5 things I hate about...

Empire Total War

To kick us off, I'm going to moan lyrical over the latest instalment in this franchise. So, in no particular order, here we go:

1. Friendly unit AI in battles. If history has taught us anything, it's that no matter how much you tell them to fire at will, line infantry will invariably stand around picking their noses with bayonets having several ounces of lead shot pumped at them repeatedly, with nothing so much as a harsh word thrown in retaliation. 'Concerned: Losing slightly' Yes, me too.

2. Time to play a game. Like the great dynasties of yore, at the rate it takes to proceed through even a short Grand Campaign, I'll have to pass on the mantle of stewardship to my sons and them to theirs if my family is ever going to see a campaign through. Real-time strategy? You're not kidding.

3. Thugees. Yes I know the term is accurate but DAMN, every time I hear the advisor chick's voice saying it I almost snort a lungful of my soup. For some reason I have images of 50-Cent's crew roaming around the sub-continent in their pimped-out carts terrorising rice farmers and cotton weavers. Don't be a menace to South Asia while drinking your lhassi in the jungle.

4. Enemy AI on the campaign map. Watching enemy manoeuvres sometimes feels like you are watching two very stupid dogs chase each other around, waving their tails like these virtual muppets wave their flags with seemingly no sense of purpose to it at all. One unit will march from point A to point B, about face and march to point C. Meanwhile, another, perhaps slightly cleverer muppet (but who really knows) will start from point C and march straight to point A. The end result? Nothing has changed except a wasted turn of movement and the player sitting there giggling uncontrollably as she ponders which region to next meander over and swallow up into her empire.

5. Difficulty. A vegetablised donkey could prolapse onto a board made of solid stupid and that dubious deposit could swallow a couple of valium, play this on hardest setting and STILL easily mince to victory. Hell, I could even play this on the hardest setting and mince to victory (although as point 1 above suggests, probably only using good old auto-resolve (or should I say auto-win by the way but that's technically sneaking in thing number 6 that I hate)). This is also pretty much only theory as due to point 2 above, I've not got a spare year to actually find out. If conquering the world was this easy, America would have done it by now.

*offers pinch of salt*

Got any more?

(((Note this is crossposted from my new blog over at GAX. I'll keep crossposting for a wee while even though it's also kinda doing that automagically. )))