THE HISTORY CHANNEL: Great Battles of Rome (PSP)
- Publisher:
- Black Bean
- Developer:
- Slitherine Software
- Release Date:
- 15.06.2007
- Number of players:
- n/a
- Type:
- Action
- Reality Factor:
- Realistic
- Real Time:
- Real Time
- Map Size:
- Local
- Management:
- Minor Economy
- Combat Status:
- Militaristic
- Age:
- Ancient Times
1 movie
We play THE HISTORY CHANNEL: Great Battles of Rome...
Now here’s a genre we could probably have never imagined until a few years ago; the ‘portable, fully-licensed, 3D, real-time-strategy game with video content’. As an exercise in demonstrating just how far portable gaming has come in the last few years, Slitherine’s new History Channel tie-in certainly fits the bill, and attempts to bring a full RTS featureset to the small screen. As admirable as that is, unfortunately it seems that all of the lessons to be learned from titles such as Advance Wars and Field Commander have been thrown out of the window, and the resulting experience is unfortunately devoid of any true tactical entertainment.
As you would expect from a Television channel tie-in, the most immediately noticeable aspect of Great Battles of Rome is the emphasis on multimedia. Containing over 50 minutes of full-resolution video from the History Channel’s various series devoted to the tactics of Roman soldiers, the little UMD is certainly interesting from a historical point of view, if nothing else. At times it leans a little close to the ‘edutainment’ category for its own good though, and ends up straddling the twin roles of knowledge and entertainment without delivering either to a satisfactory degree.
Your job within the game is to play the role of the Roman empire (another campaign from the Celts point of view unlocks later down the line), commanding your squadron of troops throughout the great battles of the empire. Starting with the humble task of settling a dispute between tearaway farmers, the skirmishes soon scale up to include vast and open battlefields, as the Roman empire fights its way through the 100 most important moments in its fairly glorious history. Of course fitting all of the detail and scale necessary onto the 4-inch PSP screen is a difficult task to undertake, and one which has only been met with a semi-satisfactory implementation.
Battles essentially take place on two screens. The first is the army camp, which allows you to recruit new members for each of your squads, upgrade armour, weaponry and unit types, and balance the amount of soldiers that you wish to carry into battle. This really is as straightforward as it sounds, and each progressive skirmish awards the player with more money to spend before embarking to the next in the series. There is no room for devolution from the set path here, each battle must be undertaken in a linear order whilst moving through the campaign; every enemy force must be defeated before allowing any progression.
The battles themselves comprise of two stages. The first task is to position your various fighting squads on the battlefield, and issue some fairly basic orders as to how you expect them to behave. Each unit is represented as an icon on the terrain, and careful positioning is needed to avoid any overlapping, with the game refusing to proceed if even the slightest amount of pixels is encroaching on a neighbouring unit. Elevation and terrain are key aspects, as with any war simulation, and good tactics can make each battle a relative pushover. Positioning a set of archers on high ground, for example, is common sense rather than keeping low to the ground and at the front of a spearhead.
Once the tactical lineup has been finalised, you simply advance to the battle itself and watch how your setup plays out in real-time. If you find your units behaving erratically or an attack panning out incorrectly, you can take control of individual squads and give them positional or attack orders in the midst of battle; but unfortunately doing so is tremendously fiddly with the limited PSP interface, and often it will be easier to let the battle finish as it started and then replay with a different set of tactics.
Compounding the overly simplistic action is the rather murky graphical engine, which simply attempts to pack too much scale onto the handheld screen, with the end result being a rather confusing and blurred mess of a battle. Since watching the armies clash should be the pay-off for the tactical planning in the previous stage, this somewhat undermines the experience as whole. Perhaps a more abstract view of the battle would have been better, and the traditional 3D real-time viewpoint left to more capable home consoles and PC’s.
