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Finally!! This is great news because, seriously, music production in the latest blockbuster games is truly spectacular. Hear the latest Shogun 2: Total War soundtrack and it's frankly Hollywood on Windows!

Eve Online and the Total War games offer a deep and varied challenge.

I have been playing Rome Total War, and it's a turn-based game until you come to the battles, which you don't have to play if you don't want to. I think it's a nice mix of turn-based and realtime. As for other turn-based games, I haven't played it myself, but I've heard a lot off good things about Europa Universalis.

The series on Total War on the History Channel, where they use game engines to recreate epic battles. This seems to be a similar idea, except they're turning the mock ups into actual development scenes (before shooting them, redigitizing, and adding super special effects.) and not really using the engine for any sort of finished project.

I hope ideas like that start becoming more commonplace. I like the idea of using 3-D digital storyboarding in realtime, it sounds pretty awesome. It'll be exciting to see if this turns into more of a production tool that ends up getting used in movie and not just in the development process.

Found at forums here:
http://www.totalwar.com/community/rome.htm
So community acts:
http://www.petitiononline.com/rtw/

Even a small company should consider a policy on this before they put up forums or blog/response. Only realizing later that customers don't like their comments deleted is poor planning!

Maybe Microsoft and AoE3 are better, juicier journalistic targets, but Rome: Total War attempts to make a larger overture toward historical correctness.

It did fall a bit short, though. Most notable was the inclusion of three separate Roman factions which fight alongside each other until a civil war erupts among them. While giving the Romans three factions, versus every other nation's one, allows the Empire to spread swiftly across the map, the historical accuracy of having three factions came under harsh scrutiny.

This (and other issues) led to the formation of an independent mod group which released Rome: Total Realism, which alters the normal R:TW game in order to enhance the historical accuracy of the game. It's a very popular mod, and most people who use the mod like it so well that they don't play the unmodded game afterwards.

Does R:TW/RTR educate? Yes, some. It does teach you about how war was waged around 200 BC, including the use of mixed forces, the devastating power and the horrid weakness of the phalanx, city siege, and the importance of soldier morale on the battlefield. You also learn (some) geography since the entire game is spent poring over a map of Europe and the ancient Near East. As for the grander history lesson, it's difficult for a game to include a textbook historical message that really sticks with the player. While R:TW does make occasional references to important historical events, and it does provide several scenarios which recreate major battles of the day, there's no contiguous historical lesson present.

Your best best would be either RTS's (I recommend Rome: Total War ) or an MMORPG ( Everquest 2 or World Of Warcraft are both fine choices.

I play a video game called Rome: Total War . In that game, I control armies with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of men. Those men march across open fields armed with swords, spears, bows/arrows, etc. Then, they kill each other in massive violent battles. I can actually see hundreds of dead bodies on the field when I am finished with a battle. When I capture an enemy city, I am given the option of Enslaving Half of that cities populace, or killing 90% of the populace in an effort to maintain control.

My game, which I love, is rated T (for Teen). Nobobody complains about the violence in my game. Why are you complaining about the violence in GTA?

MMORPG. It's of a contradiction in terms, because under the current paradigm, increasing the scope of a MMO game reduces the amount of game that is actually available to any given player. For several years I've watched new MMO releases with anticipation, hoping that someone will find a way to break the flawed mold. It hasn't happened, and I've given up hope that it will happen in the near future. Creating real game content in the current MMO paradigm just isn't cost-effective.

Give me a real RPG anytime, with actual story and some way to empathize with the characters in a meaningful way. A game where your decisions have some tangible effect other than "Ooh, this sword gives me +3 damage". The only recent RPG I've played that is worthy of the name is Vampire: Bloodlines, IMO one of the best games of 2004.

Powerleveling? Treadmills? My god, people! Those terms should not be complementary to anything pretending to be a real game. The only thing that current MMO games have going for them is social interaction, and even in that respect they fall somewhere under the quality of IRC.

How do I know this? My roommates play World of Warcraft. One of them has been playing since the release, and has levelled to the high forties. My other roommate just bought it. What do I hear when they're playing at the same time? "Goddamnit, this is so boring when you guys are all too high level to play with me!" Their screens look the same... usually a perspective of a couple orcs hacking at a large spider-like thing for a while until it dies. It's not a game, it's a screensaver with slightly complicated clicking patterns!

Get off the MMORPG treadmill. Buy some of the incredibly good single-player games that have recently been released, like Half-Life 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, or Rome: Total War if you're a strategy fan. I have a feeling that it's going to be a very looong time before MMO games have even the potential for fun factor and immersion of high-quality PC games.

The MMO genre is only a few years old, is based on incremental improvements, and has longer development cycles than conventional design. Worse, evolutionary considerations for MMO games favor the least common denominator of complexity and involvement. It should come as no surprise that they still suck, even though I keep hoping otherwise.

I think this is the same series in its US franchise form.

Anyone interested, the link is here. A slightly critical review of the series here.

It wasn't a bad programme, but you were rather at the mercy of the TV studio contestants, some of whom clearly had no idea about about basic tactics (ie. it was clear they had never played anything like it before) or the time period in question (some very questionable uses of shield walls in the face of cavalry kept cropping up IIRC).

