after the end of Age of Mythology, Titans follow the exploits of Kastor, the son of Arkantos (who was the protagonist in the original AoM game).

Ancient toga parties were a sight for sore eyes

Heading up what remains of the Atlantean empire, Kastor is not exactly the happiest clam around, not to mention that he's more than a little pissed off with the assorted heavenly beings above that have abandoned him and his people.

Eventually, he ends up being used in a ploy to free the Titans so that they may once more walk the Earth.

Okay, so maybe the plot is more than a little hackneyed and would be more at home on the set of the fifty-fifth season of Hercules, or perhaps the fifteenth season of Xena (for some of you others) but why should that have any effect on the fun, eh?

We all know why you'll be buying Titans, and it's not the storyline.

Frankly, you'll be buying this expansion pack for the gameplay, and specifically for the titular, uber-beastly and down right gigantic Titans.

Mega-units, these things can be built in the fourth stage of development, and can quite easily decimate a city and its army without dying, thanks to the almost-godly amount of hit points they have at their disposal.

These guys add an amazing amount of spice to the end-game, as both you and your opponents simultaneously try to build your own Titans, while disrupting the progress of the others.

When someone does finally get their Titan completed, the lengths some people will go to in order to hold it off for long enough to get their own finished are quite extraordinary, and a Titan vs Titan battle is something to behold.

Other than the addition of the Titans, we've got a new civilization in the form of the Atlanteans, who are sufficiently different from the other races that it can take a while to adapt to the correct playing style needed, due to both the expensiveness of their units and the fact that nearly all their units are the strongest in the game compared to their racial counterparts.

Ensemble Studios went out of its way
to create an improved visual aesthetic

New units abound for both the Atlanteans and the other races, and those that aren't new have had a graphical touch-up, meaning that all those polygons look tastier than ever before.

The 12-mission single player campaign that revolves around the cliché --I mean story-- can take ages to finish, and there are multiple solutions to each map, so the replay value is pretty good, although the dedicated AoM veteran will be able to chew through The Titans in roughly 100 hours.

When you get online, it's a different story, as we all know. Multiplayer is fun, good for the soul, and all-improved, although some might find far-flung servers slightly laggish.

My advice: Don't go playing a bunch of American LPBs on a server based in the middle of the Crimea, and you should be right as rain.

For those who didn't like AoM in the first place, The Titans is unlikely to do anything for you.

It's still the same game it was before, only now it's got lots of extra fiddly bits for those who would like to squeeze some more life out of their copy of Age of Mythology.

As far as expansions go, The Titans is an example of how this kind of thing should be done, but, more to the point, it's got big chunky polygon things belting each other to pieces *shrieks like a little girl such is his happiness*.

Game: Age of Mythology: The Titans
System: PC
Players: 1-multi
Online: Yes
Developer: Ensemble Studios
Distributor: Microsoft

Rating: 85%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

Age of Mythology: The Titans is on the shelves now.

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