Empires, is a Half-life 2 or Source engine mod, attempting (and in most cases succeeding) in crossing three genres and amalgamating them into one hell of an online multiplayer experience. Vehicular combat, RTS, and FPS are all combined to make a team based online shooter. The game modes which are in the mod’s current release are a FPS staple capture point mode, an escort mode and the final mode is the best and most innovative only called “Classic” by the mod team.The flagship game mode involves two teams each commanded by a player (in RTS view) who builds the base, controls research and defences and orders. Which are then carried out by players who fight as infantry and Vehicles with the aim of the destroying the enemy base and command vehicle. The other game modes are fairly self explanatory amalgamations of the Vehicular combat and class based shooter, with a more realistic TF2 style capture point map (or payload in the case of the escort mode)
The Vehicular combat works along with the majority of the systems in the game which are often not associated with the source engine. The RTS screen works, the research screen, and the Vehicle or soldier customization/load out screen all work and all come with default choices allowing you to make either a variety of good choices or bad choices when it comes to customization of your ‘ride’ or soldier. Example of a nicely customized tank would be a medium tank, with absorbent armour a high explosive cannon, a salvo missile launcher and an upgraded engine to stave off the generally fatal overheating. A bad example would be an arty tank (Artillery to you and me) with no armour a bad engine, and an unupgraded gun (or paper arty).
Once you’ve made the right choices with a vehicles load out you come to the combat which feels fast passed in the larger scale battles with missile launcher (ML) turret lock-on’s and RPGs, Mortars and other tanks all exchanging fire amongst infantry, building and repairing walls and also exchanging small arms fire. Sound good? Yeah that’s because for the most part it is, however if you find yourself separated from the rather enjoyable front line and battle and in a 1 vs. 1 situation with another tank which is also well customized it’s a rather slow and tedious affair. This is due to the armour and weapons of the tanks made to be balanced in the large scale combat, which then make them not quite powerful enough to make one on one engagements edgy, fast paced, or realistic and brutal.
The other mechanics of the Vehicular combat are also good with the way cannons, and missiles react during movement and the Vehicular combat becomes as twitch based and skilful as infantry combat and is just as fun. Although in the large scale battles that make it fun, delay between the missiles or cannons firing, hitting a target and registering is often quite high and as such often means vital shots are missed.
My one major fault with the “Classic” game mode is the way the commander is selected; it wasn’t the most effective system the development team could have chosen, because when it comes to the vote you quite often find yourself clicking for the name with the clan tags and hoping that they know what they are doing. Although this may sound reasonable it is often not as a bad commander leads to a bad game, and a good commander leads to a good and fair game. Also with the free for all commander voting system it often leads to grievers winning the vote, combined with water being the bane of every Vehicle grieving is easy to commit and often hard to deal with, making another major problem with the mod.
The community of the mod is also rather unforgiving, leading to new players being abused by the veterans rather than helped also leading to bad com manders being rife and the grieving to be committed not out of being an idiot but m ore out of revenge at the veterans that aggravated you in the first place trying to get rid of you and stop you from taking charge another time.
The infantry combat is very standard class based shooter you have four classes, the scout, the engineer, the grenadier, and last but not least the riflemen. Each class has its own almost direct parallel to TF2, the Engineer is fairly obviously linked with the engineer with its abilities to build turrets walls, and resupply other soldiers. The scout, is closely linked with the quite surprisingly the sniper and the spy, with its ability to (if customized right!) cloak, and its signature weapon being a sniper rifle. The Grenadier is closely linked to the soldier with its RPG and only proper anti infantry weapon being a pistol, although just like TF2 the RPG is great when aiming at infantry’s feet, however with the inclusion of vehicle the RPG is also used in its primary role.
The infantry also have their own load out screen allowing choices of side arm (two types of pistol) and main weapon (most classes have a choice of three although the engineer only has the choice of two SMG’s. Each of the weapons gives the class slightly different roles, an example a riflemen with a Heavy rifle is actually quite effective at medium range, but with an assault rifle he’s much better at storming buildings.
