What I'm Playing: Empire: Total War

To start this off, how in the hell did this game ever get a metacritic rating of 90? The game was unplayable at launch without constantly going in and deleting files to keep it from crashing. I had bought this the day it came out and had returned it to Gamestop within a week. Being a steam game though, I still had access to it, not getting the urge to download until recently.

While most of the crashes have been removed from the game, the game is still lackluster. I loved the original Medieval: Total War and enjoyed the Medieval 2, but cannot get into this game in the least bit. I'm not really sure what it is that is putting me off either. The game is sluggish on my computer when it shouldn't be, which contributes to my frustration.

I guess the problems lies in the lack of control I feel over my empire. I've been playing a lot of Civ 4 recently and in comparison, Empire is severely lacking. No peaceful means of expansion, minimal control over territories, and not much city control. I know Empire is more a war game, but a little variety would be nice. The only advantage that Empire theoretically has over Civ 4 is in actually playing out the battles. If only it were true in practice. Shoddy camera controls and overall lackluster AI makes it more enjoyable to auto-resolve every battle. Random point: why the fuck can't troops move quicker on the campaign map. Dear lord it takes forever for them to move.

Another peeve of mine is in regards to the DLC. Really, unit packs? You are going to charge people a couple of dollars for non-placeholder units? It is a big rip to me, as I have no problems with DLC for a game when it actually adds to the playtime. In the old days, this type of stuff would have been free content patch or combined up with a new campaign or something in a full blown expansion. Now they feel they can just nickle and dime us. Needless to say, I don't plan on purchasing any of the DLC.