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Rather than arrange all the campaign scenarios in a long snaking chain, the developer has sprinkled them on a map of Europe, giving players a choice of up to three destinations at any one time. Symptomatic of Glory's lack of engagement are the Londinium missions within the chunky campaign segment. Extra virgin I find fiddling calms me at times like these. In contrast to Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile which had a clever flood season feature and an elaborate pyramid building aspect, there's nothing here that gets to the heart of the extraordinarily rich subject matter. With a few graphical changes and some text tinkering Glory could easily be transformed into an equally convincing Ancient Greek city building game, or an Aztec, Chinese, or Sumerian one.
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The wonders of Roman plumbing are represented entirely by well structures and extendable aqueducts (largely unnecessary) the rest of the Empire by a very poor, very limited import/export interface. Apart from buying a few slaves occasionally and building the odd vineyard and bathhouse for the nobs, there are almost no meaningful reminders that a social hierarchy exists. Shouldn't coliseums be colossal?Īmong subjects given little attention or none at all, are class, sanitation, politics, taxation and trade. Instead of using real history as an inspiration for features, Haemimont has just used it as a garnish it has taken the classic city-building template and decorated it gingerly with a few token laurel sprigs and SPQR standards. In spite of a sprinkling of Latin names and distinctive structures like coliseums and aqueducts, the game never feels particularly Roman. What dooms Glory to mediocrity is partly its insipid, half-hearted interpretation of Roman life. The same applies to the social management dimension populations will riot or pop their sandals if you neglect their various needs, but warnings of coming trouble are, usually, timely and helpfully specific. The economics are complex enough to be passably interesting but not so convoluted that they overwhelm. Like any half-decent city-building game, there's a definite momentum to the action you start a scenario by plopping down a few thatched hovels, farms and mines on a spacious map, and, before you know it, an hour has passed and there you are earnestly scouring a vast brick and marble sprawl for room to place just one more gold-leafed statue of Bacchus, God of winos. Glory might be completely devoid of original ideas, but at least it's competently constructed and entertaining in a bland, non-threatening sort of way. Indulgent intro ends hereĪpologies for the cynicism. With luck one day he'll be making products as fresh, iconoclastic, and crammed with surprises as Glory of the Roman Empire. By teaching him to suppress his imagination and mimic the objects he sees around him, I'm equipping him with exactly the kind of mindset he'll eventually need to get ahead in mainstream game design. I know it sounds cruel, but really it isn't. If, on the other hand, he brings me a model of a huge blue horse drinking from a volcano, or a peacock with rockets instead of feathers, I smash it to bits in front of him and rage until he blubs. It works like this: let's say he's playing with his Lego and builds a neat little model of our house or our car on such occasions I reward him with affection and words of praise.
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To help him on his way I'm already employing a special Hungarian education technique called Realignment Through Play (RTP). I'd be as pleased as Punch if my three-year-old son Randolph grew up to be a games designer.