As if more proof were needed that Febrooairy and Marrtch were months made of strategy, we hear glad tidings of little army men achieving great commercial success. Across the world (including the US, UK and Oz) last week, Dawn of War II hit the top of the PC charts like a, er, Space Marine hitting a pile of Orks with a powerfist. Or something. God, it’s too early for tortorous similes.
However, come this week in the UK, DOWII’s down to number 3 in the PC charts, below the latest instalment of perennial UK man-magnet Football Manager. In the all-formats chart, it places a mere 29th. DOOM! PC GAMING, DEAD! DEAD LIKE MY ABILITY TO DEVISE FUNNY SIMILES! Except… we have a new champion. One that achieves even greater success.
Sitting pretty at number one in the UK PC chart is Empire: Total War. And at number one in the all formats chart? Woo-hoo! Empire: Total War, possibly the most PC-gamey game of all-time, is master of all it surveys. Eat that, Killzone 2 and Halo Wars. The PC is the ultimate champion once again – coo in envy and mild arousal as it performs the crab most muscular.
No word on its Yankee chart-placement yet, which is likely to be interesting. Empire’s Euro-focus, despite the introductory War of Independence campaign, seemed to rile a few of our more patriotic American readers a little while back – could there be a general sentiment that ETW be disrepectin’ the colonies?
Amusingly, I note that the game features different box art in the UK and US. It’s the same shouting Sean Bean-alike front’n'centre, but in the UK he’s wearing a red coat with a British flag waving behind him. In the US? Why, blue coat and star-spangled banner. See above for empirical proof.
LOLZOR. Though it totally makes sense, of course: that evil motherland-celebrating redcoat box sat on US store shelves would have riled tempers enormously. It’ll certainly be fascinating to see if ETW can achieve the same success in the US, or if there’s a genuinely a political/cultural/historical obstacle between it and megabucks.
Update – seems like there’s a ton of different Empires. LOLZOR once more:
Thanks to Winfred van Heerebeek for pointing that out.
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It seems wierd for me, being in the UK and until recently with the Wii, only ever having spent much time with Spectrum and 386/486 upwards… What is this Amiga of which people speak… Did I have a NES once? I can’t even remember, or was that someone else?
The mental picture of four slightly bookish gentlemen invading my house in coats kidnapping a few brats for their grand experiment at the oh-so-secret RPS Tech-Citadel is somehow… epic.
I’m not sure that, had the redcoat art been used across the board, any mention would have been made of it in the first place. Most Americans probably started the grand campaign as Britain anyway.
Ginger Yellow – “Uh, that’s exactly what happens if you let unrest grow. It’s much easier to maintain order than it was historically, but still.”
Sorry i didn’t mean it quite how you interpreted it. I meant they become an actual faction not just a generic rebel city. I mean it actually turns into a Ireland faction that can form alliances with the French and whatnot. It might not change much gameplay wise but it would make rebellions more personal. if the was a much larger chance for rebellion as standard that could actually get very interesting.
I always forget that Io Interactive is a European developer. Hitman is one of my favorite games, but it’s always seemed so over-the-top that I don’t notice how most of the locations, even the biker bar in Codename 47 and Contracts, are in Europe.
Jalf mentioned Hitman as a European-style game, which is why I bring it up.
Lambo: I think that kind of thing happened in Europa Universalis…
Well in Sweden we have another case, which shows large American, British and French flags, and then a tiny, tiny Swedish flag far to the right. Is that a veiled insult? IS IT?
Yeah I noticed too 706, rather strange. Maybe this is the “original” non-edited case.
Nice to see a PC-only title doing so well. Just a shame it’s been tainted, slightly, by various problems on launch. Hopefully they’ll all be sorted out, quickly.
@unclelou:
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on RPS, ignore catska. He’s just trolling. Every single time I see him make a comment, it’s to disparage the PC as a platform. That’s all he does. It’s getting tiresome.
@The Sombrero Kid:
Practically all the mainstream game news sites do it. I can’t count how many times I see an article where they talk about a game – and I know that there’s a PC version available – and they completely (and deliberately) overlook that fact.
“Keep it civil, folks, or we’ll kill your children. I mean delete your comments. I always get those two confused!”
Ironically, my internet comments are my only children. *sobs*
Pah! You call that a Sean Bean-lookylikey?
