The Settlers: Rise Of An Empire (PC DVD) (Video Game)

Yep it's good looking and easy to play - so my 11 year old son loves this game If you are into games like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, Zoo tycoon 2, Supreme Commander, HomeWorld 2, Black & White 2, Jurasic Park: Operation Genesis, Age of [Empires] Mythology and Genesis Rising, as my son (11) certainly is, perhaps this game will appeal. He hasn't played any earlier 'Settlers' games, but really liked this one - he says the the towns are cheap to build and he mastered the game controls very easily (and even the training level was good). You build what looks like a 12th century Bavarian settlement, lots of trees and lakes amongst the attractive timber/stone buildings. You don't get many attacks by other groups, but my son builds 'castles' near the neighbours territories just in case, as he wants to keep his settlement looking nice. The game looks great as well with his highish spec AMD dual core/NVidia 7950 graphics card XP PC. On loading, the game took an age to update itself, and its run OK so far. My son insisted I review the game for him. He says: "It's really good, the controls are easy, and it's very easy to build things (which is most important). You can make custom games, and make the time go quicker. I like it when it snows, you can walk over frozen lakes, and if you keep your castle alive your person never dies". Some of the chat gets annoying, e.g. "a farmer has no cows" you are informed repeatedly when doing something else. There's more building than fighting (probably a more realistic scenario) than say 'Rome Total War', although both are rated 12+. As it's easy to play I'm also attracted to this game, but I prefer first person looters, like Thief III really. So if you like The Sims type games, with a bit of a historical slant and not that hard to play, give this game a go.

Looks great and strangely compelling to play, but... Plus points: 1. one of the best Intro's to a game I've seen - the detail and rendering are amazing. Also several cut scenes through-out the game are very well done. 2. Extremely detailed world. Developers have obviously taken a lot of care to produce a stunning and detailed world - fish in the lakes, crabs walking about, etc. Really makes it fun to play. 3. Something very satisfying about building up your settlement and watch your settlers go about their business. I guess like building a train set or flying a flight simulator - just building a nice settlement with content settlers is strangely addictive. 4. User Interface well laid out and very intuitive. Most people should be able to get going with the tutorial intro mission and common sense. Minus points: 1. Way too easy. No difficulty adjustment that I can find. Simply build up your settlement and you have content citizens and loads of cash. Even maps with less resources (e.g. desert maps) just means that it takes longer to build up your settlement. There's no awkwards decisions here with limited cash and not enough food to go around. I never had a problem feeding or providing everything the settlers need on any map. Apparently they go on strike if they're not happy, but I never saw this once. Sim City this ain't. 2. Combat is a bit of an afterthought. Attacks from enemies are few and far between and really means there's little point in building walls around your city. With a decent number of soldiers you'll have no problem with fending off any enemy attack. Also, taking over a territory is simply a case of attacking the outpost there. This is a tiny building with enough space for 6 soldiers and the outpost seems to offer the soldiers inside no protection. Hence they're easily overwhelmed by a small force. If you could upgrade the outpost up to a castle (just like Settlers I) and populate with a decent defence then things would be interesting. But as it is, there's no reason to bother defending your land - just take it back from the enemy should they (on the very rare occasion) attack you. Overall - combat needs a serious look for the next game - I appreciate that they're never going to compete with Age of Empires and those type of strategy franchises, but they need something more advanced and more difficult to master than this offering. Just way too easy for even mild fans of strategy games. 3. Some technical problems - needs a serious graphics card to play. My 512MB nVidia 7950GT was struggling in bits. Sreen scrolling is jerky, but that may have been also due to my 1GB RAM limitation (one of my memory sticks failed just as I was installing it). Also suffers from serious memory leakage. For the non-techno geeks out there, this means the game just continually grabs more and more of your computer memory the longer it plays. Eventually the game will crash, but you can predict the impending doom by the fact the your hard disk will start going mad about 5 mins before crash due to all memory swapping going on. I needed to restart the game about once every hour to avoid problems. The game actually says that it will run on 512MB of RAM but I seriously doubt that. Overall - I like it just for the satisfaction of building a settlement and watching everyone going about their business. Beautiful to watch and a very detailed world that the developers have taken a lot of time to create. With more difficult and finely balanced resource maps that made you seriously consider every move you make and *much* more attention to combat, this could have been a real classic. Nearly...

Best since number 2 I collect this series of games and i have to say this has been the best by far since settler 2 (still the best in my opinion). The graphics and music in this game are really good but unless you download the 1.1 patch before you play you will probably have problems with these. The single player missions are simple for the first 10 or so and then get challanging as you have to manage limited space and high demands for goods (wood is so annoying now you dont get forresters!. This one is less battle orientated than its collegues but to be honest I like that and you can still have a good fight should you desire. I think the worst thing Ive found about this one is the lack of mining operations you have to establish its just iron now. Overall, my best game of the year play this in between Bioshock!

Hey, I enjoyed it. There's three ways to play this game. Nobody seems to be touching on the multiplayer, which isn't my thing either, while most people are criticising the campaign mode, which I've played through to level 10 - and it's true it isn't difficult up until the teen levels, apparently. But there are also standalone and custom single player games, some of which will give you as close to a sandbox mode as you're going to get. I got a kick out of just building a sprawling community with lots of happy settlers. If that's your thing then this aspect alone will probably appeal to you but if you want a more competitive game then I can sympathise with the criticisms being aired here.

Bringing Back Memories This is the sixth incarnation in the settlers series. For those who have played earlier games such as the classic II and III versions, some things will seem strangely familiar - the miniature inhabitants of the settlers world planting crops, chopping trees and hunting animals - all are rendered in beautiful detail. The scenery is lush and detailed accompanied by excellent background music and a great new addition - the changing of seasons as trees change colour and the snow begins to fall. Settlers games always paid great attention to wildlife that hops, flies and runs around their beautiful world. Unfortunately it is the invertebrate variety that has returned to haunt the settlers. YES, you have guessed correctly - this world is full of BUGS. Not the crawling kind, but the ones that freeze games,stop your average settler in his tracks and generally make you want to chuck the computer out the window. As of old, this settlers games is full of them, particularly ones associated with trying to open previously saved games. My advice - a beautifully drawn and potentially addictive game, but don't buy it yet. Wait for at least the third, fourth, fifth patch?