Counting down to our top game of the year, at number 8 we find:
Empire: Total War (Gold Edition)
Based purely on web traffic, this one would win outright. Our review and youtube footage of the game remains the most popular we’ve posted so far, which is not surprising given that it was highly anticipated for a rather long time.
Empire: Total War gave us a huge amount of gaming to get stuck into, with the ability to command troops across most of the globe, and an improved engine over its predecessors. Feral Interactive did a lot of testing to make sure it would work, and it seems to have paid off.
It’s a pity the promised multiplayer support still hasn’t found its way into the game, but there are plenty of mods to keep life in this yet. The new, streamlined gameplay wasn’t a big hit with us, nor were the naval battles. What really kept the game from being named our game of the year though, was the relative age and price of the game, which has already been overshadowed by Shogun II and the forthcoming Rome II games on Windows.