Age of Mythology: The Titans Review
23 October 2003 | By Canker
So, the storyline is good, the cutscenes slick, the Titans awesome and the graphics/sound much the same standard as the original
Age of Mythology was like Marmite to strategy gamers: you either loved it or hated it. AoE purists bemoaned the Myth units for making the game too one sided whilst the more tactical gamers enjoyed the Myth addition for the extra longevity that they could produce in battles. Love it or hate it, it must be agreed that AoM was one of the better releases in the last 12 months & scored heavily in the original reviews. The Titans builds further on the original AoM experience with a whole new civilization, campaign and other assorted goodies.
In a nutshell, Arkantos, our hero of AoM, was raised to Godhead for his sterling work at the end of the single player campaign, & Titans loosely takes up where that ended. The new civilisations, the Atlanteans, have taken Kronos as their demi-god & are set on unleashing his titans on the rest of the world. Arkantos’ son Kastor gets drawn into this & the storyline expands in much the same way as the original, with battles being fought against former allies & the welcome reappearance of some of the original heroes.
The Atlanteans , although bearing a striking resemblance to the Greeks, differ to the other civilisations in numerous ways. As with all the Civs, the key to creating your Myth units is generating favour: the Greeks pray, the Egyptians build statues while the Norse impress their gods by clobbering everything in sight. The Atlanteans gain favour by territorial gain – the more settlements, the faster the favour rate. This leads to some hectic exploration at the start of any skirmish games in order to gain enough favour to build up a force strong enough to withstand early attacks. Because of theis, the Atlanteans are the only race who can expand without the normal age limitations. Atlantean villagers are far more efficient than other races – they do not have to deposit gathered resources anywhere – just point them at a mine or forest & forget all about them till the resource is tapped out – then just move them on. To compensate for this versatility, the villagers are a lot more expensive than normal, and a favoured target of any military units. Militarily, Atlantean forces are on a par with all the others, the differences here being that all offensive units are produced from one barracks, while any counter-offensive units come from, wait for it, counter-barracks. The overall effect of this making the gamer think just a tad more about the forces under his control and generate more balanced forces, capable of taking more punishment as well as dishing it out. Remember all those heroes in AoM – they are still there – but the Atlanteans do things differently. If your knackered old villager doesn’t perform too well, for a cost he can be permanently made into a hero – enhancing his speed and any other aspects. This goes for ANY Atlantean human unit. If you have a nice army happily pillaging & ransacking when a large force of enemy myth units appears – no worries – simply select as many of your troops as you see fit and, as long as you have the necessary resources, press a button & hey presto – heroes – bye bye Myth units. The cost is expensive, but with careful planning & selective villager ‘heorisation’, your peons will be churning out food, gold & wood at an excessive rate allowing you to augment your forces with heroes at a moments notice.
Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever played Total Annihilation, but for those that have, do you remember the mighty Krogoths – a chuffin great killing machine that strode about laying waste to all in its path. As I said earlier, the Atlanteans want to unleash Titans on the world, and to that end you can now develop to the Titan age. Once there a Titan gate can be constructed. Assigning a shedload of villagers to the gate in the same way that you would set them to build a wonder will eventually free a Titan. The animation as it rises from the pit is superb and the mere sight of one is enough to reduce your opponents to tears. These beasts are nigh on impervious to attacks from ‘normal’ human forces, heroes or Myth units, in fact, the only thing that will really damage a titan is another titan. Watching two or more of these big boys knocking seven buckets of **** out of each other is not too dissimilar to scenes from some Godzilla ‘B’ movie. As in Wonder development, as soon as you start a titan gate, your opponents are notified so you can expect an impressive force arriving to try & take out your villagers or for you to receive the same message – then it’s a race against time as you can only have one Titan. As if this is not enough of an advantage, Atlantean gods do seen to be somewhat more beneficent, and a lot of the powers bestowed are not ‘one shot wonders’ and can be used a few times (especially helpful being the ability to heal your units & also turn them into heroes). Kronos also has the ability to phase time, and you have the option of moving structures anywhere on the map that you have line of sight to. Once you have located an enemy, phasing in a barracks & temple in the vicinity & then producing loads of units right on their doorstep can be a quick winner. However, the buildings are vulnerable while phasing so an alert opponent can counter quickly. But what good would this be if you couldn’t do it to the enemy buildings as well – having trouble with that Migdol Stronghold, - no problemo, just zap it with the ‘deconstruct’ god power & admire the way it disintegrates (the enemy gets all the resources back however).
Apart from the addition of another civilisation, the only other goody noticeable is the ability to set your production facilities on autopilot. Just press the button and your military units will start churning out to the selected rally points – make damn sure you have plenty of resources before using this option though.
So, the storyline is good, the cutscenes slick, the Titans awesome and the graphics/sound much the same standard as the original. For an expansion the learning curve is surprisingly shallow allowing you to quickly re-acquaint yourself with the controls. The manual tells you all you need to know so no problems there either. A minor quibble being it is still hard to differentiate between heroes & normal units – the slight halo/glow doesn’t quite cut it. For the price I expected a bit more than was delivered and it might be worth waiting for the normal combi pack for those players who do not have the original (why not – it was a great game!!!!)
