Praetorians game protective formation
Rather than dragging boxes around your troops, Praetorians' troops are pre-grouped, Shogun-style, with you being able to split formations up as and when you see fit. Moreover, the battles themselves are based on real events, one for instance has you guiding a small Roman detachment through the mountains to outflank a barbarian army - perhaps the first ever documented use of Special Forces behind enemy lines. The storyline is important, in that although the campaign is a linear one, you play throughout the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, controlling each of the game's three races in turn. Because of the engine, however, we can zoom in for cut-scenes and show the individual faces on the characters, which will drive the story forward." "Which is why we have a fixed perspective. "We wanted the game to feel familiar to people," says Inigo Vinos of Pyro Studios. It’s a curious thing to actually create a stunning-looking 3D game and not allow those that play it to swoop through it like an uncle at a wedding wielding a new camcorder. In fact, like C&C, you’re stuck with the same view -except of course that your legions of Romans, Egyptians or Barbarians, move about as naturally as they might in the most realistic first-person shooter. For instance you can't spin the camera, nor can you zoom in or out on the countless dozens of troops. While Praetorians looks utterly 3D and indeed is, it doesn’t actually play in 3D. "Ergo, Mr Maker of Shoes, 3D!" 3d Or Not 3d.? "Hang on there Shoemaker," you interject, "If you look closely you’ll see Praetorians is actually a 3D game." Oh, and you can tell, can you? "Oh yes," I hear you say, "look at the little men running around, they seem to be made up of straight lines, suggesting they are thoughtfully constructed out of hundreds of thousands of little computer generated triangle-shaped sticklebricks." Well. Never fear, say I, Praetorians is almost here. Now that the big guns of realtime strategy - Westwood and Ensemble Studios, responsible for C&C and Age Of Empires respectively - have both embraced 3D graphics, can we now proclaim the sprite-based 2D graphics engine dead? I for one sincerely hope not, but you have to admit, we haven’t seen a killer isometric game for some time, despite the unending popularity of sprite-based graphics in games like The Sims. In the battle of the RTSs next year, Praetorians is undoubtedly bringing up the 'Shogun with Romans’ side and it looks as though it will be taking Age Of Mythology on in a head-to-head battle for the hearts and minds of strategy enthusiasts everywhere. The fortresses in Praetorians are huge and intimidating, but in gameplay terms the real innovation is to turn fortress walls into actual battlefields, i Deploying your forces from an assault tower is quite a sight, as is seeing vour tower crumble to ashes under the flames of defenders’s fire arrows. That’s a whole new area of gamepley that’s only starting to be Then there are fortress sieges and assaults. Instead, like Shogun, it’s played purely as a tactical war sim. What immediately sets Praetorians apart from the bulk of RTS titles, is that in the 'to dig or not to dig’ dilemma, the game has gone for the lesser 'not to dig’ option with a distinct lack of any resource management.
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This 3D RTS title from the makers of the Commandos series focuses on the political machinations of the emerging Roman Empire, and players will get the opportunity to command the forces of not only the Romans, but also the religiously fanatical Egyptians and the ferocious Gauls. Like we’ve never heard that one before, but in the case of Pyro Studios’ Praetorians, we’re inclined to think he might have a point.
#Praetorians game protective formation Pc#
"Praetorians will set a new benchmark in strategy-based PC games," claims Nick Earl, VP for development for Eidos US.