Last year at PAX, we took a tour around the PAX 10 booth, a collection of indie games that were being displayed on the show floor. Games like The Maw was there, which recently came out on Xbox Live Arcade. There were a lot of PC games as well, one of them being Chronotron, a puzzle game that stars a time traveling robot.

To get an idea of what we're talking about, you can play the game here.

It's a simple set up in which you play as the happy-go-lucky robot that needs to hit the green key in the level and then return to the elevator door-like pod he started from. Obstacles that stand in your way include platforms that can only be raised if someone is standing on it or doors that need to be held open, so they all require an extra hand (or full-sized robot) so that you could get through. This is when you go back to the blue pod--which acts as a trusty time machine--and travel back in time so that your former self will mimic the movements you just did. Now you can follow yourself as you clear the way and open doors for…youself. The game starts off relatively basic, but as you go through the levels, the difficulty ramps up considerably and it starts to get confusing when managing multiple copies of yourself because sometimes you'll need 3 or 4 robots to help you get through the stage.

This game caught the eye of Santa Cruz Games, who is working on bringing Chronotron II to the Nintendo DS and possibly other platforms. A representative from Santa Cruz Games came by to show us what it would look like on the DS. It looks very much like the flash game that you see above, with the stage displayed in the top screen and the bottom screen is currently where the restart button is. You use A to jump and B to enter the pod to go back in time. The few demo levels that we played were very similar to the first few levels of Chronotron; the only difference is that physics have been included so there are now new approaches to completing certain levels. Instead of hitting a switch to raise a level, you can push yourself against it to get it open. If it only moves one way, you still need help to get back out, but this is just an example of how the game will work. Another example is that platforms will rise at a slower speed if there is something standing on it.

The original creator, Joe Rheaume, had other characters in mind when he worked on the first Chronotron, so we were told that we can expect a story with multiple characters and perhaps a reason that could tie together all this robot time traveling. We'll update you with more information as soon as it becomes available. Right now Santa Cruz Games hopes to have the game come out on at least one platform later this year. In the meantime, be sure to check out the original Chronotron for free at Krongegate.

The healthy gaming craze continues to explode. On the heels of Nintendo's Wii Fit, a ton of recent and upcoming games are looking to pick some fruit off the Wii fitness tree. EA is in the game with EA Sports Active , Ubisoft's got My Fitness Coach , and Majesco put The Biggest Loser star Jillian Michaels in her own game . Now 2K Sports is looking to get into the fitness game of sorts with its upcoming Don King Boxing for Wii. Unlike the dedicated exercise games, the fitness aspects of Don King Boxing come in addition to the full-fledged boxing game. A few weeks ago, we went hands-on with the main modes of the game; today we had a chance to check out the training modes in the game.

Training mode features four mini-games: heavy bag, speed bag, fitness, and a jump rope. The first two focus solely on your punching, while the latter pair use the Wii Balance Board (which is optional, of course) and test feature both punching and footwork. With the heavy bag, you're presented with a heavy bag split into four different quadrants. Your goal is to punch a quadrant when it changes from red to yellow; and during the mini-game you'll mix up your punches between upper and lower punches with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Lower punches are executed by holding the B or Z button on the Wii Remote or Nunchuk respectively. In the speed bag mini-game, your goal is to punch a hanging speed bag with left and right punches; the timing is tricky on this one, but if you listen for the sound of the bag hitting the board at the apex of its backswing, it makes getting it down a bit easier.

As with all of the training exercises, there are two different skill levels to try: amateur and contender. Amateur level typically involves shorter sessions and less complicated movements, while contender is for folks who have some familiarity with the game's controls are looking to burn some more calories.

Fitness mode is a bit like an cardio kickboxing class, only without the kicking. Here, you'll stand on the Wii Balance Board (after calibrating it, of course) while a sequence of icons runs vertically up the screen. Each icon corresponds to a different type of punch: jabs, straights, hooks and uppercuts. Periodically, you'll also be called on to do footwork, stepping on or off the Wii Balance Board while keeping (more or less) in time with the music.

The final exercise mode is jump rope. Here, you hold the Wii Remote and Nunchuk in your hands and put both feet on the balance board. To begin jumping you lift your heels off the board and begin bouncing up and down, making sure to have your heels land on the board when you come down. To simulate the "rope", you simply move your wrists in a circle, keeping time with your feet. As with the rest of these mini-games, the more successive combos you can put together, the more complicated things will--for example, when jumping rope, you'll eventually move to criss-cross movements with your hands and alternating your feet. Screw up and you'll start over.

