Battle Realms, the first product from Liquid Entertainment, has style in spades--everything about it is slick, and it's noteworthy for that reason alone, as well as for many others. It's a martial-arts-themed real-time strategy game featuring dozens of great-looking units from four unique factions, impressive graphical effects, and an innovative resource model. It has a polished, attractive presentation, an open-ended campaign, and several good multiplayer modes. Battle Realms does have a few gameplay issues that diminish some of its strategic appeal, as the action can prove to be difficult to manage. But it's still a very worthwhile experience despite these things and should provide many hours of enjoyment for all kinds of real-time strategy players. The setting and characters of the game are clearly inspired by some of Hong Kong's most spectacular martial arts films--particularly the work of director/choreographer Tsui Hark--as well as some of Japan's action-packed comics and animated films, like the gory and stylish Ninja Scroll. The incredible fight sequences featured in last year's film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are also a good frame of reference for what you can expect from the battles in Battle Realms. Nothing is mundane in the game's fictional Far East-like world--even simple peasants can fight as trained martial artists should the need arise. All the game's various units and characters don't just stand adjacent to each other and hack away, as in most other real-time strategy games. Instead, they'll attack with a variety of moves and techniques and put on quite a show in the process. Thanks to the game's beautifully animated fully 3D units, not to mention the attractive terrain graphics and the overall detail found in the game, Battle Realms certainly looks impressive.

Peasants are the basic and important unit in Battle Realms

True to its source of inspiration, combat in Battle Realms can be quite chaotic. You actually have little control over your units besides being able to move them about (you can make them run by double-clicking), order them to attack, and initiate their special abilities if they have any. It's surprising that you can't do more with your units. They're very autonomous--they'll automatically rush to attack nearby foes, prioritize threats properly, and even switch between ranged and melee attacks as necessary. The pathfinding in the game is great--tell your units to go somewhere, and they will, stopping to fight any enemies along the way. But you can't set your units in formations and must instead move them as a rabble (though the rabble moves at the speed of the slowest unit in the group); and the pacing of the combat can be so fast that you'll just have to wait and see whether your forces survive. It can be very difficult to pull units out of battle, as they will seem to keep trying to lurch back into the fray. Also, since the game's units are large and tend to spread out when they fight, it can be all the more difficult to keep track of everything that's happening in a big battle, since it won't all fit onscreen.

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The Conquerors Expansion also introduced various new gameplay features and tweaks, including the new game modes Defend the Wonder, King of the Hill and Wonder Race. Additional maps, some based on real life geographic locations, and new winter and tropical terrain textures were included. In-game, infantry are able to garrison in battering rams, protecting the infantry while increasing the ram's speed and attack, while ships are able to form formations for more effective fighting. Micromanagement is made easier, by an improved scripted Artificial Intelligence of villagers and siege weapons. Villagers will now commence automatically gathering resources, if they build resource gathering sites, while siege onagers will not fire if their attack is likely to harm friendly units. Additionally, an in-game option has been added to allow the game to automatically replenish farms after they are exhausted. Chat commands are introduced, in order to communicate more effectively with allied computer players.

A castle in middle age.

The Conquerors Expansion adds four additional single player campaigns. These are based on Attila the Hun's rise to power, Moctezuma's defense against Hernán Cortés and the adventures of El Cid. The fourth campaign, "Battles of the Conquerors," is actually a group of unrelated single scenarios, each based on a significant historical battle. These include the Battle of Agincourt, the saga of Erik the Red, and the Battle of Hastings, among others. DOWNLOAD HERE: CD1

The Age of Kings focuses on building towns, gathering resources, creating armies, and destroying enemy units and buildings. Players conquer rival towns and empires as they advance their own civilization through four "Ages": the Dark Age, the Feudal Age, the Castle Age, and the Imperial Age, reminiscent of the Renaissance—a 1000 year timeframe. Progressing to a new Age unlocks new units, structures and technologies, but players must pay a sum of resources and construct certain buildings before advancing. Players choose to play as one of 13 civilizations split into four architectural styles, West European, Central European, Middle Eastern, and Far Eastern, that determine building appearance in-game. The civilizations have varying strengths and weaknesses with regards to economics, technology, and battle, and each has access to a different, very powerful "Unique Unit". To add variety, each civilization has a set of soundbites in its native language that are uttered by units when selected and instructed to perform a task. Civilian units, called "villagers", are used to gather resources. These resources can be used to train units, construct buildings, and research technologies, among other things. The game offers four types of resources: food, wood, gold, and stone. Food is obtained by hunting animals, gathering berries, harvesting livestock, farming, and fishing. Wood is gathered by chopping down trees, gold is obtained from either gold mines or trade, and stone is collected from stone mines. Villagers require checkpoints, typically depository buildings, where they can store gathered resources.Each civilization can purchase upgrades that increase the rate of gathering these resources. Players who construct a special building, the market, may acquire or sell resources for gold. Market price fluctuate with every transaction.

A Celtic player in the Feudal Age.

There are five campaigns in The Age of Kings, containing historically-based scenarios such as Genghis Khan's invasion of Eurasia, Barbarossa's Crusade, or Saladin's defence of the Holy Land. In the Joan of Arc and William Wallace campaigns, the player can control a unit based on its namesake. DOWNLOAD HERE: CD1

Honestly, I always feel as if I have to explain that bit, even if 99% of the readers here already feel the same way. Anyway, the most important part of Grand Theft Auto III is the gameplay. For those who haven't ever played the series (GTA1 and GTA 2 on PC and PlayStation), Grand Theft Auto III is a hybrid game comprising driving, shooting, exploring, and in the truest sense, role-playing.

Players start off as a nameless criminal, who in the midst of a bank robbery, is double-crossed by his girlfriend, shot, and left for dead. As the "kid," "friend," or whatever your latest boss decides to refer to you as, you escape from the police through a mysterious high-level hit-and-run, and begin life again with the help of your friend 8-Ball and the Italian Mafia. From there, the game leads players through an odyssey of non-linear missions for various factions of organized crime, from the Italian to the Japanese mafia and on. The 3D world of Liberty City is on a scale that's truly epic, consisting of three large urban areas, the industrial, commercial and suburban districts, each with appropriate architecture, landscapes, and aggressive, distinctive AI. What makes Grand Theft Auto III so different than other games in the series is the volume of characters, cut-scenes, and story imbedded in nearly every mission, large or small. Players find that their missions are packed with characters who are acted out at a professional level, and who perhaps sound more far more realistic than their simplistically visual caricatures reveal. The game actually does have a beginning, middle and end, too. Players can choose missions from telephones like before, or they can be paged like before, but most often, there are central characters whose missions drive the story, and whose missions tell the story, too. Thus, players find that in amongst the throng of distracting missions and the humungous landscape that must be traversed, there is a central focus, and it's there when they're ready. DOWNLOAD HERE: Part1 Part2 Part3 Part4 Part5 Part6 Part7 Part8 Part9