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| It's important to leave space so that your troops can maneuver to combat quickly. |
Port cities have quite a few distinct advantages over ordinary cities. |
In a nutshell, Arkantos, our hero of AoM, was raised to Godhead for his sterling work at the end of the single player campaign, & Titans loosely takes up where that ended. The new civilisations, the Atlanteans, have taken Kronos as their demi-god & are set on unleashing his titans on the rest of the world. Arkantos’ son Kastor gets drawn into this & the storyline expands in much the same way as the original, with battles being fought against former allies & the welcome reappearance of some of the original heroes.
The Atlanteans , although bearing a striking resemblance to the Greeks, differ to the other civilisations in numerous ways. As with all the Civs, the key to creating your Myth units is generating favour: the Greeks pray, the Egyptians build statues while the Norse impress their gods by clobbering everything in sight. The Atlanteans gain favour by territorial gain – the more settlements, the faster the favour rate. This leads to some hectic exploration at the start of any skirmish games in order to gain enough favour to build up a force strong enough to withstand early attacks. Because of theis, the Atlanteans are the only race who can expand without the normal age limitations. Atlantean villagers are far more efficient than other races – they do not have to deposit gathered resources anywhere – just point them at a mine or forest & forget all about them till the resource is tapped out – then just move them on. To compensate for this versatility, the villagers are a lot more expensive than normal, and a favoured target of any military units. Militarily, Atlantean forces are on a par with all the others, the differences here being that all offensive units are produced from one barracks, while any counter-offensive units come from, wait for it, counter-barracks. The overall effect of this making the gamer think just a tad more about the forces under his control and generate more balanced forces, capable of taking more punishment as well as dishing it out. Remember all those heroes in AoM – they are still there – but the Atlanteans do things differently. If your knackered old villager doesn’t perform too well, for a cost he can be permanently made into a hero – enhancing his speed and any other aspects. This goes for ANY Atlantean human unit. If you have a nice army happily pillaging & ransacking when a large force of enemy myth units appears – no worries – simply select as many of your troops as you see fit and, as long as you have the necessary resources, press a button & hey presto – heroes – bye bye Myth units. The cost is expensive, but with careful planning & selective villager ‘heorisation’, your peons will be churning out food, gold & wood at an excessive rate allowing you to augment your forces with heroes at a moments notice.
Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever played Total Annihilation, but for those that have, do you remember the mighty Krogoths – a chuffin great killing machine that strode about laying waste to all in its path. As I said earlier, the Atlanteans want to unleash Titans on the world, and to that end you can now develop to the Titan age. Once there a Titan gate can be constructed. Assigning a shedload of villagers to the gate in the same way that you would set them to build a wonder will eventually free a Titan. The animation as it rises from the pit is superb and the mere sight of one is enough to reduce your opponents to tears. These beasts are nigh on impervious to attacks from ‘normal’ human forces, heroes or Myth units, in fact, the only thing that will really damage a titan is another titan. Watching two or more of these big boys knocking seven buckets of **** out of each other is not too dissimilar to scenes from some Godzilla ‘B’ movie. As in Wonder development, as soon as you start a titan gate, your opponents are notified so you can expect an impressive force arriving to try & take out your villagers or for you to receive the same message – then it’s a race against time as you can only have one Titan. As if this is not enough of an advantage, Atlantean gods do seen to be somewhat more beneficent, and a lot of the powers bestowed are not ‘one shot wonders’ and can be used a few times (especially helpful being the ability to heal your units & also turn them into heroes). Kronos also has the ability to phase time, and you have the option of moving structures anywhere on the map that you have line of sight to. Once you have located an enemy, phasing in a barracks & temple in the vicinity & then producing loads of units right on their doorstep can be a quick winner. However, the buildings are vulnerable while phasing so an alert opponent can counter quickly. But what good would this be if you couldn’t do it to the enemy buildings as well – having trouble with that Migdol Stronghold, - no problemo, just zap it with the ‘deconstruct’ god power & admire the way it disintegrates (the enemy gets all the resources back however).
Apart from the addition of another civilisation, the only other goody noticeable is the ability to set your production facilities on autopilot. Just press the button and your military units will start churning out to the selected rally points – make damn sure you have plenty of resources before using this option though.
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| Once you complete a Titan gate, the Titan will spectacularly rise from it. |
The new Titans are immensely powerful, and their only real foes are other Titans. |
So, the storyline is good, the cutscenes slick, the Titans awesome and the graphics/sound much the same standard as the original. For an expansion the learning curve is surprisingly shallow allowing you to quickly re-acquaint yourself with the controls. The manual tells you all you need to know so no problems there either. A minor quibble being it is still hard to differentiate between heroes & normal units – the slight halo/glow doesn’t quite cut it. For the price I expected a bit more than was delivered and it might be worth waiting for the normal combi pack for those players who do not have the original (why not – it was a great game!!!!)
AGE OF MYTHOLOGY: THE TITANS VERDICT
So, the storyline is good, the cutscenes slick, the Titans awesome and the graphics/sound much the same standard as the original. For an expansion the learning curve is surprisingly shallow allowing you to quickly re-acquaint yourself with the controls. The manual tells you all you need to know so no problems there either. A minor quibble being it is still hard to differentiate between heroes & normal units – the slight halo/glow doesn’t quite cut it. For the price I expected a bit more than was delivered and it might be worth waiting for the normal combi pack for those players who do not have the original (why not – it was a great game!!!!)
TOP GAME MOMENT
: Building a titan gate from which you can summon an immense creature to do your bidding.
