Reviews
T
he hallmark of Creative Assembly’s Total War series is an almost
effortless blend of high-level strategy and ground-level tactics:
two gameplay styles that can often be at odds. Rome alternates
sweeping, turn-based decisions centered on long-term cause/effect
relationships among taxes, citizen happiness, construction, trade, and
diplomacy with real-time armchair general decisions focused on troop
deployments, support, and maneuvering.
The game’s pacing is just right, giving you plenty of time to play out
the intrigues and empire-building of ancient Rome during the age of the
Caesars, as well as conduct the most impressive city-sieges and battles
ever brought to a computer.
Sieges are handled cleverly, allowing you to overwhelm a city on the
strategic map and simply starve it out without fighting a single battle, or build
siege equipment and hit the 3D battlefield in real time. Once you deploy the
deliciously rendered foot soldiers, cavalry, archers (with flaming arrows!), cat-
apults, battering rams, siege towers, and (our favorite) tunnel diggers, you’re
in an entirely different game. It’s not like dropping to Command & Conquer
during a game of Civilization. It’s a wholly unique experience: two games that
could easily stand on their own, merged into a fluid whole.
Technically, the game is a giant leap forward from Medieval , with more
units on the field—each unit is an individual 3D model!—and more detail, all
of it maintaining surprisingly high frame rates. The package is almost absurdly
feature-rich. There are numerous maps, customization features, victory types,
factions, and multiplayer support en masse. The campaign games are long andsatisfying, with political power
struggles culminating in that final
march to Rome itself.
—THOMAS L. MCDONALDRome: Total War
Truly, this is the glory that is Rome
In Rome: Total War , the strategic aspect of the game is
turn-based and plays
out on a large map
of Italy and the
surrounding regions.108 MA XIMUMPC DECEMBER 2004
Brilliant, deep blend of turn-based strategy and
real-time tactics.TOTAL 7ARLI-ITED 7AR
What’s to complain about?
$50, http://www.rometotalwar.comMA XIMUMPCVERDICT 10
I
n Evil Genius , you are Dr. Evil. You lead a massive, world-wide, evil
organization whose only goal is to take over the world. At your beck
and call are more than a dozen varieties of evil underlings, ranging
from relatively innocuous workers to slippery spin doctors to insidious
biochemists. Like any true evil genius—from Ernst Stavro Blofeld to Hugo
Drax to C. Montgomery Burns—you issue orders, but keep your hands
clean of the messy day-to-day work.
Evil Genius may initially seem like your garden-variety lair-building
Dungeon Keeper clone, but there’s much more to it. In addition to building
your lair and staffing it with a multicultural force of minions, you must also
send teams of goons out into the world to do your bidding. Their goals range
from the basics—such as stealing cash and loot—to kooky world-domina-
tion schemes that will warm the heart of every wannabe overlord. In order
to succeed, you must balance the daily needs of your base and your mega-
maniacal urges to take over the world,
all while building your reputation as the
world’s premiere supervillain. Overextend
your forces, and you’ll find yourself with a
base full of turncoat super-spies.
Of course, you really don’t have to
conquer the world to be a successful evil
genius. The first time you slaughter a dozen
do-gooders in an unnecessarily complex
trap, it makes all the late nights spent slav-
ing away at your schemes worthwhile.
—WILL SMITHEvil Genius
Welcome to your evil underground lair!
Call us sickies, but the only way to
prove your evil abilities is to build
overly complex booby traps that
electrocute hordes of enemies!Innovative campaign mode, loads of kooky traps,
torture devices, and other items.SKULL-SHAPED ISLA.DSHEART-SHAPED ISLA.DS
When things go wrong, you can execute underper-
forming minions. Oh wait, that’s not a bad thing.
$50, http://www.evilgeniusgame.comMA XIMUMPCVERDICT 9
series is an almostFlambe anyone that stands in your
way of becoming the world’s next
top supervillain.