Another thing the infantry lack is any persistence, or feeling, with the vehicles you pay for them out of your ‘wages’ and your commanders ‘resources’ so you feel responsible for the vehicles wellbeing and if it dies it’s your fault and you wasted resources. Valuable resources however the infantry don’t feel like that. You never unlock anything new (apart from skills as you get promoted) the research system doesn’t affect them which make them feel less important as the vehicles. Which dominate the games multiplayer combat.
The promotion system also doesn’t feel as fleshed out or as complex as it could be if they improved on it by making the promotions persistent and unlocking items rather than just skills which are easily forgotten or go by unnoticed. Another problem I have with the simplistic promotion system is linked with the issues I have with the commanders voting system, it’s all well and good to have a democratic system, although some restrictions on who can ‘opt in’ would be great and simply having persistent promotions and a rank requirement to become a commander would have a made a lot more sense, stopped the bad commanders, also allowed people to take the learning curve at a slower pace, and probably not have made the community as unforgiving as it is.
Empires, is a good mod, it’s fun to play, and its easily available through Steam, however in its current release it doesn’t feel as complete as it could be and it also could be easily improved, by fleshing out and expanding on some ideas that are present it would easily make this one of the true mod greats. Currently it just is an above average mod, with some innovative and original ideas that make it playable and repayable none the less.
Pros
- Fun vehicular combat which is rarely seen on the Source Engine - A strong blend of multiple genres leads to interesting game play - A strong back story and class/weapon design lead to fun infantry combat. - Future plans, such as aircraft could make this much more fun in future.Cons
- Unforgiving community (caused by some slightly bad design choices) - Hastily add systems that seem like an afterthought which detract from persistence and feelings of making real impact (I’m looking at the promotion system here) - Due to the amount of effects from the vehicular combat, and infantry combat all in short spaces can cause a lot of movement which the Source Engine isn’t great at dealing with, and causes lag. - Commander UI can sometimes be buggy although this is mostly fixed now but still sometimes glitches.Requirements: A Source engine game
Website Link: http://www.empiresmod.com/drupal/
Download from: Steam
Images thanks to: http://www.empiresmod.com/drupal/
hello, i play this game for almost 3 years (dunno maybe its more) now and i feel the need to clear up some of the cons you brought up.
first, if you consider the need for tight teamwork a bad design decision then ofc your first statement is true. this is the sole reason for the community to be unforgiving. this game requires more teamplay then most of the games ive played since i started playing online 13 years ago.
what you called hastly added system of non persistent upgrades is vastly superior since it keeps the game interesting without dozens of pointless addons – there is a time when youd max out, no matter how much upgrades you can get. it also lowers the gap between new and long term players.
i agree with you though that some sort of stat system should be implemented to make comm coice easier (you have to know who is good at this game to know who to vote for)
the lag issue actually is a lowFPS issue on crap machines. empires is way more complex and dynamic then any other source mod and therefore has considerably higher hardware requirements.
the comm ui things is actually right, a general gui redesign is somewhere on the devs todo-list afaik.
other than that, thanks for promoting the game that maked all other FPS feel dull for me …
Nice review, I’m sorry the community can come over quite rough edged for some, and I agree its not the my little ponies community; But I hope some of the rougher edges can over time present a certain kind of charm
In response to James R, I am also a long time player of the game and feel like the review is missing a lot about the game.
First of all, the squad system, being as primitive as it is, is a large part of the game. In addition to the fact that staying close to your squad members, your squad leader can activate squad powers, which, depending on the class of the squad leader, can do various things such as healing your squad members’ health points fully, or activating a 30-second partial invisibility mode.
All in all, I have a feeling that you, the reviewer and the player did not really soak in the Empires experience. Not to blame you of course, as it takes several months to adjust to the game well. This is not a game for a person to pick up and frag, but to develop knowledge about the game and based on that play the game. After playing the game for a 1 year, only then did I find out that you can home in with an RPG by holding down your mouse button. Crazy, huh?