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/templates/images/sidebar/promos/promo_empire.jpg
@ Lambo
you need the medieval 2 addon it introduces ireland as a playable faction
@redrain85
i’m fairly sure it’s a recent trend for eurogamer though, i usually don’t bother with most other games sites for that reason it’d be a shame to abandon eurogamer after reading it for so long
+ dan whitehead deliberatly and specifically decived me about RE5 racism to win an argument but thats another story
Paying for extra content that’s On The Disc reeks of companies trying to eat their cake without losing any actual cake.
It comes with the monetary benefits of DLC, as in extra income from sales of optional products added onto the base sale, but without the actual “downloading” or the issues one would imagine DLC would ordinarily bring up–hosting files on servers and actually having them sent to the customer, for example.
Locking on-disc content from use is pretty blatant as far as consumer-ripoff shenanigans go.
And regarding the chocolate box analogy: I’ve never seen anyone leave a chocolate box unfinished. After all, they bought the chocolates in the box, not two-thirds or three-quarters of them. And even if someone were to make up convoluted, nonsensical rules regarding legal post-purchase boxed chocolate consumption, I doubt this would do anything to curb the world’s rampant confection piracy.
Woooo go med 2. What a pity you’re uninstalled since your younger more fun brother is here…….what a delightfully fun pity…..*sighs* *fires up Empire”
Subject 706 says:
Any chance of a pic?
Interesting about ETW. As an Amurkin, I thought it was an (American) Revolutionary War game and didn’t follow it, but I’m much more interested now. So. Stereotypes are fun. I just want the heterogeneity of national cultures to be realized. Bleh.
catska says:
Its quite telling that the charts everyone is championing are for the UK only, which has long been a small, PC centric market
Actually contrary to what our clever friend says, the UK in fact just overtook Japan. Wow, yes, second out of 192 countries is certainly “small”, I love how halfwits who know nothing just pull “facts” out of the air.
This is one of the many reasons why I don’t have children. I’m scared people will take them away if I speak the truth, even if the truth is sometimes uncivil. ;)
So I bought this gem and it’s hard locked on my box twice so far, both times in under 5 minutes of play. Bless PC Gaming. I’ll mess with it later. I really just wanted to play some of this supposedly phenomenal game and remind myself why I despise RTSes so much.
I was one of the ones mistakenly seen as offended by certain things of ETW. No, I was just a little annoyed that one thing was implied for so long and it ended up being a totally different thing. (i.e. U.S./13 C’s one of the main factions, but ended up the subject of a pretty short tutorial saga). I was also very interested to play Prussia from the start and I would have thrown an identical fit if they turned out to not be in the game, or ended up as a minor faction, etc. I was misled and it annoyed me, that’s it.
Again, like some ridiculous comment left by some Danish guy, what actually got me riled up was the automatic assumption that I must be upset because Americuhhh got dissed and that must be really upsettin’ me and my giant belt buckle and cowboy hat, and the implication that I/anyone else annoyed by the misleading about the US/13C situation is just another arrogant American dickhead who thinks the world revolves around the U.S.
I made similar posts about how I think the U.S./13 C thing could have been handled better, purely in the interest of deeper gameplay and unique situations, and every single one of them got the same responses and assumptions made about me and the people who agreed with me. Any sensible person can see how that’d become a little frustrating after a while.
The last 4 Total War games and all their expansions have been “Euro-centric” and haven’t hurt North American sales in the slightest, and I’d like to point out I own every Total War game, and every expansion, including 3 copies of Rome gold (long story), and two copies of the first Medieval and it’s expansion.
Throws hands up and sighs
P.S.
Empire: Total War is an instant classic.
“Mitthrawn says:
at Jalf
You’re generalizing.”
It’s not like Jalf didn’t say he/she was generalzing about 8 times during the post or anything. Then you follow it with your own sweeping generalizations.. so, um, yeah.
Well in Sweden we have another case, which shows large American, British and French flags, and then a tiny, tiny Swedish flag far to the right. Is that a veiled insult? IS IT?
A veiled insult? Heavens, no. We’re all quite open in our hatred of you Scandinavian mongrels.
HTML disaster. All pedestrians please clear the area.
Consoles didn’t really take off in the UK until the Playstation
Sega Master System?
I think console gaming dominated the market in the states in the 70’s and 80’s much more than it does now (think of the Atari and NES eras), and it really wasn’t until the mid 90’s that PC gaming exploded here. Prior to that, our computer game market was dominated by the Apple ][, Atari 800, and Commodore 64. Prior to the internet going commercial in the mid 90’s, no one owned computers here unless they were a student or tech-inclined.
