Ferrago has new screenshots of Age of Empires III and Rise of Legends.

If they keep this up, I’m going to lose all my hardcore grognard street cred by gushing over graphics.

First the AoE3 screens. The Vauban style fort in this shot is a little out of place in the New World. I guess Louisbourg was a pretty solid fortress, but most New World fortifications were simpler. But it’s really silly pointing out ahistorical stuff in an Age game. I think I saw this shot in an old Western once. All the new screenshots look amazing, but give little real sense of what the game is going to be like. No new battle scenes, not a lot of resource gathering stuff. More a pretty textbook than the sense that there is a game going on. But this is Ensemble and the game related stuff should be available soon.

As for Rise of Legends, it is still a year off. No way to tell that from the screenshots. Check out this battle scene. Or this one. The themes of an Arabian Nights world and a steampunk civilization are pretty clear. There looks to be a genie in one of the battles and one of the cities has that fantasy Harun al-Rashid thing going on. The flying machines look really cool. Here we have a lot of battles, but little else. I am assuming that most of these shots are coming from the story driven campaign in production, so the conflict is the centerpiece. But a little more of the civilian side would be nice. As I mentioned earlier, I play my RTS games at a pretty slow pace, so the domestic development is something I am really interested in.

Thanks to Ferrago for posting these screenshots. The anticipation is almost as sweet as the inevitable satisfaction.

Haemimont Games and FX Interactive have announced a new ancient strategy game, Imperivm: Great Battles of Rome. Yes, it’s supposed to be a “v”. I guess that since “Imperium” has been used a lot, and they aren’t creative enough to think of another name, they’ll just drop the “u” and pretend that all their customers get the Latin joke.

I don’t mean to be dismissive or snarky, but Haemimont is one of those developers that I just don’t get. Both Celtic Kings and Nemesis of the Roman Empire did very well with most critics, but bored me more than Pliny. And their new game, with all its promising PR looks like more of the same.

Don’t believe me? Check out their press info pack here.

First, the good. Numantia and Viriathus! Finally a game developer decides to take on modeling the guerrilla war in Hispania that, in many ways, set the tone for Roman politics between Hannibal and the Gracchi. Hard fought, long, and very frustrating for the Romans.

It looks like there will be set piece battles from the screenshots with the ability to give orders while paused.

There is a Total War type campaign mode that looks like it could be a decent distraction.

Now the not so good. None of these battles are really set pieces (most discuss sieges or landings) and much of the document shows the same settlements we saw before, raising the threat of supply focused gameplay that made their other two ancient games such a chore.

Anubis warriors? Osiris chariots? Where in the name of Sisyphus were your historical experts? Is it so hard for developers to understand that Cleopatra’s Egypt was not Ramses’ Egypt? A couple of thousand years does make a difference.

The graphics don’t seem to have changed at all.

And, once again, Pompey gets slighted.

I’ll get it more because I have this ancient itch that won’t stay scratched. And I expect respectful reviews from my colleagues in the gaming press. I remain to be convinced.

1up is reporting that the new version of Age of Empires II: Age of Kings for the Nintendo DS will be turn-based.

Why take one of the most popular real-time games of all time and make it turn-based? And how would that even work?

“Age of Empires has set the gold standard for real-time strategy games and its global audience continues to grow,” said Ken Gold, vice president of Marketing at Majesco.

So how do you translate a gold standard real-time game to a turn-based game? It will be an entirely different game, that’s for sure. How can you do an archer rush in a turn based environment? Or a town center creep?

Eagle Games has tried to make these types of decisions for its series of board games based on computer hits. It has somehow managed to make Age of Mythology into a board game. But there can be no confusing it with the the Ensemble Studios hit. It uses cards as power ups and exploration chances, but still has the basic myth unit/human unit distinction and the three races. But when you look at the game board, it is clearly more inspired by Age of Mythology than a simulacrum.

Doing a turn based Age of Kings for a handheld console is an intriguing concept and I look forward to seeing if and how it turns out. Europa Universalis II, the king of humongous real time historical fun is also being designed for the DS and it has the advantage of being derived from a board game in the first place.

Given the dearth of serious historical strategy games on the big consoles, their migration to portables is an interesting trend that might push me to pick up one of these little toys myself.

Why do games come in paper sleeves? Do the marketers have any idea how easy it is to lose one of these? And when I am scooping up a pile of paper from my too-cluttered desk, a sleeve with a game in it can get more easily lost in the folds of a folders than a true CD case.

