5. Rome: Total War
Developed by: Creative Assembly
Published by: Activision
Release Date: TBA

	What's Ahead: Though we were able to watch a battle between two moderate-sized companies, we weren't able to see any truly huge campaigns, or witness the game's technical performance on such a scale. The developers from Creative Assembly assured us that the new game's system requirements will be higher than those of Medieval and Shogun, but they'll still be very modest--we'll see how the final game turns out. We're also interested in seeing how the game's improved AI scripting will let us play through historical campaigns in which enemy generals will use the same strategies as their real-life historical counterparts.

The Total War series made its impressive debut in 1999 with Shogun, a game that let you command thousands of samurai warriors on battlefields in feudal Japan. Developer Creative Assembly has been hard at work on the next game in its epic strategy series, Rome: Total War, which will feature a brand-new, fully 3D engine that will render each individual unit with impressive detail.

Watching Rome: Total War in action, we saw a great deal of detail in the game: Your cities will be towering 3D settlements stacked with individual buildings to represent your temples, barracks, and other structures, and they'll be crawling with individual townspeople who will celebrate at the gladiatorial games in times of feast and riot in the streets in times of famine. This level of detail was also evident in battles--we watched as soldiers of many different ranks and equipped with many different kinds of weapons and armor appropriate for the time period squared off against each other individually, only to get tossed sky-high by squadrons of rampaging elephants.

Aside from making these graphical improvements, Rome: Total War will expand on the tactical and strategic aspects of the previous games. As we saw, skilled use of tactics on the battlefield will be more richly rewarded than ever, since the new game will feature onscreen commander units that can grant powerful bonuses to their companions--though they can throw entire companies into disarray if they're slain. If what we saw was any indication, Rome: Total War will expand on just about every aspect of the already-epic Total War series, and that's definitely a good thing.