Age of Mythology – Review

Well if you’ve played their previous offerings Age of Empires and other publishers wargames/RTS games then you’ll have nothing really new to greet you, jump right in and play the campaign or go for a single player map, or alternatively you can go do multi-player. Its all out war as in the previous offerings, but with bits of myth thrown in to produce a new title. Play as the Norse, The ancient Greeks, or the Ancient Egyptians, get extra bits for worshiping gods and off you go to decimate or be decimated.

Graphics:
There’s nothing really all that new on offer here, it’s all sort of the same as previous but with different units. There are of course the god-powers that can rain meteors down upon an area or whatever, and there are the legendary monsters etc. There’s nothing all that bad about the graphics, they’re mostly clear and all show exactly what they’re supposed to, and the buildings aren’t limited to planting them in a grid as such, so there’s more freedom over town design than many other war games have had to offer previously. There’s all the expected stuff on the minimap as well with blips, sonar pings, l’il building icons and other more humdrum graphics.

Sound:
The game has very appropriate soundtracks playing while you do your thing, making it all nice and atmospheric, and there are area specific chops and chimes and such, no disappointments here, everything in it’s place: sounds of combat where fighting occurs.

Gameplay:
Well what’s to add to the RTS/wargame control system of a million other titles before hand? It’s all pretty straight forwards. Use what you start with to collect resources, like wood, gold and food, then use your building units to build structures which allow you to produce other units using some of the resources at hand. Get enough tough guys together and off you go to show the opposing forces what you’re made of, or not. There are little things which help in the form of god-powers which can give problems to the enemy, aid your units, or do other strange things which can all help, but basically it comes down to your forces against another set of forces.

Multi-Player:
The game offers a pretty straight forwards multi-player type of affair, with the standard pick your map, choose your people type and then set it to go with a quickstart and it’ll seek someone out, or you can go and select your opponent/map. All standard fare really.

Female Gamer Angle:
Um, war with mainly male characters, though some of the heroes and heroines you can summon are female, but its all about war and being the best, so the multiplayer thingy seemed to be flooded with male players, with names like damachine. Apart from that it’s as female friendly as any other war game is really.

Conclusion:
Well what can you add to an already flooded genre? It has all the standard bells and whistles of most other RTS/wargames, with a few of its own to add the mythology angle, but it felt just like too many other Age of.. and War.. and Command and.. and all the things gone before. At best I suppose I could say its pretty much at the top of the pile of RTS type games because it’s the newest. There was nothing really here to keep my interest beyond playing it long enough to get well acquainted with the campaign, multiplayer, and single player modes though, enough to know how samey it seemed.

Review by Ruth