Empire Earth games have long stood as a testament to how complicated an RTS can be, how hardcore it can force players to delve into the resource management jungle of ruling a huge empire. Of course, a publisher wants to appeal to more gamers, and that’s what must have happened here.

I can only assume that the marketing meeting went something like this:

Publisher (Sierra): Ok, so, we need you to kinda dumb down Empire Earth for mass market appeal.

Developer (Mad Doc): Ludicrous! Fine, we’ll make the game simpler.

Publisher: Good! We’ll go write up the press release without playing the game.

Developer’s secret thoughts: We’ll dumb it down alright.. we shall besmirch their names, it will be so bad!

I can only guess it went something like that. Right! On to the game.

Empire Earth III, the first two games notwithstanding, is an RTS in which you select a faction, drop down on the planet, and proceed to conquer everything before you, RISK-style. Sounds like an awesome idea, and it worked very well in the previous games. Your empire progresses through the eras, becoming more and more technologically advanced as time goes on, eventually going from catapults and ending with ray guns. Cool. Ok, so far, so good, right?

Players of the previous EE games be warned – that deep resource management, diplomacy juggling, alliance grabbing, strategy-heavy game you played? It has died, and gone to some sort of complicated gaming heaven. In its place is the desiccated, soulless corpse of the old games.

Pastel visuals look like they belong to a game years old – Company of Heroes, Age of Empires, and Medieval II all looked considerably better. Hell, Starcraft looks better, pretty DX10 water effects not included.