You'll earn fitness points after each exercise in Don King Boxing which you can use to track your points on an in-game calendar. There are also achievements to earn if you're particularly skilled at the training exercises. While the punching exercises seemed to be inconsistent sometimes, we have to admit that skipping rope did give our calves a nice little burn. Don King's training mode might not turn you into the next Joe Louis, but it certainly couldn't hurt… much.

If you haven't played a good city-building game in a while, you may want to keep an eye out for Cities XL, which will try to combine the peaceful pursuit of building up a tiny virtual city with cooperative (and competitive) online elements and Web-based social networking. We've previously taken an in-depth look at the game and its unusual premise and have new details to report today.

What's better than being a land baron? How about being a land baron...online?

To catch you up, here's a quick recap: Cities XL will basically offer an offline experience right out of the box and a continuing online experience should you want to pursue the dream of being the world's most successful architect. Like in many other city-building games, such as the SimCity series, the out-of-box, offline game in Cities XL will let you use editing tools to build up the virtual city of your dreams, using powerful tools that will include some 500 different buildings, so you can click, drag, copy-paste, and brush-paint tiny individual houses or sprawling roadway networks, then maintain your population's happiness and income while using your funds to build a bigger, better, happier city.

The online portion of the game will let you go beyond just puttering around in your own city; you'll actually be able to, for instance, putter around other players' cities on foot, as well as monitor the progress of your city online through the game's Web site, which will act as both an online scoreboard (which ranks all players' cities by their relative wealth, popular happiness, and other statistics) and a social hub. The Web site will let you create your own profile, write your own blog, post images, and maintain a friends list. You'll also be able to use the online interface to trade any excess resources that your city, or other players' cities, may have produced. All cities produce and consume resources (such as energy, power, and cash), and depending on how you've built yours, you may end up with a town that creates a daily surplus of this or that resource. This daily surplus will disappear from your city's coffers at the end of the day, each day, to avoid the dreaded practice of "farming"--in this case, repeatedly hoarding resources each day until you have an unreasonably huge stockpile. Resources will be traded in the form of "tokens"--one token will represent one unit of resources, and developer Monte Cristo currently intends to let the resource market regulate itself, rather then get too involved in the player economy. However, since you will have access to resource trading online, you won't necessarily need to create a well-rounded, self-sustaining commune. For instance, if you want, you can build an industrial wasteland that's nothing but factories and smokestacks--and just trade for whichever resources you don't generate.

Will you create a simple but beautiful country town with rolling meadows, or a wealthy industrialized wasteland?

Resource trading will be important not only for generally keeping your town running, but also for creating "megastructures"--famous wonders of the world that will grant powerful bonuses to whoever builds them. (Cities XL will ship with about 20 of these right out of the box, and more will be added at a rate of about five or so per month). In order to build one of these impressive monuments, you'll need the blueprints, which will randomly appear in the accounts of a handful of users every so often (and can be used to start construction immediately, or traded for resources, or given away for free...otherwise the blueprints will expire in about a week after use to prevent players from accumulating them in their accounts). Megastructures will be fantastically expensive projects that go through three different phases of construction (and each phase will require a different mix of resources). Successfully building one will grant serious bonuses for your city; for instance, plopping the Arc de Triomphe in the middle of your metropolis will grant your city powerful economic bonuses as tourists from your principality and from neighboring towns take a holiday to come see your wondrous new masterpiece. And the tourists will build up the local economy, presumably by purchasing cheap T-shirts and souvenir coffee mugs.

However, megastructures won't offer clear-cut, no-strings-attached advantages; they'll actually have their own set of realistic concerns that you as the city's mayor and chief architect must address. For starters, an attractive monument will bring in many guests and their big, bulky tour buses--and the buses may congest traffic and lead to noise pollution that creates unhappiness for any of the locals who live or work nearby. More importantly, if your city becomes too wondrous and begins drawing in too many of your neighbors' citizens, your neighbors (other players who are in control of their own cities) may become jealous that you're getting all this great tourist revenue and they aren't. In fact, this will be a real concern for all online land barons when they go looking to trade resources. Yes, you need four tokens of oil for your own town and you'd be willing to trade four tokens of water...but do you really want to give that water to someone who will just end up spending it on building an Eiffel Tower that will draw in your citizens and line your neighbor's pockets?

