Games - Title: Empire (11 result(s))

First came Midwinter… and then the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Whether you see a causality in this sequence of events or not – the illegitimate child of these two followed soon enough, and it was called Ashes of Empire. From the (at the time very much current) situation of the former Soviet Union, the game takes its scenario: A large country, a major military has collapsed under its own economic weight. Its former republics are plunging into anarchy, and not the good kind. Armed former military units, now turned into modern-day highwaymen, are roaming the countries, leaving a trail of fear and suffering among the already poor and underfed population whereever their aimless plundering takes them. Only some local administrative structures can still uphold at least a bit of order.

Reviewing games belonging to genres which are governed by very strong conventions is not much fun. All too often, you fall back to just going through the motions, performing a mental checklist. Which, not incidentally, is one of the main reasons I rarely dive into shoot 'em ups. It's not a seen-one-seen-'em-all genre, but it is sort of discussed-one-discussed-'em-all. Still, there are some which simply shouldn't go unmentioned. This can be for various reasons, like general popularity, coming from a noteworthy company or even indeed doing something a little different.

In the strategy genre, there is usually a distinction between high level strategy and low level tactics. Some games do one of them right, some excel at the other. Consolidating both levels into one game rarely works: It is the interface between the two which is hard to get right. One major aspect is that none of the levels may take up too much time, because otherwise, the players will forget about what happened on the other. How does this fare with Cyber Empires?

Empire inspired a whole generation of programmers to do similar games. The concept is simple, yet addicting: Start with one city, build up an army and conquer the whole (unknown) world. That's it. Plain and simple. Maybe you've had this many times before, but certainly not often that well done!

A strategy game set in the D&D universe. A sequel of Stronghold? No - Fantasy Empires follows the futuristic footsteps of Cyber Empires. On the surface, not a lot has changed in the gameplay: Competing armies are strategically shuffled around a world map... until they meet, which is when the games zooms into a real-time battle screen on which the player can even control one soldier himself.

Build and manage all the complex, interconnected operations of a modern skyscraper.

You are the owner and the general manager of your building, which you create from nothing, shaping and sculpting it by adding offices here, coffee shops there, until it's a teeming edifice of commerce and intrigue. The challenges of SimTower grow with each storey you add on: Each of your Simtenants, be they office workers, residents, or shoppers at your stores, has places to go, and their time is not something they waste calmly.

This one is a Windows 3.1 turn-based strategic game in which your goal is to dominate the universe wiping out any opponents. It allows for up to 12 players (human or AI).

The game is far from being visually attractive, yet it may be quite absorbing. It does not contain anything like a technology tree, races, spaceship building, diplomacy, espionage, planet micromanagement or a lot of other things we got used to due to bigger space-based strategy games. What you mostly do is choose which stars to colonize, how many of your ships to send in which directions or garrison.

On earth, an experiment with the moonstone the Avatar got on his last adventure goes awry and carries him, along a professor and a reporter, to the lost Valley of Eodon, where dinosaurs and humans live together.

To lead a life like Hugh Hefner someday… doesn’t this cross most men’s minds? Well, in this game from 1997 we get the chance to give it a virtual try. Too bad, that you will have to start at the veeery bottom. Namely as a bank robber, who is hunted by the FBI and whom his chums have cheated of his share of the loot. So we hide in some dump in the desert, where we meet lovely Lula, who is willing to help us, if we can turn her into a heroine of the porn industry (which girl with a bust size of 50+ does not dream of this kind of things?!?).