But despite all of the nitpicking above, Emperor plays very well. The units are responsive, the pathfinding is good, and the ability to issue quick commands like "scatter" and "hold formation" to groups of units is handy. Westwood also added random encounters to help turn the tide of a battle. If you have a squad of heavy units marching to a destination, chances are you'll disturb a sand worm that will be more than happy to chow down on your troops. Or maybe a sandstorm will tear through your base and rip apart your ironclad defenses.
Also available are secondary houses, like the Freman or the Tleilaxu. These are mercenaries that can be hired by any player to fight. Unfortunately, these little gameplay tweaks are not enough to help Emperor stand out amongst all the other Westwood RTS titles.
It's impossible to talk about Emperor's graphics without sounding like Westwood paid you off, so I'm not going to try... They are fantastic. This is the best-looking RTS I have ever played. Even on my modest system (P3-900, Geforce2GTS, 256 Megs of RAM) I still had to pick my jaw up off the floor when the game loaded. The textures are incredibly detailed, the lighting is colorful and vivid, and the frame rate is smooth like "buttah". The most impressive aspect of the graphics, though, is the attention to the little details: The laser crosshair coming off of the sniper's scope, the headlights on the vehicles during night assaults, the scaffolding that erects itself around newly placed buildings, the goo that peels off the armpits of newly hatched Tleilaxu. Literally hundreds of little details are carefully placed to fully immerse you into the Dune world. And with the wonderful camera zoom feature, you can enjoy them as closely or as far away as you want.
The sound, furthermore, complements the graphics well. The music is matched to the race being played: The Atreides have brave and gallant tunes, the Harkonnen music is aggressive and evil, and the Ordos music is mysterious and shady. The sound effects for each unit are perfectly matched. You'll know to be afraid when you hear the thumps of numerous Harkonnen Devastator Mechs heading towards your base or when you hear the crackle of Ordos Chaos Lighting.
The only sound that I found annoying was the female announcer. I know she means well, but she's just a little too slow on the draw. For instance, she'll say "Unit Lost" thirty seconds after your scout dies because she was busy saying "Structure ready to place" at the time of the his demise. The last thing you want to hear after losing a huge battle is a snotty announcer carrying on about it five minutes after the fact.
The most glaring fault of Emperor is its lack of innovation. Westwood has become too comfortable with the Command and Conquer gameplay engine and refuses to explore beyond it. Emperor is the plain blue M&M. It has a shiny, new colored candy shell on the outside but with the same familiar chocolate center. Instead of "Boldly Going" and trying to create the Almond M&M or the Peanut Butter M&M, Westwood decided to play it safe. Your enjoyment with Emperor and its replay factor depends solely on how many plain M&M's you've eaten before it. You can only have so many before your mind gets bored and your stomach gets full.
Dilip "Klashe" Trivedi
Freelance Game Reviewer