Plus, these sleeves have no distinctive side art (like those heavy cardboard envelopes) so when they are on my shelf I have to leaf through a bunch to find the one I want. As I look at my game rack at the moment, I can identify Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, Pax Romana, Europa Universalis II and six other games to its right. But the game to left of Kohan is in a white envelope, so I have no clue what it is. (On closer inspection, it’s Dominions II).

On the other hand, I love the new DVD boxes. No cardboard box to recycle. To the left of my laptop I see Imperialism II, Dragoon and SpaceHoRSE. Well, at least SpaceHoRSE has something going for it. The DVD boxes are attractive, though they do take up a lot more space than traditional CD cases.

The decline of game packaging is as constant a subject of complaint as the decline in manuals. At least most manuals are being replaced by better in-game help and roll-over tooltips. There is great resistance, it would seem, to moving to superior forms of packaging like DVD boxes. The only possible explanation is cost of CD cases, but game companies are still (mostly) using boxes to stick the sleeves in and this is mostly wasted paper.

Age of Empires III (Microsoft/Ensemble)
American Conquest: Divided Nation (CDV/GSC)
Ascension to the Throne (1C Company/DVS)
Battle Mages: Sign of Darkness (Buka Entertainment/Targem Games)
Black and White 2 (Electronic Arts/Lionhead)
Blitzkrieg 2 (CDV/Nival Interactive)
Brigade E5: New Jagged Union (1C Company/Apeiron)
Civilization IV (2K Games/Firaxis)
Codename: Panzers, Phase Two (CDV/Stormregion)
Company of Heroes (THQ/Relic)
Cuban Missile Crisis (1C Company/G5 Software)
Desert Law (1C Company/Arise)
Earth 2160 (Zuxxez/Reality Pump)
Ghost Wars (Hip Games/Digital Reality)
The Guild 2 (JoWood/Deep Silver)
Heart of Empire: Rome (Deep Silver/Deep Red)
Heaven vs. Hell (TKO Software)
Heroes of Might and Magic V (Ubisoft/Nival Interactive)
Hotel Giant 2 (JoWood/Game Factory)
The Movies (Activision/Lionhead)
Outfront II(1c Company)
Pacific Storm (Buka/Lesta Studio)
Paraworld (Sunflowers)
Perimeter: Emperor’s Testament (1C Company/KD Labs)
Panzer Elite Action (JoWood/Zootfly)
Rollercoast Tycoon 3: Soaked (Atari/Frontier Dev.)
Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War (Midway/Stainless Steel)
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends (Microsoft/Big Huge Games)
Rush for Berlin (Deep Silver/Storm Region)
The Sims 2: Nightlife (Electronic Arts/Maxis)
Singles 2: Triple Trouble (Deep Silver/Rotobee)
Space Rangers 2: Dominators (1C Company/Elemental Games)
Spellforce 2 (JoWood/Phenomic Game Development)
Stalingrad (1C Company/4X Studios)
Star Wars: Empire at War (LucasArts/Petroglyph)
Tycoon City: New York (Atari/Deep Red)
UFO: Aftershock (Cenega/Altar)
An Untitled RTS (Deep Silver)
War Front: Turning Point (CDV/Digital Reality)
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Winter Assault (THQ/Relic)
War Leaders: Clash of Nations (CDV/Enigma Software)
World War I (1C Company/Nival Interactive)
A World War II RTS (1C Company)
XIII Century: Sword and Honor (1C Company/One Small World)
Zoo Tycoon 2: Endangered Species (Microsoft/Blue Fang Games)

Over at Gamerdad, Dave Long is subjecting himself to an interesting experiment. He will cut himself off from your typical game news sources and rely solely on the mainstream media for his E3 coverage.

Lots of gamers don’t know a lot about gaming. These are the big, bloated, casual gaming mass that really has no idea where to get up-to-date information. I have one friend who has repeatedly asked me for the latest dirt on 24: The Game despite the fact that I don’t have a console and that I have linked him to Gamespot at least twice.

Lots of people who care about this sort of stuff knew what the Xbox360 would look like and what its specs would be days before the MTV promo-show for it. Your average console gamer might not have even known that a new Xbox was on the way.

I look forward to hearing about Dave’s experience. I find it hard to cut myself off from my Gametab News and read mainstream coverage of gaming more to get an idea of what my nieghbors would know about it. Very little, it seems.

So check out Dave’s story and follow his adventures. And spend some time at Gamerdad. A great site with a great team of writers doing some important work.