The community is what has kept me playing. If I wanted rainbows, sparkles and unicorns in my ear while waging make believe war, I’d go see a psychiatrist.
Hi, flasche. Im just going to respond to your comments regarding my cons.
I dont feel teamwork is a bad thing, teamwork is a very good thing in multiplayer games and its something we dont see often enough in both mods, and fully fledged games. Teamwork is not a reason to explain away the community, ofcourse if a game requires closer knit teams and groups then the community will be harsher and more judging towards those that dont conform with the teams plan, and run around like headless chickens doing the wrong thing. However empires does not require TRUE teamwork it requires the majority of the team to know the vague direction to fight in, and just to press e or use the engineers tool on a refinery the commanders placed. That’s not teamwork its just common sense. Due to the lack of a team identity and often proper organization there cannot be proper team work.
Also i will agree the promotion system if it was persistent wouldnt have been perfect, although in its current form it is also not perfect. It shows no degree of skill or teamwork and it only unlocks skills, which also dont make an impact. IF you work harder, if you play harder, if you make more of an impact. You should get something to show for it, Discounts on vehiciles or anything like that would have made sense, or only unlocking vehiciles after a certain level per round to stop early tank rushes into the water by the guy that only just installed the game.
Your comment about the FPSlag was fairly true, if you run a bad rig your game won’t run fast on full settings. Although the problem with lag wasn’t with my pc or the server, it was just badly optimized code. An example, i was driving a NF tank and i fired a shell at another tank so i pressed the mouse, the shell fired it hit the ground… Wait for it….Wait for it…. There is the explosion a good 2 seconds after the shell hit the ground. IF it was FPS lag the game would have slowed down to a stutter and the shell would be in slow motion, the lag is between actions, not 10fps during a firefight.
Also thanks for responding to the review, and i hope this clears up why i chose the con’s i did. If you have any more questions about the review or points that i think i should have added, email me at “[email protected]”
Thanks James (oh and sorry for any mistakes in this post i actually wrote it out on my IPOD
)
i wish i had one of them thar things.
my phones such a p.o.s.
good review by the way.
but teamwork is absolutely necessary to win this game. it starts on the level that you require player-commander interaction (thats at minimum 2 players) up to the point where you get resupplied by engineers and so on …
empires only works when you have teamplay, almost any element is heavily reliant on that. it might be loosely formed with anyone knowing what to do or heavily organzied like in competitive play, its still teamwork.
thanks for your reply btw
Forgot to mention the other part:
“However empires does not require TRUE teamwork it requires the majority of the team to know the vague direction to fight in, and just to press e or use the engineers tool on a refinery the commanders placed. That’s not teamwork its just common sense. Due to the lack of a team identity and often proper organization there cannot be proper team work.”
This is true when the skill of most players is average. However get a few players who know how to cause trouble on the same team and you won’t be saying that anymore. Squad powers and squad teamwork with good players who know the game better than others can easily win the game for you. It can be as simple as having a scout activating squad hide to sneak behind the enemy and then having the squad leadership given to an engineer which can be used to squad revive your teammates behind the enemy lines. Of course for an average player this just seems like a waste of time, where he just wants to run n’ gun, but for seasoned players who want to win the game without going through the same ol’ tank shootout, teamwork is absolutely irreplaceable
It’s true with almost any game that, having a team of good players working together will make them almost guarenteed to win. If a game requires true teamwork, then it requires teamwork to even have a chance of victory. An example of this is RNL were without teamwork your chance of victory is 0 due to the high levels of realism and greater team identity by reworking standard shooter conventions such as the ‘scoreboard’ this level of team identity makes the players refer to the teams as We instead of I…In Rnl if you capture a point its, We just took church. If its Empires, its I just captured X, or just took out the ref at b4 comm build a new one please…Or even simple Ref at B4. There is no ackknowledgment of teamwork in game.
Inresponse to the comments about the sqaud system, i tested that quite extensivly with a friend of mine, and we found it useful. Although for the standard player who’s not clanned, lacks 3rd party voice software, and doesnt have a group of 3-4 other people who want to play Empires, won’t get the things out of it that you mentioned. IT does promote teamwork, although it doesnt force it upon you, if a game requires teamwork as i said earlier it forces it upon you rather than offers it as a juicy alternative.