One day, all this will be yours. Then you can build a frozen-yogurt stand there.

Cities XL is still in development and will likely go to a beta-testing phase in the coming months. The game is scheduled to launch later this year.

Last year's The Last Remnant for the Xbox 360 tried to push console role-playing games in new directions by including larger-scale battles with battalions (or "unions") of characters massed to fight as a group. The game took place in an unusual alternate-fantasy world where talking cat-men with four arms routinely served as royal guardians, and where, like in many console games of this sort, many of the human males that served as main characters were young, slender, and had fabulous hair.

Get ready for turn-based console-RPG battles on your PC.

We got our hands on the PC version of the game and have played through the early part of it, and have found the game to so far be a faithful translation of the original console game. Like in the Xbox 360 version of The Last Remnant, the PC version of the game starts with the story of Rush Sykes, a plucky young lad who sets out to rescue his kidnapped sister, without the help of his workaholic parents (who are off toiling on a potentially world-saving project involving ancient artifacts known as "remnants"). Over the course of the game, he meets various characters (who may or may not be cat-men) to join him in his quest and eventually lead into battle as part of the game's larger-scale combat system.

Keeping a close eye on your union members and building up huge enemy chains will let you quickly develop them into more-powerful heroes.

Like with the majority of console role-playing games since the original Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior from the 8-bit NES, The Last Remnant's combat is turn-based, and alternates turns between your party's characters (and their planned attack abilities) and your enemies' turns. Each character in The Last Remnant will have various different abilities that will be specialized in such areas as casting magical spell effects or swinging a sword, and additional abilities that can be performed at a cost of "action points," or AP; but interestingly, you won't have direct control over them beyond giving general orders, so you'll effectively act as both a general and a soldier at the same time. However, by attacking and defeating enemies in sequence, you can perform longer and longer "chains" that will net you more experience points so that Rush and his buddies will gain levels (and the new abilities that come with them) faster.

You will come to know the face of your sister's captor as you explore The Last Remnant. POTENTIAL SPOILER: It may or may not be a very pretty man.

The PC version of The Last Remnant seems to run just fine and we encountered no framerate hiccups or significant technical problems of any kind as we played. The game was built using the Unreal Engine and this powerful technology seems to do a good job of translating the colorful graphical look and intricate, cat-man-filled world that first debuted in the console game. The Last Remnant is scheduled for release later this month on PC.

[UPDATE 6 March, 2009: As mentioned in the comments section, Soviet Assault will be made available for separate purchase for those who already own the original game, as well as packed in as the Complete Edition, which will contain both the original World in Conflict and also the Soviet Assault expansion.]

Before we dive into our play session of World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, a quick history lesson:

2007's World in Conflict was an outstanding game took a very risky step with real-time strategy games, but once the game came out and everyone played it, people found themselves asking, "Why didn't someone do this before?" What World in Conflict actually did was combine the fast pace of real-time strategy games with the class-based, team-based, action of games like Battlefield 2. See, Battlefield 2 was a military team-based shooter where you would choose to play as a certain "class" of character, like a medic, an assault trooper, a sniper, and so on, and you teamed up with other players online who also chose different classes, then moved as a team (assuming no one was being a jackass) to capture key "control points" on the map before the opposing team, which was also composed of players who chose different classes, could snap up all the control points first.

The original World in Conflict from 2007.

World in Conflict basically took the same basic team-based, competitive concept and brought it to real-time strategy games; instead of playing a medic or a sniper, you might control only a tank platoon or a squad of attack choppers. Basically, when you played as a team, your whole team was like a traditional real-time strategy army with mixed forces (infantry, ground armor, artillery, air cavalry), but since you controlled only one squad, you were free to micromanage the heck out of them and focus on causing as much mayhem and destruction as possible with the game's tactical aids, like the almighty nuclear warhead. (World in Conflict was set in a fictitious war between the USA and the Soviet Union during the 1980s--the real Cold War never escalated to actual battlefield conflict, but in WIC, the simmering rivalry between the two nations becomes an actual war.)

The Russkies are coming in Soviet Assault.

This brings us to World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, an expansion for WIC that was originally planned for consoles, but is, for now, currently planned only for release on PC. Soviet Assault adds the actual Soviet faction as playable units and includes a whole bunch of new toys to play with, including Soviet armor, air vehicles, and units, as well as new tactical aids which you can see in action in this recent trailer. The Soviet units and new tac aids will be available in multiplayer, and will also be featured in the modified campaign. As you may have heard, Soviet Assault will be released as an all-in-one package that includes both the original game and also the expansion (so you won't need to dig out your old copy if you can't find it).

