Empire: Total War
Preview
Gone naval
by T3HDX
previewed on PC
Fight aspects
Boarding enemy ships is an effective way of taking out the enemy vessel as well as increasing your own armada. When two ships are close enough, crewmen throw grapples and pull the ships toward each other, until they are close enough to board the other. Sailors and marines will then begin to battle on board of the ships, fighting it out to take the prize of the other ship. If you win the battle, you can claim the ship; however you are unable to use it in the current skirmish.
Another aspect of sea warfare is to protect troop transport ships. Using stronger ships to secure routes for the weaker transport ships is vital when invading other nations. Transport ships have no way of defending themselves from even the weakest of enemy ships. There will be a lot of activity throughout the different sea channels, both enemy and your own.
When it comes down to the land fighting, it plays relatively the same as previous iterations, with the introduction of gunpowder weapons such as muskets and canons. However, the combat is not 100% ranged; there is still a strong emphasis on hand to hand combat as well. The biggest weapon available on the battlefield is surprise. Being able to startle your enemy and strike fear into them will always prove more useful than a few muskets from a distance.
Visuals
The graphics are looking amazing so far, and are visually gorgeous by any standards. From what I have seen they have certainly gone the extra mile to boost the visuals as well as the animation. No detail has been spared in character and ship modelling, even down to the carved figure heads on the front of the ships. The level of detail you can see while watching a boarding fight is truly amazing as well. Close up cinematic cameras add to the action and really bring home the realism put into this game.
The animations are likewise exquisitely done. Using the art of motion capturing, where the movements of real people are captured using motion sensors and recorded onto a computer are taken and replicated on the computer with character models represented in the game. Empire: Total War is joining the ever growing list of games now making use of this wonderful technology to give a high level of realism and detail in the ground combat fighting. Using trained stunt men to record fighting motions and then watching it replayed with naval troops was a work of art.
Promising
All in all Empire: Total War is shaping up to look like one of the greatest RTS games on the market. With such a strong line of games behind it, as well as such promising features and game play aspects with both sea and land battles that it has currently shown us, the February ’09 release can’t come soon enough.
