I’ll be in the Brewery . . . hic! Review

I’ll be in the Brewery . . . hic!

Most people I know, including myself, had never heard of a little game called

Settlers before. Surprisingly, the game has been around for years, and

has now returned in its third incarnation. While Settlers III wont be

the new dominating real-time strategy game, it still delivers an innovative

and fun experience.

While the

graphics and sound are interesting, most strategy buffs want to know how much

thinking they’ll have to do in order to win. In Settlers 3, you have

to change your thinking. While there is a lot of resource management, every

strategy player has a handle on that by now. You also have to build units, but

everyone knows about that too. What’s different is the building order.

In StarCraft, for example, you need a Covert Ops

and a Science Lab to build a nuclear bomb. Settlers III takes a somewhat

more complex approach. To get usable wood, you need one settler to grow trees,

one to harvest, and finally a woodmill to make boards out of it. To feed your

people, you need to build farms – the fields actually grow as you play. To get

the military unit you want, you have to mine metal ore, smelt it, and then transfer

it to a blacksmith to build your implements of war. This level of complexity sets

Settlers III apart from other real-time strategy games.

Strategy aside, graphics are an important part of a good game. And while Settlers

III doesn’t throw the most amazing effects at you, it still holds its own

against today’s standards. Though it lacks the effects of StarCraft and

the 3D appeal of Total Annihilation, the bright and

colorful sprites look interesting and are well animated.

Sound is equally decent, but not spectacular. You’ll mostly be hearing mining

and chopping sounds anyway – not the most interesting fare.

The story,

while taking a back seat to the gameplay, follows three demigods. These gods

have become fat in their rich lands, their people working for them and producing

many goods. They represent three different peoples, Asian, Roman, and Egyptian.

Their master, the “main” god, has found them to be lazy and decides to have

a little game. They must battle each other, the victor winning the favor of

their master.

That’s where you come in – you are the person, chosen by your god, to lead

your people to battle. Three battling races (many will draw comparisons to Starcraft

or Age of Empires) but lets remember that the

original Settlers came out even before Warcraft.

Settlers III is also the first in the series to include massive multiplayer

gaming. While the interface succeeds in being both accessible and powerful –

joining games is a tedious task. After receiving multiple time-outs and other

network errors, I finally got into a game. The game was filled with lag as well

as having another major problem – even without internet latency, the games are

inherently slow. While Settlers III works well as a single player game,

building up a civilization does not lead to quick “rush” games. An experienced

player warned me of games that never end as well as games that run so long they

go out of sync.

The number of users playing Settlers is decent, but not overwhelming.

Peak hours saw about fifty or so people playing the game. However, for the most

part the multiplayer is a disaster – you must dedicate hours and hours of play

just to complete one game, hours that many people do not have, especially not

in a single stretch.. If you are looking for a quick fix, look somewhere else.

For a game that succeeds so well as a single player game, it really is a disappointment

that the multiplayer is so bad. Settlers III is an interesting, fairly

innovative real-time strategy game, so if playing against the computer is your

bag, well then baby, get this game. On the other hand, if you crave the excitement

of biological opponents, don’t settle for this one.