Graphics and Sound

Flat 3D

One of the big selling points of Emperor is the fully 3D accelerated game world, and Westwood really did a nice effects job, especially for weapons and explosions. You'll see a lot of colored plasma blasts, smoke trails, shimmering bolts of lightning, and fiery explosions when you're playing. Units and buildings are 3D models, each with a unique set of animations. Infantry will play with their guns while idle, factories billow smoke, and mechs take long, laborious steps to cross the sands. Units and structures even cast real-time soft shadows on the ground! Unfortunately you just won't have time to enjoy most of these animations while you're playing. As in any RTS, you want to be able to see a large area of the map all the time so you'll be zoomed out when you're playing. You can zoom in for close-ups but you'd never do that in the middle of a battle.

As with any change of technology, 3D acceleration can also hinder Emperor's graphics. The biggest problem is one PC gamers hopefully won't have to think about in a few years: low-poly models. In the quest to fill the screen with dozens of objects, all of the units and buildings suffer greatly from their low detail. It's annoying looking at a supposedly smooth cannon barrel made up of three very angled boxes. Combine that with the need to be zoomed out to see the battlefield and Emperor reminds me of old Atari games where everything was made up of small boxes.

Jaggies everywhere

Common battle view

Kobras pack a punch

So why don't you just up the resolution or turn on FSAA? Because Emperor will bog down even the highest-end systems. The minimum system requirements say you only need a 400 MHz chip, but you'll hate life if you play on such a slow system. I'm running a moderate Thunderbird 1 GHz with a 32MB GeForce2 and I experience FPS drops on almost every mission. While I was playing on high graphics settings at 800x600, anytime there was more than 25 units on the screen the game would drop below 30 frames per second. That's not a lot of units in this game, so be prepared to either turn down the graphics options or trudge through a slide show. I'm sure that gamers playing Emperor for the single player game won't mind the frame rates so much, but multiplayer gamers will probably turn down all of the graphics options (like playing Quake on fugly mode to max out your frames).

While everything in Emperor is in 3D, functionally the extra dimension is useless. There are only four levels that units can be on: the ground, plateaus, slopes, and the air. Sound familiar? Probably because this is the same thing you'll find in 2D RTS games like Red Alert 2 and Starcraft. The 3D in Emperor is completely superficial, unlike Ground Control or Sacrifice, which used three dimensions as an integral part of the gameplay. For example, there is no "true" line-of-sight - units can see anything inside their view radius, even the other side of a mountain. Also if a tank is near the edge of a cliff any unit can shoot it, even if the attacker's line of fire goes through the side of the cliff. While this may be standard in other RTS games, it makes the 3D pointless.

Ice world map

It done blowed up

Carryall

One of the better graphical elements of Emperor are the maps. While most of the maps are desert, spice and a few rocks, you do have to remember that you are on Dune. The desert maps are done well, Westwood used plenty of different sand and rock textures so that the maps are more interesting than a giant sandbox. Besides Dune you'll also fight on each House's home planet, as well as the Highliners (the massive spaceships that use spice for space travel). Unfortunately, less than 10% of the single player missions take place off of Dune.

Sound

Westwood has traditionally had great music and sound in their games, and Emperor is no exception. The music keeps with the synthesized techno/industrial/rock of their trademark C&C games. Whatever you want to call it, it's good and worth listening to while you play.

The unit voice acting is also done well. All of the units keep with the theme of the house they're from, including the sub-houses. The units generally say something cheesy when you order them, from the mindless Theilaxu Contaiminators to the bloodthirsty Harkonnen soldiers. Luckily there are enough different types of units so that the voices don't get tedious. Each unit also has a unique death rattle, which I found quite amusing.