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Empire Of The Ants
Page 2
More Ants
You start the game with some working class ants and some military class ants.
The military class is controlled in combat by the player in classic RTS style : dragging and clicking. Military ants are also used for scouting the terrain as everything is covered by the famous black shroud ( so far so good…).
As you scout you will discover new food and material sites the working ants can harvest. That's the easy part of the game. Now comes the management part which will be the part you will spend most time with.
Your working class ants are used to gather resources, build new rooms in your underground camp and to maintain your camp altogether.
However unlike the combat ants you have no direct control over them. You must set a priority list and the computer will automatically divide the available ants to the tasks you set.
If for example there is need for food you will have to place food gathering on top so more ants go out to collect food. Food is important for your queen who needs it to be able to breed new ants and for the combat ants who need it to stay alert and ultimately alive.
  
Is your camp ready to fall apart you will need to collect building materials like leafs and other things and so on. The challenge here is to find a balance between the different tasks at hand. And to fulfill those tasks you'll need ants. Your ants are managed in a very similar way : setting them in a priority list. If you need to fight a lot of enemies your queen will have to breed combat units (from regular combat ants to ant 'tanks').
But all these ants have to eat so you will have to collect resources and that means breeding worker ants as well. Balance is everywhere in this game.
It sounds boring?
If you should think this sounds boring : well it sounds boring , but it isn't.
Once you get the hang of it it's actually quite fun. For me it reminded me of my SimCity days: I just couldn't get any people in my urban areas till I discovered you need to provide them with water and electricity. The game was suddenly so much fun and this is the same with EOTA ! Once you understand the basics you will be ready for the more advanced factors in this game, which I will discuss in the next part.
Exploring
So you have set your priorities and have been able to build a respectable working and combat group. Now it's time to explore your surroundings to find new resource sites and to pinpoint the location of some enemies.
Exploring is very easy as the people at Microids have build this game in 3D. That's right : you can rotate the landscape to your hearts content and feel free to zoom in and out 'cause it's all possible. And should you get tired of the other things, well just relax and watch the living world around you. See other insects collect resources, witness a rain storm etc. . It's all in this game and it's beautiful.
Let's get going : just select some combat type ants and click where you want them to go. They will immediately follow orders and proceed to their destination. You can speed things up by grouping all your units and forming massive armies of killer ants. Just let me add that you cannot breed an infinite number of minions. This is tied to your underground empire : should you build new rooms and collect more food and other resources, you will be able to generate more units.
As your units proceed to the waypoint they will uncover the territory and perhaps discover new resources. You can now instruct the working ants to collect or to leave this site alone. This feature is useful if there is an enemy not far from the site and collecting could attract his attention.
Should you encounter an enemy the will have to engage him. Just click and the units will attack. There however some other influences you will have to take in account if want to be victorious in combat.
First of all the units will get stressed if combat takes long and a lot of their companions are killed. If they get overstressed they will go berserk and either run away or charge blindely into combat (and thus certainly getting killed).
Another thing is that your units will get hungry so you could lose units even before getting into a fight because they died of hunger. This means that you will have to manage your exploring forces as well as your resource gathering machine to keep your forces alive.
If you play smart you will probably not take every unit away to explore your surroundings. You can use them to patrol the vicinity of the hive. This is all easily done with preset buttons on the games' interface.
The same goes for protecting your workers : should an enemy attack a group of worker-ants you can just press a button and all working ants will return to the safety of the nest until the danger has been cleared by your comabt units.
However all this has to happen in a given time limit (seasons) which gives this game a tense atmosphere and which will bring you on the top of your chair if you can just make it in time.
Manual & Sound
The manual is good. All options and icons are explained in a clear and understandable way. There is also a quick reference card in the box you can use should you forget the meaning of some on-screen icons.
Sound is good, nothing more nothing less. Everything sounds realistic and the background music (as separate CD-tracks) is very soothing. It sounds like classical music with lots of violins and I like that.
Conclusion
Pro
- Original game design
- Beautiful graphics and weather effects, lots of little detail
- Nice Music
- Challenging
Con
- Hard to get into
- Skirmish AI is too aggressive
- Can get a bit too challenging later in the game, especially with time limits
- Recommended system requirements must be taken seriously !
- Unattractive packaging
All in all I can say Microids deserve to score with Empire of The Ants, but I'm afraid it will not be anyone's cup of tea.
However if you read this review and are thinking about getting this game I would really recommend it. If you are willing to put some effort in it you will end up playing a beautiful, challenging and very original game.
-Jochen
Ratings
Manual:
75% |
Graphics:
90% |
Music & Sfx:
86% |
GamePlay:
92% |
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This game scores
on our 5-point Rating System
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