“Sorry i didn’t mean it quite how you interpreted it. I meant they become an actual faction not just a generic rebel city. I mean it actually turns into a Ireland faction that can form alliances with the French and whatnot.”
It happened twice during my last (and first btw) game.
First there was uprising in Austria region (owned by Prussia at the time), after capturing Vienna, they reformed Austria as a contry (and major one), and they had war with everyone, who was previously in war with them (me, France and Prussia).
The second was former Dutch colony in South America (I don’t remember the name), they were “generic rebel city” I planned to capture. Not they’re another minor nation.
If you buy it on Steam then the guy on the box is where an HEV-suit and waving a banner with a headcrab on it.
True story…
The boxart here in Ireland, is noticeably different – instead of Sean Bean waving a angry jingoistic flag, there’s pale skinned Gabriel Byrne looking destitute and hungry…
Paying for extra content that’s On The Disc reeks of companies trying to eat their cake without losing any actual cake.
It comes with the monetary benefits of DLC, as in extra income from sales of optional products added onto the base sale, but without the actual “downloading” or the issues one would imagine DLC would ordinarily bring up–hosting files on servers and actually having them sent to the customer, for example.
Locking on-disc content from use is pretty blatant as far as consumer-ripoff shenanigans go.
It doesn’t depend on if it is on the disc or not at all. Now the “special forces” are a bit of a bad example, but the only thing it depends on is if they made that extra content *because* they knew they would sell it extra. If it wouldn’t be on the disc if they hadn’t planed to charge for it, you can’t complain if it is on the disc and they didn’t charge you for it (but don’ let you use it).
You don’t “own” the content anyway. You physically own a worthless piece of plastic (the data carrier) and a box, which is why any chocolate box example just doesn’t work.
Tiny Swedish flag :P
http://images.webhallen.com/product/83633/large
@Oak – You just made London a priority target for my army of Scandinavian mongrels with flag inferiority complexes.
“The boxart here in Ireland, is noticeably different – instead of Sean Bean waving a angry jingoistic flag, there’s pale skinned Gabriel Byrne looking destitute and hungry”
I particularly liked the scenario involving the attack on the Riordains’ farm.
P.
I always liked establishing protectorates after a massive invasion. Its kind of Useless but i just get a sense of pride that my political offspring are still holding land.
It’s silly, but knowing there’s a cover with my nation’s flag on it makes me want to buy it (a tad more).
Nice thing with the covers there. The Prussian eagle for the German edition. I guess the Bavarians and Austrians wont buy it then.
;D
Although I’m not a fan of these type of games I don’t begrudge them their success.
The French flag is the wrong colour on that box, it should be white.
When did the word ‘Huzzah’ take over the world? I grew up in the seventies and eighties and I never heard it. We all said ‘Hooray’ or ‘Hurah’. Then since about five years ago everyone on the internet is saying ‘Huzzah’.
I mean, I grew up in the UK so i had a fair exposure to American culture via watching so many American TV shows and I still don’t remember anyone saying Huzzah. I can understand some small pockets of people saying it like some in the south say ‘Wrasling’ instead of ‘Wrestling’ but it seems that everyone says ‘Huzzah’ on the net and no one ever says ‘Hooray’ or ‘Hurah’.
I say hay, hay, hay, hay . . what’s going on?
Blame Cave Story B-)
I have a feeling that some of my fellow americans are angry at Empire for destroying their pet myth about winning the revolution because we “fought like injuns” while the “redcoats” lined up in the fields using “parade ground tactics”. Though it is irritating that the minutemen and indians don’t do this, if you’ve played empire you know it would end badly if they did.
The drama of Empire battles has done a good deal of service to those of us who try to explain pre 20th century tactics to people whose only knowledge thereof comes from watching The Patriot. These aren’t bloodless affairs, and they fought in lines because it really was the best way to do it.
Lordy, all this wailing and gnashing of teeth about the extra units and, shock horror, the fact that you can pay some money to unlock them sounds so very Daily Mail. Outrage built on ignorance and fanned with gusts of arrogance.
We exist in a world of digital content distributed by digital channels, I think you are all aware of this although you whingers sound like a bunch of octogenarians talking about whether a word document is ‘really there’ when it is displayed on the screen.