"Mr. Gorbachev...TEAR DOWN THIS WALL! Wait, what are all those tanks doing there?"

The single-player campaign in Soviet Assault will feature a handful of new campaign missions that you'll play from the perspective of the Soviets. The missions will actually be inserted in between the campaign missions of the original game where they're intended to make contextual sense (rather than a completely separate Soviet campaign). Missions will be broken up by in-engine cinematic cutscenes that show key characters discussing their missions and rallying the troops along the background story of the full campaign.

Expect to see plenty of stuff getting blown up in Soviet Assault.

The early campaign mission we played started off as a night ops mission in the highly contested area of West Berlin, Germany, which is currently staked out by American forces. As the Soviets, your first mission requires you to attack the American encampment, first by sending in stealthy infantry to quietly neutralize guards on foot so that you can take out a handful of antiair guns, then come rolling in with tanks. Ironically, the much-lauded 1989 teardown of the Berlin Wall does still happen in the 1980s in World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, but not as a result of joyous freedom-lovers taking a few swings with a symbolic sledgehammer, but in a hail of Soviet tank fire as your tank crews blast the wall in an explosive fusillade. We pushed forward with our tanks to help capture Berlin and begin the Russian invasion in earnest. In all cases, the powerful and quick camera controls of World in Conflict remain intact in Soviet Assault and let you quickly zoom and pan around the action to get the best view of what has just, or what is about to, burst into flames.

Soviet Assault's handful of single-player campaigns seem interesting, but like with the original World in Conflict, we assume that multiplayer will be where it's at. The expansion (which will be both sold separately, and also packed with the original game as World in Conflict: Complete Edition) is scheduled to ship later this year.

Warhawk's got some snazzy new additions coming its way. I got to sit down with Dylan Jobe from Incognito Studios to talk about the new Warhawk Command Center in PlayStation Home. Traditionally (as traditional as a few months can get), Sony's Home is a place you go to outside of your games. You might go there to tool around in your apartment, talk to some folks, or partake in the ever popular dance parties. Or you might not go there at all. With the addition of the Warhawk Command Center, Home turns into a hub, and we think Incognito's got the right tack on this one.

If you've started an online game you generally hop to a server browser and click away. The new Warhawk Command Center fills that role and much more in a war room/lobby of sorts. The Spartan design, industrial fittings, and large sky lights make it an airy, almost cheery place. As you enter, on either side of your character you'll find large monitors. When we saw them they were empty, but Incognito said they'd be filled with videos, and later on leader-board stats. Shoot enough folks down and you'll be immortalized on the walls. In the middle of the room you'll find learning terminals with tips and strategies. Other spots in the large room were mostly for eye candy.

The real draw of the Command Center will be the sand table. Incognito refers to it as "tactical furniture". (Sign me up for a battle stool.) It's really a fully interactive, and rather swankily done, strategy table. Every map from the game, including the ones from boosters, will be on there and you'll have the option of laying down markers for tanks, planes, infantry and more. If you're a fan of drawing arrows and fancy multi-stage attack plans you certainly won't be disappointed. Other players will see what you're doing in real time and you can hash it out until you get it right. To keep things sane, you'll be the one in control of the table unless you let other folks in on the strategery action.

As well as being able to hash out battle plans, you'll be able to launch games directly from within the Command Center. You'll get access to the usual game setup options and the added ability to put all your buddies on the same team so you can duke it out with the world at large. Launching the game makes Home seamlessly flip you over to the action. Once the match is over, it'll plunk you back into Command Center so you can figure out what went wrong with those carefully laid out plans.

The Command Center is a work in progress and Jobe mentioned that there are numerous features that have yet to be incorporated including the ability to save and load strategy sessions on the sand table.

Codemasters had its very first gamer's day yesterday in San Francisco, where it showed off its lineup of games for the year. In between all the racing games and shooters, there were not one but three different versions of Overlord--none of which was a port. All are scheduled to be released on the same day in June--which date exactly we don't know yet, but Overlord is bound to show up on at least one of your favorite gaming platforms.

Overlord II (PS3 / Xbox 360 / PC)

We recently had a chance to check out Overlord II at the New York Comic-Con (embedded below for your convenience), but last night we got to see some new areas and new features that have been added.