Total War (there's Shogun, Medieval, and soon Roman) gives you control over battalians, much like a field general, but once they engage, you have to sit and watch what happens. Some retreat, and you can't order them back, some will get too much adrenaline and keep attacking, even if you ask them to fall back, and it isn't total death... eventually the losers will start running, and, unless you have a great deal of horses, they usually escape. Truely a fantastic RTS. Definately worth trying.

Sorry, I plan on playing Rome: Total War during that time.

Of course, it'll be delayed too.

Yep, and they even turned the game into a pretty good TV programme, too: http://www.totalwar.com/time.htm

Check out Medieval Total War.

This is a great game - you can choose any one of a number of European and Muslim countries, and guide it through the middle ages. When the Muslims send Imams to scout out your country and convert the populace, you can assassinate them. You can also declare crusades, marry off your daughters for political gain, conquer others, and get trade monopolies. A good time.

Also, the original MechCommander is fun. You defeat enemy mechs in combat, and sometimes you can salvage their carcases and rebuild them (get the MadCat!). You can completely customize the weapons on each mech, and can make up your own strike force configurations with no limitations (except weight).

Theres a new BBC show called Time COmmanders that doesn't actually focus on video games but uses a game engine as a method to allow contestants to
re-enact historic battles. The BBC don't have a page on it (figures , battle isn't politically correct so the vegan lentil eaters who do their
web site wouldn't be seen dead writing about it) but there is a page run by the company who did the software:

Total War

In the UK, the BBC has a lot of good science programs. BBC2 more really, because of the connections with the Open University, but there's also some other interesting things on. It's a long way from being a dedicated science channel, but it does a better job then any other channel I've seen, even the ones on Cable/Satellite.

Science Shack is good, with Adam Hart-Davis and his enthusiam for odd and fun experiments. Time Commanders is something I should mention, even if that's more military history, but only because I enjoy strategy games, and the idea of letting contestants take one side of an famous battles is good. If only they'd do a head-to-head version too :). The Human Mind and other documentary series like that are interesting, and deal with a lot of biology stuff. The Sky at Night is the longest running program in the world, and is interesting if you're into astronomy. Then there's also Rough Science, which is where a group of scientists have to complete tasks such as panning gold or building a generator whilst stuck out in the middle of nowhere with little resources. And Hollywood Science I like too.

Now if only they'd take all of these and all the rest and stick them on one channel for convenience :)

Could it handle the destructible and climbable walls, though? Also, I'm not sure it'd scale to quite that many troops. The Total War series also has an engine with most of the right components to do a Helm's Deep simulation, but as far as I know, it still would be unable to handle troops on the walls, or ladders for climbing the walls.

Helm's Deep in War 3? Ha! The engine can only handle a couple 100 units at best. You would need something like the engine from the Total War games www.totalwar.com to have a battle that felt anything like Helm's Deep.

The Total War games can get into the tens of thousands and still look pretty cool. The battlefields are huge as well. Check out: http://www.totalwar.com/

All those people griping about RTS games being stagnant just haven't looked hard enough.

Brian Ellenberger

Then, look outside of the US! If you haven't yet tried the games in the made-in-England Total War series (Shogun, and the upcoming Medieval), they're worth a look. Creative Assembly has managed to design a refreshing combination of both real-time and turn-based elements.

All they did (showing some of that wonderful Blizzard Creativity) was take the main character from Diablo, and put it in the middle of Warcraft. The trouble is, the heros are so essential to the game, and so hideously overpowered the rest of the characters are reduced to sideshows.

Warcraft III is designed to be a quick and dirty game where the fights are over in 30 minutes or less. Gone is any hope of a epic back-and-forth fight, it's a lets get the game finished as quick as possible.

The first person to lose their hero has lost the game in 90% of the cases, because their hero is out of the game for 2 minutes, while the other hero is running around levelling up and getting more items.

In order to get the game over as quick as possible, the game is exaggerated - if you lose, you come into the next fight at a disadvantage. If you win, you are more likely to win the next time, because the game is adjusting the hero's strengths. Add to that the Upkeep rules and the game is saying "You will play me this way or not at all - I will not let you deviate from the designers vision"

Strategy games should not do this - It's like playing a game of chess where when you capture the oponents pieces you get to put them on your side. Fun ? Maybe once or twice for the low-attention span crowd, but it's not strategy.

Personally, I'd look to a company that doesn't have a history of screwing over the open source community, or trying to steal your personal details from your system registry - say Creative Assembly, who will be releasing the latest Total War game in the near future - Medieval Total War which is more a computerised table top wargame then anything else.

This is to say, it's ugly. You control literally hundreds of troops on a big playing field. You have to plan your attack or defense well, because your troops grow tired the further they march. They grow disheartened if they see too many buddies get killed. And most importantly, they don't react the instant you tell them to go somewhere! You'd be surprised how important this little delay can be - the hyperactive teenager can't get his troops to move any faster than the methodical Prussian tactician.

There are lots of elements of victory. Troops attacking downhill have the advantage. You can rally your troops by making sure that reinforcements are waiting behind their lines (fleeing soldiers tend to regroup if they see lots of friendlies). If you put your general in harms' way, he can get killed or turn tail and flee, usually fatal blunders. You can surround and crush an enemy excursion; but if you miss the timing, they can easily break through and wreak havoc on your lines.

Be warned though: it's slow, and it can be dull and frustrating. I find that figuring out why I won or why I lost is at least as interesting as fighting the actual battle.