Empire Earth

The Good
The campaigns bring life to the history that you only read in books and articles. There's absolutely no end to variety as you not only play through the scenarios, but have the ability to customise your own in the editor. Even the random maps make for a nice break from the campaigns. And finally the tutorial is very helpful, although it doesn't teach you how to make tributes to another sect. The Russian Campaign is perhaps very creative for a hypothetical world domination by political extremists, then time travel fixes that.

The graphics are very well textured, the units smoothly animated even for polygonal voxelated actors and the camera pans well across the map. The unit, structure and ambient sounds are crisp and keep you aware of what is happening as you play. And of course there is a good selection of units, though you find yourself playing rock-paper-scissors (shock-piercing-arrows) against opponents in the earlier epochs.

The Bad
The campaigns could have done with better historical accuracy, especially the alternate history where the Germans won World War II, though that is forgivable. The use of prophets really makes playing scenarios far too easy.

The annoyances abundant in the game are the music tracks which sound very samey and don't really match all the epochs. Then there's the ever-irritating "We're under attack!" warning, which goes on and on. And some sound effects we could do without are the dying sounds of primitive period units which sound like puking. Leaving it at that, there's not that much to put you off playing at all.

The Bottom Line
You may think it's all been done before in the Age of Empires series, but Empire Earth's collection of all epochs in one game is ambitious for its time. It's really brought out the best of historical-themed strategy games. Audio isn't perfect, but just enough to make the game lively. After you play through each and every scenario the game has to offer, you'll be hungry for more.