The overlord in his new icy underground lair.

Overlord II is a sequel to the first game, in which you wreak as much havoc as you possibly can as the budding new overlord. To help you achieve this are your minions, which come in the same four flavors of wickedness: brown, red, blue, and green. They function just like in the original, where each color has a specialty, whether it's hurling fireballs or the ability to swim. You'll also have an arsenal of new spells so that you can get off your lazy overlord butt and jump in on the action a bit more. In our demo last night, we explored a gorgeous snowy landscape, complete with a yeti who, oddly enough, behaves very much like Donkey Kong. We were told that everything that is cute and cuddly can be destroyed as we watched the minions approach an adorable white seal. Pandas will also be featured in the game, so animal-rights activists might want to look the other way. We watched as the overlord raided an igloo camp like it was built out of Styrofoam and freed angry-looking wolves that were kept in cages. After freeing the soon-to-be mounts, the minions will hop on and go for a ride. Before we knew it, the entire army was on mounts, ready to take on anything. Another cool feature that comes with the mount is the ability to jump, so you can send your slaves to the other side of a stream to bring down a drawbridge. You'll never have to get your feet wet.

The game is full of parodies--the more obvious one is of the Roman Empire. We saw minions dressed up as centurions, using catapults to launch giant boulders. We were told that at some point you'll be on a ship, with your minions lined up neatly, rowing in beat with a drummer. If you want them to row faster, just beat the drummer (that's one way to get things done). There are also minion-only side quests to take on, if you want to spend some quality time without the overlord getting in the way. Since the game is really about your little gremlin slaves, there is a slight possibility that you'll get attached to a particular one donning an attractive hat. When your minions die, they are sent to the graveyard so you can mourn their passing or resurrect them from the dead. You must, however, sacrifice a minion of equal or lesser value to bring back your favorite.

If you've played the original Overlord, the controls should feel familiar. We didn't get any hands-on time with this one, but from what we saw, it seems to be coming along really well. The environments look great, and with the updated engine that now includes physics, you'll be able to watch in satisfaction as your minions destroy everything in their path.

Overlord Dark Legend (Wii)

Management games have always worked better on a PC because of the mouse, but now with the Wii, you can direct your minions with precision and hack your way through farm animals without breaking a sweat. Overlord Dark Legend is a prequel to the original Overlord, going back to when the overlord was 16 and trying to find his true evil self. The first thing we noticed was that there was a cartoony look and feel to game, making it more comical than it already was. There will be references to popular fairy tales that fit in nicely with the dreamy and magical environment. To add to the personality and charm of the game, your minions will be sporting a variety of goofy-looking hats as they obediently follow you around.

"Say that to my face, squirt."

From what we played, the game retains the comical feel of its predecessor, and it all seems very familiar except for the controls. The camera is still a work-in-progress though. As of right now you use the C button to reset it behind you, but if you hold it you can pan around with the Wii Remote. You melee with the Z button, and the remote is reserved for your minions. Using the B button, you can target and send a minion off to go do something. The A button will reel the minion back in, and if you use the A and B buttons together while pointing up, you can pick up a minion and throttle its neck. Shake the remote until the minion's eyes bug out, and then let go and watch it become an explosive projectile. Poor minion. At least they come in handy when you need to blow up a road block.

To get a feel for the controls, we messed around in the charming countryside, sending minions after large bugs. We eventually wandered into a lovely narrow canyon, passing by spawn points occasionally to call up more minions with a quick press of the A button. Using the pointer, we would point at an enemy or large obstacle and fire the trigger button. Each press of the B button will send an additional minion, so you can easily send a couple one way and fire off a few more down another path. The D pad is used to select minion types, so you can gather all the brown ones, for instance, and send them off in one direction.

While Overlord Dark Legend can't compete visually against Overlord II on the Xbox 360 and PS3, it still looks mighty impressive on the Wii with its charming and colorful visuals that give off a warm and magical glow.

For some gameplay footage, check out our latest video from New York Comic-Con.

Overlord Minions (DS)

Overlord Minions takes a different approach by letting you control one of each minion type with your stylus on the Nintendo DS. You play as the overlord, but your presence onscreen isn't necessary since the goal here is to get your minions through each level. The stages are designed to be played in short spurts, making the game easy to pick up and play. We had an opportunity to see it last year at Codemasters' HQ, but last night we were able to get a feel for how the game is going to work.

