Empire: Total War

Empire is without a doubt the best strategy game you'll play this year.

This is one of those times where, as a game reviewer, you just want to write "This game PWNs", set the page text to OHMYGODBIG type and fit in as many screen shots as can fit - just so you can go back to conquering Europe and the New World.

We previewed Empire a little while ago, and we were pretty damn excited. We got a taste of the new gameplay, from the naval combat to improved diplomatic options, in the Road to Independence campaign. But that's just a taste of the epic scale that you get from the Grand Campaign. There's a mess of scenarios and of course the Independence campaign to play, and very well-featured multiplayer, but the true joy of Total War has always been in the literally hundreds of hours we've spent plotting total domination of each game's given theatre.

In Empire, the Grand Campaign features not just one theatre, but three - Europe, India, and Central & North America. On top of that, there's also four smaller Trade Theatres where you can plant trading ships to take advantage of rich resources. It might seem a lot to handle, but that's the business of Empire for you.

If you've played any of the previous games you'll be pretty familiar with the set up - the use of upgrading buildings to produce new troops, the need to fortify and garrison frontier posts, and the general give and take of each tactical encounter. But the move into the black powder and high diplomacy of the 18^th century brings with it many new wrinkles.

The addition of a fully fleshed out naval simulator to the game is probably the most obvious new addition. Now, when rival fleets butt heads, you get a fully rendered 3D battle to fight, right down to individual marines sniping from the rigging. Given the importance of piracy and sea-borne trade in the period, this is a vital addition - fleets can turn privateer and block an enemy nation's trade (thus denying important income to build and arm troops), blockade ports, guard trade routes and deliver armies. In previous games dominating the sea was always an afterthought, but in Empire it's a necessity.

Diplomacy is a richer experience, too, and each nation or Empire is now far more likely to remember past deeds, good and bad. Gone are the seeming random backstabs of previous titles, though allies will still push the bounds of friendship (like the bloody United Provinces army that took advantage of my excellent siege work to take a city we really wanted - damned cheese eaters!). There's also the usual array of agents - Priests and missionaries, Rakes and Gentlemen - that help you influence a region's religion, spy on armies and boost research. Which, by the way, is very important in Empire - you'll need colleges to unlock new technologies, and the three tech trees (Military, Industrial and Philosophical) can dramatically alter your nation's strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, you've also got to worry about public opinion and what it means for you current government. The game features Absolute Monarchies, Constitutional Monarchies and Republics, and each has their own wrinkle, like regular elections that could see your very skilled cabinet of ministers get tossed out in favour of a bunch of muppets.

In fact, there's so much in the strategic portion of the game that you could easily auto-manage every battle, and still get a lot out of the game. But, of course, you'd miss out on the crowning part of the game.

Everything about the tactical part of the game has been ramped up and improved. The topography of each battle map is a rolling and natural recreation of each region, right down to proper plant types and weather modelling. Individual soldiers look almost as good as anything you'd see in a recent first person shooter, and ballistics are modelled down to the individual musket ball or cannon shot. As the action of a large battle starts to heat up, smoke drifts across the battlefield from burning powder, cannon balls bounce through ranks of infantry, and cavalry rushes to find a weak flank.

All the units you'd expect to find on 18^th century battlefields are present, from mobile horse artillery to versatile dragoons. Additionally, units are given titles like 16^th Regiment of Foot as they are created, meaning that even after only a few turns you'll start to develop attachments to your veteran units and their famous exploits. Even each sailing vessel is named, further adding to the sense of belonging to the period.

In fact, the scope of the game is almost too broad to cover in such a small space; and we've not even had a chance to play any multiplayer yet. We're expecting the competitive side to be just as excellent, and future content (in a month, no less) will open up the larger campaigns to multiplayer participation - if anything were possible to be Civ-killer, this would be it.

We gave our first look at Empire an Anticipation Rating of 96 per cent; that seems a drastic understatement having had a taste of the full game. This is a game that demands attention from any gamer with even merely a passing interest in history or strategy. For fans of the Total War games, it is nothing less than the defining instalment of the series.