As far as names go, Empire Earth is a pretty darn good one. It manages to invoke a sense of power and might and even includes a lovely spot of alliteration. The developers, Stainless Steel Studios, may not be as grandly named as their debut PC RTS offering, but at least they know what they’re doing.

EE spans 500,000 years of history, from the ancient times right up to now. It even dips its toe into the vast creative expanse that is the future, dragging back towering robot units and futuristic buildings. It is, in fact, entirely possible to set a game whereby your units consist of battle hardened super robots that fire lasers, fighting some puny stone age cave men wielding clubs. Wearing nothing but leaves as a sign of modesty.

As RTS’ go, the developers have managed to cover pretty much every eventuality. From Ancient Rome, Medieval times, Napoleonic Europe, the colonisation of the Americas, World War Two, the future and alternative realities. There is such an awe defying magnitude of settings for RTS games, that there is probably one out there that has you control a kingdom of ants and lead them to glory over the fabled picnic hamper. Empire Earth realises this, says “screw that” and decides to include every single option in one game. This is either a pure master stroke of genius or a display of baffling incompetence, as one game tries to juggle too many aspects, thus becoming the master of none.

EE succeeds for the most part, the game is fun and varied and there are so many nations, civilizations and units to wrap your head round, that you will be playing this game for a long time to come. It plays like Age of Empires, except 3D with a moveable camera. Archers counter infantry, spearmen counter horses, Nazi Panzer tanks counter less developed American tanks and robots counter everything. For a game with so many combat possibilities, it is remarkably well balanced. There isn’t much to say other than “it works”. Sure, you won’t find the control and command intricacies of other, more detailed RTS offerings. Nor will you find the focus and sheer dogged determination of other games, to be the best as one particular time period. But EE is an ambitious, large and most importantly, a perfectly playable strategy game. If that didn’t sound much like praise you’re right, it wasn’t. But it wasn’t criticism either. The game is just that – functional, yet never excelling when it comes to gameplay.

This game is held back by several things, the first of which being the atrocious AI. Your computer controlled opponents manage the God-like feat of being able to exactly pinpoint your location on the map. That perimeter wall you were building? Forget that, the enemy will know a way around it even if you don’t. There’s no scouting around and stumbling through the fog of war to try and find each other, the AI will come for you. This leads to hilariously awful situations where the computer’s units march in a long snake-like line towards your base, they are frankly devoid of strategy and challenge.

The graphics are a bit “ehhh” as well. EE is one of those early strategy games which decided to use new fangled 3D graphics, instead of the traditional 2D more often used in the RTS genre. As computers back then didn’t have the graphical prowess they do now, we have been left with a mess of sheer awful looking 3D. Contrasting 2D RTS games released at the same time, which look amazing even now. The sound is however, above average. The music fits the tone of all 500,000 years of history combined, which is actually quite impressive and the sound effects are great too.

Empire Earth is a functional and ambitious strategy game. It might blow you away by sheer numbers, but the all important detail and focus that an RTS game requires goes out the window. It is fun yes, but not exactly refined. It doesn’t do much for the genre; it’s just kind of ‘there’. Play it if you want, or not, you won’t be missing out. Then again you won’t be left feeling disappointed either, Empire Earth is mediocre, playable, fun and bad all at the same time. Knock yourself out.