Always causing trouble.

Depending on the level, you'll have access to two to four minions. You can control all of them at the same time by swiping your stylus over their icons to the right side of the touch screen, or you can control them individually by picking one and leaving the others behind. The levels are like a maze, with obstacles and puzzles in between the starting point and the finish line. Keeping in mind each minion's talents--for example, the blue minion can heal and travel across streams--you can plan a careful strategy to get to the finish line.

Everything is stylus driven, and to get rid of enemies, just slide your stylus through your minions, and they'll claw their way to victory. Most of the game is focused on puzzles, however, and the story is told through still art in between stages. So far things are looking pretty good. The gameplay is fun and different from the series, and it looks nice on the DS.

Side note: If you're a fan of the humor and the writing, you should be happy to know that Rhianna Pratchett, the original story writer, is back again for all three Overlord games.

Let's face it, we all have the urge to boss little monsters around and this might be the best way to do it. Look for all three Overlord games when they ship sometime in June.

If you hadn't heard, Empire: Total War is coming. This massive game will build on the foundations of the Total War series, which combines turn-based strategic elements (like managing your cities, oppressing peasants, establishing trade routes, oppressing peasants, researching new technologies, researching new peasant-opressing technologies, and diplomacy) and massive real-time battles. This time around, Empire will offer the huge land battles everyone has come to expect from the series (but with more emphasis on muskets and cannon), along with real-time naval battles that are genuinely affected by the realistic physics engine that developer Creative Assembly has built for the series.

These cannons were made for firin'. And that's just what they'll do in Empire: Total War.

We started our session with a few quick real-time battles that are started from the game's conventional multiplayer interface, which lets you host, join, and search for games from a single screen. Empire will support networked play as well as online play over Steam and will actually take your Steam ID into account and let you sync up with players on your Steam friends list and such. Quick multiplayer battles seem to run about the same way they have in previous games--prior to diving into battle, you'll pick and choose from whichever forces you care to bring into battle using a weighted point system to make sure each player is bringing in about the same amount of firepower (unless you're one of those manly men who prefer to give your opponents a handicap). You then set your armies in place in a timed deployment phase, and after that, you're off.

Prior to starting up a match, you can also set weather conditions; things like wind direction may affect the way ballistics work on land. But wind direction and wind levels, as well as general sea conditions, can have a profound effect on naval skirmishes. Because Empire's physics engine models the weight and mass of ships, as well as the effect of wind on the size and number of sails on a ship, speed and maneuverability become a lot more important on choppy seas. Of course, it's ideal to have the wind at your back filling your sails, while attempting to sail straight into the wind will bring your ship almost to a standstill. Standing still in water isn't always a bad thing, though. Based on what we can tell from our limited time with the game, Empire's naval battles seem to do a good job of capturing the feeling of being on a ship that's powered primarily by whatever winds happen to be blowing. Since there were no nuclear engines or turbo boosts back in the Age of Sail, your best bet is to drop anchor to stop your ship's forward motion, and you'll need to do this if a damaged enemy craft is on a collision course for the hull of one of your prized ships, because a good, solid ramming with a heavy battleship can do serious damage.

Our naval battle went fairly well for us; the highlight of the match was the utter devastation of our opponent's smallest ship as we first killed off his admiral with a grapeshot volley, then encircled our foe with our two largest craft, delivering simultaneous broadsides to both port and starboard hulls with standard cannons that smashed up and crippled our target. We felt pretty proud of ourselves going into our land battle, so much so that we decided to go easy on cannons and load up on swift cavalry to overwhelm our opponent, who may or may not have been a polite and accommodating British staff member of Creative Assembly, and who may or may not have let us win the naval battle. And in the land battle, our opponent may or may not also have been polite enough to show us how effective long-distance artillery is on clustered squads of faraway cavalry (here's a hint: It's really effective in killing your cavalry), after which point we may or may not have dropped out of the game, probably not due to bad sportsmanship or anything, but probably because of some kind of network issue. Yes...yes, that sounds believable.

From there, we headed off to try out a single-player campaign, which includes all the game's many nations with the exception of the United States of America (which must be unlocked from the Test of Time campaign's third chaper--a chapter that tells the tale of the American Revolution) and of the Native American nations, which won't be playable in the game out-of-box but will likely be made playable in short order, considering the industrious and clever fan base for this game (a fan base that's clearly clever and handsome enough to leave many positive comments on this blog post). Native American tribal nations...a naval superpower? It's more likely than you think, apparently.