Of course none of this would matter if Great Battles of Rome was fun to play, but unfortunately the simplistic tactics and poorly implemented interface get in the way of any real sense of satisfaction. Each battle becomes a chore of lining up units in a formation, hitting the play button to view the battle, and then repeating as necessary until a suitable tactical approach is evident. Whilst the video segments are entertaining, there aren’t enough of them to recommend a purchase to history fans, and the educational aspects fall short of being worthwhile. A nice idea, poorly executed.
Top Game Moment: Lining up your units, and then watching them get massacred on the field of battle.
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| This isn't a view that you'll see very often | Battles take place on an impressive scale |
As you would expect from a Television channel tie-in, the most immediately noticeable aspect of Great Battles of Rome is the emphasis on multimedia. Containing over 50 minutes of full-resolution video from the History Channel’s various series devoted to the tactics of Roman soldiers, the little UMD is certainly interesting from a historical point of view, if nothing else. At times it leans a little close to the ‘edutainment’ category for its own good though, and ends up straddling the twin roles of knowledge and entertainment without delivering either to a satisfactory degree.
Your job within the game is to play the role of the Roman empire (another campaign from the Celts point of view unlocks later down the line), commanding your squadron of troops throughout the great battles of the empire. Starting with the humble task of settling a dispute between tearaway farmers, the skirmishes soon scale up to include vast and open battlefields, as the Roman empire fights its way through the 100 most important moments in its fairly glorious history. Of course fitting all of the detail and scale necessary onto the 4-inch PSP screen is a difficult task to undertake, and one which has only been met with a semi-satisfactory implementation.
Battles essentially take place on two screens. The first is the army camp, which allows you to recruit new members for each of your squads, upgrade armour, weaponry and unit types, and balance the amount of soldiers that you wish to carry into battle. This really is as straightforward as it sounds, and each progressive skirmish awards the player with more money to spend before embarking to the next in the series. There is no room for devolution from the set path here, each battle must be undertaken in a linear order whilst moving through the campaign; every enemy force must be defeated before allowing any progression.
 |
 |
|
| 'Rome: Total War' this definitely isn't | Battles are played out in real-time |
The battles themselves comprise of two stages. The first task is to position your various fighting squads on the battlefield, and issue some fairly basic orders as to how you expect them to behave. Each unit is represented as an icon on the terrain, and careful positioning is needed to avoid any overlapping, with the game refusing to proceed if even the slightest amount of pixels is encroaching on a neighbouring unit. Elevation and terrain are key aspects, as with any war simulation, and good tactics can make each battle a relative pushover. Positioning a set of archers on high ground, for example, is common sense rather than keeping low to the ground and at the front of a spearhead.
Once the tactical lineup has been finalised, you simply advance to the battle itself and watch how your setup plays out in real-time. If you find your units behaving erratically or an attack panning out incorrectly, you can take control of individual squads and give them positional or attack orders in the midst of battle; but unfortunately doing so is tremendously fiddly with the limited PSP interface, and often it will be easier to let the battle finish as it started and then replay with a different set of tactics.
Compounding the overly simplistic action is the rather murky graphical engine, which simply attempts to pack too much scale onto the handheld screen, with the end result being a rather confusing and blurred mess of a battle. Since watching the armies clash should be the pay-off for the tactical planning in the previous stage, this somewhat undermines the experience as whole. Perhaps a more abstract view of the battle would have been better, and the traditional 3D real-time viewpoint left to more capable home consoles and PC’s.
 |
| Give your archers elevation and stick them at the back |
Of course none of this would matter if Great Battles of Rome was fun to play, but unfortunately the simplistic tactics and poorly implemented interface get in the way of any real sense of satisfaction. Each battle becomes a chore of lining up units in a formation, hitting the play button to view the battle, and then repeating as necessary until a suitable tactical approach is evident. Whilst the video segments are entertaining, there aren’t enough of them to recommend a purchase to history fans, and the educational aspects fall short of being worthwhile. A nice idea, poorly executed.
Top Game Moment: Lining up your units, and then watching them get massacred on the field of battle.
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Movie Trailer
Posted 02.04.07
Length 01:25 Views 785
