Reviews// Impire

Impire does have an interesting way in which the creatures under the player's control are managed. They are directly controlled by being placed into squads or they can be instructed individually. They can be teleported directly to where the action is occurring and thus enable to player to continually pump minions into the fray as they fall at the hands of heroes. I can't imagine how frustrating this would feel if one were a hero, as for every enemy slain, four more appear.

Impire does offer a lengthy campaign that requires the player to send squads of minions out into the larger world to raid items from nearby settlements. Sadly, this happens automatically and the player has no control over how the raid takes place. Such events may have slowed the pace of the game to a crawl, so there is some merit in removing the need of the player to control these raids, but some kind of option to do so would not have gone amiss. Instead, we're forced to wait for a squad icon to move across the map and then hopefully return with their ill-gotten gains.

The presentation of Impire is good, with windows popping up showing the action being played out when the player views the overhead map. It is very easy to see what is going on in the map itself, but the interface is awash with large amounts of data that make tracking the status of the dungeon somewhat problematic. The game demands the player uses both mouse and keyboard to interact with the game, which for a dungeon simulation was hard to fathom seeing as Dungeon Keeper, its spiritual inspiration, barely used the keyboard at all.

The music and spot effects of the game are suitably atmospheric and do much to embellish the evil feel of Impire. All this is let down by the dreadful voice acting, which becomes increasingly grating as you select various units to do your bidding. They repeat the same phrases in a style not seen since Warcraft. It was amusing back then, but times have changed and if a developer is going to try to use voice acting in their game, a little more variety would have been nice.

There is a multiplayer aspect to Impire that at the time of writing this review was in beta phase, hence it has not been included in this review as it would not be right to comment on unfinished code.

The opening paragraph of this review spoke of the application of humour in Impire. The developers have tried very hard to exploit the fact that the player is managing a dungeon filled with critters that people normally kill in games, not manage. They press this point over and over again, to the point Oscar van Fairweather, the deranged wizard who summoned Baal-Abaddon, presses his little finger to his mouth in Dr Evil-like fashion. I think it's the developer's attempt at pathos. It didn't work.

I said "ostensibly" earlier in this review with regard to Impire being a dungeon simulator. While outwardly the game looks like one, it is more akin to a spreadsheet with a very pretty skin. Ultimately the player is reduced to shovelling one set of numbers to another until they inevitably attain victory. The game's underlying mechanics become so glaringly clear that you cease to see a dungeon but instead just lines of code. As the player responds to changes in this code they react them in a Pavlovian manner, without really thinking or strategising. That is not fun. It's also not funny either.

Pros:
+ Solid visual presentation
+ Lots of meat

Cons:
- Overwhelming amounts of data
- Feels like spreadsheet management
- Ultimately not challenging
- Not funny

SPOnG Score: 5/10