GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links.

Warrior Kings: Battles Impressions

We check out Black Cactus Games' upcoming strategy sequel at Empire Interactive's E3 booth.

1 Comments

We visited Empire Interactive's E3 booth earlier today and took the opportunity to check out Black Cactus' real-time strategy sequel Warrior Kings: Battles. The game was being demonstrated by Empire Interactive producer Iain Hancock, who, as we arrived at the booth, already had a skirmish game under way.

Hancock had established a large base in the south end of the expansive and nicely detailed map, and he was attempting to defend his base from occasional probing attacks while also mounting an offensive of his own. The AI of the enemy generals in Warrior Kings: Battles has been touted as one of the game's primary strengths since it was announced last year, and we're pleased to report that the enemy general Hancock was facing most definitely seemed to be playing the game intelligently. The general's initial attacks had all taken place to the east of Hancock's base, but as Hancock had since built guard towers and stationed troops there, the enemy avoided the new defenses and attacked the less-well-defended area to the west.

It was also apparent that when Hancock committed a large percentage of his troops to attacking the enemy's structures and fields with flaming arrows and catapults, the enemy general would not necessarily rush out to defend against what appeared to be a more powerful force, but would instead initiate an attack of his own--giving our guy plenty to think about when deciding what course of action to take next.

Visually, Warrior Kings: Battles featured some really nice attention to detail, with the units on horseback and astride beasts the size of small buildings looking especially impressive. The game's only shortcoming in this department was perhaps that when the camera angle was close to horizontal, looking across the map, there was some pretty drastic fogging a little closer to our position than we might have expected. On reflection, it's conceivable that this was an intentional fog of war effect rather than the game simply not being able to render as far into the distance as we would have liked, but if that's the case, we certainly would've preferred a system that would have allowed us to see the lay of the land even if we didn't have any units in a position to see enemy forces there.

Warrior Kings: Battles is already available in Europe, but it won't be available in North America until the third quarter of this year. For more information, check out our previous coverage of the game.

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

Join the conversation
There are 1 comments about this story