Empire: Total War

Sega had two strategy titles to show off at E3 this summer, and the first one we saw was Empire: Total War, the newest installment of Creative Assembly's Total War series, which blends real-time tactics and turn-based strategy gameplay. But instead of taking place during the Roman Republic, Feudal Japan, or Medieval Europe, Empire takes place primarily during the 18th century and the repercussions of the Industrial Revolution and global colonization. The game involves exploration and conquest of various regions, from the Americas to North Africa and India, and will feature approximately 50 different factions with about 10 of those nations as playable factions.

Empire: Total War introduces naval combat, which allows players to batter and board enemy ships.

But all that jazz takes a backseat to Empire's biggest selling point: the introduction of 3D naval combat. Of all the things I saw at E3 this year, the demonstration of Empire's naval combat was certainly one of the most memorable and impressive (sadly I did not get to play the demo). Creative Assembly provided a tour through a major battle between American and British ships. The game's graphics look extremely detailed and realistic, right down to the wind blowing against the sails and the water effects. The cannon fire and explosions were brilliant, and the action showed sailors and crew members scurrying across the decks of the ship. During one encounter, demo showed the crew of one ship using grappling hooks and planks to board an enemy ship, which then shifted the game into soldier-to-soldier combat both above and below decks. In another part of the ocean, a massive fire was spreading through a ship (thanks to a strong wind), catching on the sails and dooming the vessel to destruction.

The best part of the battle was seeing the game's realism in action. Empire has a buoyancy model that will accurately determine how fast a ship will sink, depending on where its hull has been damaged and where the vessel's air pockets are located. There are other mathematical models that determine wave height, sea currents and weather effects. According to Creative Assembly, the game's weather, which includes sleet, snow and rain, can be brutal and the conditions could get bad enough to sink ships. And Empire's physics engine will show how cannonballs will ricochet and bounce through ships and tears sails. The Creative Assembly officials also explained how the game's artificial intelligence will be greatly improved from previous Total War titles - and they were right. The demo was so challenging that the Creative Assembly official giving us the tour had a tough time battling the game's AI and suffered some heavy losses during the demo. Sadly, Empire: Total War won't hit the shelves until next February.

Stormrise

The second strategy title from Sega and Creative Assembly couldn't be more different than Empire: Total War. For one thing, Stormrise was built from the ground up for consoles - but don't worry, the game will be available for the PC as well as the Xbox 360 and PS3. But the idea for Creative Assembly was to show that a strategy game for the consoles could be done well - albeit much differently than on the PC platform. Another major difference from the Total War series is that Stormrise takes place in a post-apocalyptic future. Centuries after a cataclysmic event nearly wiped out all life on earth, two warring factions emerge in a war to regain control of the planet. The Echelon are technologically advanced humans that survived the apocalypse by hibernating in a cryogenic-like stasis, while the Sai are evolved, tribal people that emerged from the ashes and adapted to the new environment.

A Sai battlefield commander overlooks a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland in Stormrise.

Another drastically different aspect of Stormrise is that players will assume the role of a battlefield commander for each faction, rather than playing the game from a detached overhead view of the map. The objective is to move the commander to the front line, giving him a line-of-sight view of the battlefield so he can usher orders. Ken Turner, project director at Creative Assembly, said Stormrise has been in development for three years, and much of that time was spent on the controls and that the developers only recently started implementing assets. "Ninety percent of what you need to do in the game can be accomplished with two thumbsticks and a single button," he said during the demo. The pre-alpha build of Stormrise looked excellent; the demo showed a decimated urban setting with the player-controlled Sai attacking an Echelon camp. With the thumbsticks, Turner showed how players can zoom in on the action and highlight different units and command them in different squad formations or attack patterns. Each faction has infantry, ground and aerial units, though the Sai versions are quite different than their Echelon counterparts. For example, the demo showed a large Sai beast taking on artillery and armor deployments of the Echelon. There's no traditional base-building in Stormrise, but players will have to locate and secure power nodes throughout the game's expansive maps.

Stormrise will feature a single player campaign as well as a multiplayer mode that supports up to eight players for all platforms; there's also a split-screen cooperative mode and two-player online co-op. We didn't get to see the multiplayer in action, so I'm not quite sure how it will work. But for a pre-alpha title, Stormrise appears to be on the right track. The game is scheduled to ship sometime in 2009.

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