Empire of the Ants Review
Empire of the Ants just doesn't do justice to the really unusual and interesting premise.
If you think ants are just annoying, stupid pests that invade your cookie jar or bite your feet in the backyard, think again. They're actually an enormously sophisticated group of creatures, and they form the subject of Empire of the Ants, a real-time strategy game from developer Microïds. Empire of the Ants was inspired by the international best-selling novel of the same name, written by French science journalist Bernard Werber. One of the novel's primary plot strands centers on the russet ant empire of Bel-o-kan, which you'll lead to supremacy while gathering resources and fighting enemy insects. If only the game were as interesting as its subject matter, it would have a lot to offer. As it stands, it's generally dull, unfriendly, and buggy (no pun intended).
As odd as it might sound to make a real-time strategy game about ants, the subject matter has intriguing game design possibilities. Ant colonies have complex social structures with multiple castes working in close cooperation, and their huge nests can serve as home to 10 million members. They can build structures from leaves they shred and then bind together in new forms. They communicate with each other by tapping, emitting squeaks or buzzes, or using chemical pheromone markers. Ants regularly take other ants and insect species captive and use them as a specialized slave labor force. Other than humans, ants are also the only species to regularly engage in highly organized mass warfare. They even resort to chemical warfare, thanks to some species' ability to spray poison or acid. Feuds between nearby colonies can go on for years and feature raids and vicious battles.
You'll experience a little--but not enough--of this strange, miniature world in the game. Your overall goal is simple: build and manage your colony so that it can survive and grow in the face of enemy ants, predator insects, food shortages, and other natural threats. While the game's subject matter is really unusual (though it's been attempted before in Maxis' SimAnt from 1991), a lot of the basic gameplay concepts will be familiar to real-time strategy fans--perhaps too familiar. Your anthill is your base and is divided into specialized chambers, such as storage rooms and incubation chambers. Your worker ants will seek out grass, mushrooms, and leaves for sustenance, and they'll bring sand, twigs, spider webs, and other dead matter back to your anthill for construction material. You'll also engage in combat with other ant species and individual predators.
Through a sometimes-confusing iconic interface, you control your ants both above and below ground. To help you find your way around and track the status of your empire, a minimap is available, and it really lives up to its name--it's so small that it's rather difficult to use. An equally awkward "maximap" option doesn't improve matters. There are two meager tutorials; parts of them are so dull that watching dust settle would be an edge-of-your-seat experience by comparison. During the egg-laying portion of the tutorial, you can go make a cup of coffee, run down to the store to buy more, come back, and find the game still slowly grinding away. The tutorials are also easy to "break"--you can accidentally deviate ever so slightly from directions, which is easy to do since they're not always clear, and then have to start over. These tutorials and the mediocre manual just don't explain the details of the game as clearly as they should. The same shoddiness rears its ugly head in the menus, where you can accidentally quit the game while navigating them because a quit confirmation appears only sporadically.
- GameSpot Score 5.6 mediocre
Player Reviews
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Empire of the Ants was awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Continue »
Critic Scores
- IGN 6 / 10
- Electric Playground 6 / 10
- Game Vortex 7 / 10
- GameSpot UK (Pre-2003) 7.5 / 10
- Gamers Pulse 67 / 100
- ESC Magazine 5 / 10
- GameSpy 75 / 100
- Game Raiders 55 / 100
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