Empire Earth II: The Art of Supremacy Expansion

Rockstar Games has acquired Empire Earth developer Mad Doc Software.

The original Empire Earth's expansion pack presented an unusual experience. Now, at the time of its release, looked like the State of the Art in the Real-time Strategy game, with its 3D battlefields and assorted gubbins. So there was a yelp of surprise upon, less than a year later, booting up the expansion pack to discover that it suddenly looked really, really old.

Despite the change of developer between the two incarnations, some things remain the same. While playing Empire Earth 2: The Art of Supremacy was enjoyable enough, it looks old. While it wasn't ahead of graphical progress on launch like its prequel, in 2005 was acceptable. Now in 2006, it's very much last year's model. With the forthcoming wave of RTS games, it's very much looking down an evolutionary step.

Of course, in terms of play, it was already feeling a little old. This hasn't changed in this add-on pack. While its best features still impress - its indirect control of the humble civilians, allowing you to send people from harvesting one resource to another with a couple of clicks and no looking helplessly around the map - it's RTS by numbers otherwise.

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