In response to the community again, rough edges can be good. Although if your a new player trying to get into a mod and trying to learn about it, and start playing. It can feel a bit daunting to jump into a server with some of the people i’ve seen playing the game, and i really did almost feel sorry for how much that one new player got raged at in one game.
Also about picking up n’ playing the game, i played the game before it was released on steam, and sorta liked it but i thought it wasn’t quite polished enough and left it till it came onto steam then i tried it again, still wasn’t overly fond of it but after a while i started to like it, although the only times i properly enjoyed it was when i was playing with a friend or two, overskype either scout teaming or charging with tanks in synergy. Those things are doubtful to happen in a public game with public people. Although i do acknowledge if you played the game for 2-3 years and got a clan, and got real teamwork the game would truly open up. Although you cant judge a game just on the experience of the elite, you have to judge the experience from the majority of the players. Mentioning the experience of the elite is good (and i should have done it) although they are not the majority so there experience is not what your guaraenteed to get.
In response to other comments, such as the one comparing it to tf2 and such, I compared it the game modes to TF2 because they are similar not because there copied. Just because a game has a capture point or escort mode doesnt mean its copied them from everyother game which has ever had them, although linking the modes to a game which is very similar allows people to understand context and similarities between the game modes and other FPS. I know Empires is older and resultantly TF2 is newer although TF2 is also a lot more popular and linking it to that allow more people to understand the mod. One thing i didn’t know was that the escort mode was older i thought that was a relitively new addition
….
Thanks James
As usual any more questions/requests/suggestions Email me at [email protected]
“Inresponse to the comments about the sqaud system, i tested that quite extensivly with a friend of mine, and we found it useful. Although for the standard player who’s not clanned, lacks 3rd party voice software, and doesnt have a group of 3-4 other people who want to play Empires, won’t get the things out of it that you mentioned. IT does promote teamwork, although it doesnt force it upon you, if a game requires teamwork as i said earlier it forces it upon you rather than offers it as a juicy alternative.”
I’m glad you got a chance to try out empires with a friend. When I first started playing three years ago I had to make a reputation for myself as an experienced player before I could persuade teams to cooperate with me on the commander/team level, let alone a squad lead/squad level. I had it pretty easy because I would play on the servers that were mostly populated by new players like myself. I think once you can start working with people and see just how important TRUE teamwork is, coordination, executing roles and following/issuing orders, you’ll get hooked on the game.
I really like how Empires doesn’t necessarily force teamwork on players, but makes it absolutely necessary in challenging games, and rewards it generously in less challenging matches. If you can coordinate a vehicle attack with multiple tanks and guide your squad mates through a maze of turrets and mines and manage to destroy the objective there’s no better rush. When you can turn the entire tide of a battle by instructing your teammates how to execute a certain maneuver and work with each other towards a shared goal, that is the most satisfying part of this game.
Empires doesn’t force you to play with your team, but if you want to win the game, to trump all the enemy confronts you with, you will have to get creative and lead.
Regaurdless, its still a review. With some mods, its hard to cover EVERYTHING without overloading the reader with info. Sometimes you gotta leave stuff out. :/
But, still a good first review
Without giving direct references to the comments and main article;
‘Good players should get discounts on vehicles’- They do, they get wages for each point they receive. These can only be spent on vehicles, and are used in preference to team resources.
TF2 is quite a bit newer then empires. The way the article was written seemed to imply empires copied; especially with the escort map! That’s been in empires for years!
Otherwise, good work in getting a lot of the gameplay from a short playtime!
it’s great seeing so much response to a single article!
even if it is mixed views, thanks for visiting our site!
“The Grenadier is closely linked to the soldier with its RPG and only proper anti infantry weapon being a pistol”
please, fix this
he has also mortar (anti infantry/building/vehicle weapon)
that is also proper anti infantry weapon.