The eras you progress through have also been chopped down, and there are now only five transitions between banging rocks together and marching giant death-robots across the scorched nuclear wastelands.

So, the large number of different civilisations you could play as in the previous games have been chopped out, and replaced with three forces - the West, the Middle East and the East - which are more significantly different from one another than the old civilisations. Mad Doc's whole approach with Empire Earth 3 is all about two things simplification, and diversification.

That can't, however, change the fact that the game ultimately finds itself tottering unsteadily along the dividing line between mediocrity and being genuinely awful. The third instalment in the franchise tries bloody hard to please, and in fact, it makes all the right noises at the outset. Nor, we fear, does the law of the review. You feel bad, because he's trying so hard, but the law of the playground awards no free passes for effort. His lunch money is going to be public property for months to come. You take one look and know he's going to get beaten up. The nerdy kid, filled with a newfound desperation to be popular, has just turned up at the gates of the school with a new haircut, outfit and attitude - but it looks like he's taken styling tips from MC Hammer and watched clips of Tobey Maguire's bizarre turn as 'emo' Peter Parker in SpiderMan 3 as a behaviour guide. Mint ImperialsĮmpire Earth 3 is the recoil. It just went a little too far for many people's tastes it wasn't a bad game, but it took some critical bodyslamming for just being unnecessarily impenetrable (unlike Kirk in that fanfiction, presumably). Yes, Empire Earth 2 was the American High School Drama equivalent of the likeable, slightly geeky guy in the class suddenly revealing that he also writes Spock / Kirk slash fanfiction in his spare time. Then it all went a little bit wrong - you got even nerdier, even more obsessed with statistics, and people were put off a little bit.

They appreciated your geeky side, and you got along just fine even if you were never going to be the most popular kid in class (not with the flashier Rise of Nations and Age of Empires around, both of whom were bought convertibles by their parents for their 17th birthdays). You started out as a bit of a nerd you had a fascination with history and got a little bit too excited about statistics sometimes, but a lot of people seemed to like you anyway. So, say you're the Empire Earth franchise.

Empire earth config file location