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GameSpot's Ones to Watch - Editor's Choice: The Games of E3 1999

Introduction
Top 10 To Watch
Notable Games by Genre
• Action
• Adventure
• Driving Games
• Multiplayer Only
• Puzzle Games
• RPG
• Sims
• Sports
• Strategy
Notable Strategy Games

Age of Empires II: Age of Kings
After having sold more than 2.5 million copies of Age of Empires, Microsoft seems to be sticking pretty close to the same recipe with the sequel, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings.

The game seems to have everything that a good sequel needs: more individualized cultures and units (like the samurai in Japan and axe throwers in France), better control over the units (ring the town hall bell and all the peasants rush inside to protect themselves from raiders), great graphics (only 8-bit, but you wouldn't know it), and more historical accuracy (the people actually speak the ancient language of their culture).

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And let's not forget formations. The units will form themselves into lines, wedges, and columns for marching (or any other user-defined formation). The units actually move smoothly into formation instead of bunching up during movement and then reforming - a definite improvement. In addition, units can move into buildings to hide (in the case of peasants) or fortify them (in the case of soldiers).

Last, while the campaigns played a fairly minor role in the first game (and a more significant role in the Rise of Rome expansion), the development team that worked on Age of Kings put much more emphasis on creating more immersive storylines. While no actual campaigns were ready to be shown, Ensemble talked at length about them. There will be four campaigns centered around historical figures. These figures are unique units who will for all intents be heroes. The campaigns will also feature unique buildings and units that will further enhance the experience of the single-player campaign. These four campaigns will center around William Wallace, Joan of Arc, Saladin, and Genghis Khan.

Developer: Ensemble
Publisher: Microsoft

Black and White
Set in the world of Eden, this strategy game from Peter Molyneux (designer of Populous and Dungeon Keeper) requires you to gain control of different civilizations, learn their magic, and raise a creature to help you conquer the land. According to Molyneux, the game will respond to individuals' playing styles, with the landscape, your followers, and your creature all being affected by how good or evil a ruler you are.

Developer: Lionhead Studios
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Conquest

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Conquest is an epic-scale 3D real-time strategy game of space battleship combat that's looking quite good. To its credit, its play mechanics seem fairly conventional and accessible - unlike the forthcoming Homeworld, you still control your units on what's essentially a flat 2D plane. You mine planets for resources and construct space stations from which you can build your space fleets.

Conquest ambitiously seeks to fix or balance many of the genre's conventional faults. For instance, the necessity to maintain your fleet's supply levels hinders players who wish to rush their enemies with a bunch of weak ships early on. Without a larger spacecraft nearby to replenish them, these small ships will quickly run low on supplies, becoming less effective and more vulnerable in combat.

Conquest looks sharp and seems to have the makings of great gameplay to match. It's a great idea for a real-time strategy game, and we hope Conquest will pay homage to all the great space battlecruiser myths from popular culture, from Star Wars and Star Trek all the way to the Japanese Space Cruiser Yamato and Macross.

Developer: Digital Anvil
Publisher: Microsoft

Next: More Notable Strategy Games