You'll be able to choose a variety of different ways to hoodwink and oppress your citizens.

In our single-player game, we started playing as the royal nation of England, a well-balanced faction with holdings in both Europe and the New World, specifically island nations such as Jamaica and a tiny trading post in modern-day Canada (then known as "Mooseland"), along with a tiny, obscure protectorate consisting of, like, 12 or 13 colonies (or something). Empire has three primary theaters--Europe, the New World, and India. At the start of the campaign, Britain doesn't have any inroads into India, though other sides, such as the Dutch, have access to the near East (and its trade commodities, such as spices--all tradable goods, whether spices, sugar, coffee, or tobacco, will trade on an in-game commodities market whose prices fluctuate each turn and are determined by geographical, technological, and social needs).

Being unable to immediately find the "Oppress Peasants" button (hopefully Creative Assembly fixes this problem immediately), we settled on a plan of economic expansion by way of building up each of our holdings along dual lines of agriculture/population growth (researching such technologies as animal husbandry, which increases food production), and also civic happiness (by building structures such as opera houses), with the thinking that a happier populace early on would provide an early-game production boost and would also experience even more-severe, more-crushing misery and oppression when we clicked and dragged on the "increase taxes" slider and cranked it all the way up later.

You may have noticed that the overland map view in Empire has changed from previous games in a number of ways. Civic structures such as farms and trading posts now appear outside of your main cities, rather than being hidden inside the walls of a single, central location. This change was apparently made to encourage defensive players to be more vigilant and to encourage aggressive players to be more proactive about harrying their rivals, since farms, mines, and other juicy targets of opportunity now lie outside city walls. We dutifully sank all our cash into expanding and improving our holdings' economic infrastructure, with the result being gradually increasing cash reserves and some "trait" enhancements for our military officers, whose inactivity caused them to seek entertainment (and +1 morale bonuses) at the local tavern, though from the looks of it, further inactivity would have caused them to develop somewhat less-savory traits. Fortunately, military training has been streamlined in Empire such that once you research new formations and tactics, you won't have to march your armies back to town to train them; they'll have automatically acquired your new strategems, and you can continue to confidently march forward to war.

We figured our path of peaceful self-development was a can't-fail proposition (after all, who would dare oppose the mighty crown of England? France? Portugal? That little group of 15 colonies, or whatever? Not likely!). Britain starts off in a fairly strong diplomatic position, being either neutral or friendly with a great majority of the Old World powers and already having existing trade agreements with them. Empire's diplomacy interface lets you peacefully negotiate (or threaten for) whichever diplomatic condition you wish, such as trade of goods/territories/technologies, open borders, military alliances, and so on. The interface has a color-coded world map that shows your standing with other nations at a glance. Nations that are bright green are quite friendly, and nations that are bright red are quite hostile. You can hover your mouse over any nation on the map to receive an at-a-glance status report on the various conditions that contribute to your neighbors' attitude; if you have trade agreements, military agreements, or have helped them in the past, you'll have a certain number of positive points. If you've committed hostile actions such as declaring war or declaring allegiances with your neighbors' enemies, you'll have a certain number of negative points, and the total of your points determines how well-liked you are or aren't.

Unfortunately, the wandering pirates of the Carribean, the game's most nonpolitical faction,disagreed with us and hijacked one of our smaller merchant fleets in the Bahamas. Sadly, because this was the early part of our game and we hadn't made any significant investments into our navy, we were easily defeated, though we went out with a bang. In the real-time naval battle we fought, the pirates had our capital ship on the ropes, smashing up the hull with cannonballs and then opening up another fusillade that happened to hit our ships' powder kegs--this is a random event that's much more likely to happen to a severely damaged ship. But as it turned out, even though our ship went up in a fiery explosion, the prevailing wind currents spread the fire to the other pirate ships, which were already severely damaged. One actually routed (retreated due to a morale break); the other sank our final ship. So, at least we went out in a blaze of glory. We're told, however, that in every campaign, the pirates will have a hidden, randomly located base somewhere in the Caribbean that thorough seafaring players can attempt to seek and destroy.

Pirates off the port bow? We'll be sure to take that under advisement as we flee madly in the opposite direction.

Empire: Total War will finally be released in the next few weeks. Keep an eye on GameSpot for a full review in the near future. We'll also have a new trailer for you shortly.