Preview: Rise and Fall - Civilisations at War

By The Jackal

We've all seen, played or heard of  'Age of Empires', it's been around since the early days of the PC gaming market. It was one of those games that just sucked away your spare time, captivating millions of gamers and plumbers alike, and drove them crazy for more real time strategy and PVC piping. 

Of course, after the original comes the clone. And although this particular clone took it's sweet time (Age of Empires has currently completed a trilogy) this particular game has some neat ideas and could poach quite a few AoE and Rome: Total War fans along the way.

Although it's nothing completely new, it does still have some characteristics which should be very fun to play with. We tested an early version of the game, and one of the major attractions is the ability to zoom into a close-up third person perspective mode with a 'Hero' character (I'll talk about hero's later). This interesting feature means that you can see just outside the Hero's view and even take direct control of him/her to inflict as much damage as possible on the your rival army's front lines.

Also included in this game is the 3D zoom option, where you have the ability to zoom right into your troops' faces, as well as into battles etc, which shows off the graphic engine's scaling potential. And this is an early build, too.

Another thing this game includes, which may be of some interest to you, the reader, is the addition of realistic ships. In many other RTS games, you get ships which can fire a cannon and sink, and that's it. In Rise and Fall you can train extra troops while on ships, add a drummer (which adds special abilities), hook other ships during voyages and bring them into close combat, just like the Vikings did. There's even a proper ship docking system, where the dock is built and you can command your troops around it.

These are just some of the many cool features which separate this game from the plethora of boring medieval RTS clones saturating the market.

The game begins in Roman times, when people like Alexander the Great were around trying to take over the world. There are a few cultures to play as, such as the Persians, Romans, Greeks and Egyptians. You can recruit legends and heroes into your army and, as I said, you can control them directly and kill people with a swift stroke of your trackball (mice are old hat now).

The heroes include dangerous (and sometime fat) celebrities such as Julius Caesar, Achilles, Germanicus Caesar, Cleopatra, Ramses the Great, Nebuchadnezzar, and Alexander the Great. 

Sadly, Sinbad didn't make the cut. Expect rioting in the streets.

You have the option to start a campaign with most of the following heroes, in which you follow a storyline and travel around trying to take over the world (at least in Alexander the Greats' case).

Once you are all set up in the game, with sufficiently sized armies and defenses, it becomes a lot easier and the pace slows down. Initially, you set about telling your peasants to go to work on trees (used to build stuff), gold mines (used to buy and build stuff) and some special points with which you can buy advisers from a board. These advisers can gain you extra money, experience, wood etc... For instance, if you play as the Greeks, you may hire a Surgeon, which makes all damaged soldiers heal slowly, while the Botanist improves your town's harvesting techniques.

And once you have got enough money from the gold mining, you are ready to build the usual structures that henceforth spawn your weapons of war. These buildings include the obvious: stables, archery ranges, barracks, docks, etc. 

From this point you can buy soldiers, horses, siege weapons and ships at the cost of your resources. Once you have bought enough men, you can initiate your conquest to kill your foes, who may be computer or human controlled, or possibly both if you know someone who has an Intel Celeron chip stuck up their nose. By this time though, you will have used up about 30 minutes of your game time just to build up decent infrastructure. Be warned: this game is addictive and you may sit on the PC for hours wondering whether to send in the Trojan or just pummel them with arrows and spears. But while it takes time to build up your forces, it's a fun game to play, and involving too - expect your time to be consumed when this bad boy arrives later in 2006.

Combat is pretty straight forward in Rise and Fall. You command you ships, siege weapons, soldiers and cavalry around the field and kill the opposition by selecting your troops and then right-clicking on their units. Once you've tactically used the high ground, pincer movements and some ambushed with backup units, you've probably won the battle, and it'll be one o'clock at night.

Let me make this clear however, the gameplay does change quite significantly if you're on a campaign with a main Hero because:

1) It may become a lot harder. The AI difficulty is cranked up due to the Hero's increased combat abilities.

2) You don't do as much building and buying, you do more marching and killing.

3) You mainly control huge amounts of men looking to destroy stuff (which is huge fun, I have to admit).

When on a campaign with a Hero character on the books it becomes a lot harder, because now you don't have as many troops and because of the grand scope of the graphics engine, you mighty come across 5,000 men who must be defeated by your 15. Although it's harder, it's not completely impossible, and it can actually be really fun for a good strategist. Your Heroes also gain experience as they endure battles, which will please the statisticians out there no end.

Let's look at Cleopatra for example. She may look hot, and have a sultry voice, but she's deadly, believe you me. She has a Kopesh Sword that can do plenty of damage to lowly grunts and she also has archery skills, and when using her bow she has 2x zoom function. She is trained in the dark arts of espionage (you thought I was gonna say flower pressing, didn't you?) and can enable Egyptian spies to ever-so-stealthily infiltrate the enemy armies. Once within their ranks, these subter-foogies can even persuade the enemy to ditch their own team and slavishly follow Cleopatra. Think of engineers from C&C taking over buildings and your half-way there.

One of the best parts of the game thus far in its development is the huge number of men you can control at once, and I hope this aspect is fortified by Stainless Steel Studios and Midway Games, the two groups who are coding the game. Just the sight of a huge army makes you want to throw them all at the opposition and just watch what happens. If you thought the 'Lord of the Rings' war scenes were cool, think again. This thing looks wicked!

Now, so far I haven't discussed the graphics and visual detail of the game. But now I will. To start with, I must comment on the detail and hard work that has gone into making the ships in this game. They are very impressive, and the level of realism must be seen to be believed. In terms of detail, it's a decent looking game. You can see things for a mile away (if you've got the graphics set to their limit), and spotting enemy units on the horizon is very cool with this amazing view. Also, for a game with so much going on at once, the water detail is very good. The realism of the liquid stuff almost draws your eyes from the action (not really, but it passes as a very good effect). 

Overall however, the graphics could use some more work. It's not an ugly game, not at all, but now that PCs are competing with Xbox 360 and the upcoming PS3, the graphics must rise to the next-gen console challenge. But I will add that, for a game with so much going on, there's no wonder they didn't go for a hugely fine detailed game - and with all the activity, it does help to hide some of the lower polygon models. To summarise it, the graphics are good, the detail is very sweet, but I can't help but feel there's room for improvement in this aspect.

One thing I didn't pay attention to in this game during my preview was the music. To tell you the truth, I can't even remember if there was any music in the background, mostly just the clashing of swords. I guess I was just too preoccupied with what was going on to really pay attention, which indicates how absorbing the gameplay is. 

One more thing I must comment on before wrapping up the preview is the menu system. When you start Rise and Fall, it lags quite a bit. I understand that it's a big game but they've added movie scenes to the background of the menu, as well as really soppy music, both of which could have been omitted for reasons of functionality. In conclusion, this real time strategy game is already shaping up to be a very slick product, with awesome gameplay and involving combat, not to mention infrastructure development. All I can say is, watch out Age of Empires!

Game: Rise and Fall - Civilisations at War
System: PC
Players: Multi
Online: Yes
Demo: Right Here Guv'na
Developer: Midway Games (Stainless Steel Studios)
Distributor: Red Ant