Overview
The lost civilization of Atlantis returns in Age of Mythology: The Titans, Ensemble Studios' expansion to the strategy action title, Age of Mythology. This expansion includes a new single-player campaign, scores of new mythological units, the ability to upgrade units to heroes, and, of course, the opportunity to harness the awesome powers of the Titan gods. The battle for heaven and earth continues as the Atlanteans enter the Age of Mythology.

Features

• New god powers like Spider Lair
• Dozens of new mythological and human units
• Atlanteans can use god powers multiple times
• Unleash huge Titans to wreak havoc

Setup
Installing the Titans Expansion was as simple as inserting the CD and clicking Install. Once installed, you need the CD in the computer to play. This is an expansion, so you must already have the original Age of Mythology on your system.

Game Play
For those of you who are not familiar with Age of Mythology (AoM), this is an action strategy game rendered in awesome 3D graphics. Landscaping, buildings, and characters are all detailed, and the animation of the graphics is incredible. The horseback units almost seem to float when they ride - very fluid graphics. AoM also includes some amazing physics, such as mythical units that actually pick up enemies and toss them a distance. Not only does it make for exciting battle scenes, but it also adds some interesting strategies, as sometimes they are tossed over walls and survive the fall. Other mythical creatures include flying winged horses and leaping Egyptian creatures. The Titans expansion adds new human forces, a few new creatures, but most notably, the Titans (huge creatures that are 10 times the size of everyone else, 10 times as powerful, and can wreak serious havoc to a city all on its own).

In AoM, you build civilizations through the process of colleting resources, building structures, and from those structures, creating armies combined of human and mythological creatures. Each civilization structure includes a "god" who grants you special powers. As you evolve from one civilization level to another, you get to choose between two minor gods for your next level, and depending on what you choose affects what units and special powers your civilization will have. You start off in the Archaic period, then Classical, Heroic, and finally the Mythic age. For an example, playing as the Greeks under the major god of Hades, when going from the Classical age to the Heroic age, you have a choice of two minor gods. The effects in AoM are outstanding, both in terms of the graphics and the sound effects. You have jumping and lunging units, dead units that come back as ghosts, heros with special powers, favor of the gods that allow you to strike someone down with lightning, or take out an entire town with an earthquake. The Titans expansion adds the Atlanteans civilization, which include new god powers such as Spider Lair. The Atlanteans civilization also includes interesting new features such as the ability to move your buildings to somewhere else on the map (my favorite new feature), and the ability to turn your human forces into heroes (increasing their strengths and abilities).

The original AoM included one long 32-level campaign, "Fall of the Trident", as well as a free short campaign that was downloadable from the web, "The Golden Gift". The Titans expansion includes a new campaign called "The New Atlantis", a 12-level campaign that does a pretty good job at letting you try your hand at each of the Atlantean major gods (Kronos, Oranos and Gaia), and the minor gods available in each. Playing under Gaia was particular interesting with all the neat effects of nature coming to life (such as the man-eating plant, and the tree that allows you to create tree monster units). The citizens for the Atlantean race are accompanied by mules, so that no matter what they are doing (gathering food, gold, or wood), they don't have to travel back and forth between any buildings and the resource.

The single player custom games is what you end up playing after you complete the campaign. There are a lot of features to choose from to customize your games, as you can select what civilization and major god you will play as, and likewise for your allies and enemies. There also was a wide range of map types to choose from. In AoM, I got bored with the custom single player game quite fast due to the unbalanced AI; and unfortunately, the Titans expansion brought no enhancements to that aspect of the game. The computer AI still gets its strength not from strategy, but from the computer's unmatched ability to gather resources and spawn units. Because the enemies were always incredibly stupid in terms of strategy, the only time they posed a challenge was when they had the numbers. However, when they had the numbers, it was exasperating to impossible to keep up. While I'm manually trying to manage each building, unit and player (requires finding the object, deciding what best to do with it, and then peforming the appropriate action), the computer is doing this simultaneously. The bottom line is that in easy mode, there was no challenge at all, but the next level up brought on an onslaught that was just too frustrating to deal with (namely, because my ability to click and click and click is limited). It really becomes more of a time and resource management headache than a strategic challenge. If the game provided better matched play like was done with the campaigns, that would vastly improve the longevity of AoM.

The Titans expansion did not fix the other problem in AoM; namely, the way the Norse civilization worked. Villagers collected resources while your foot soldiers actually built your buildings. However, there is a very useful button in AoM that helps you locate inactive villagers so that you can make sure they are always working. When you play as the Norsemen, your soldiers must build everything, and you never know when they are completed unless you continually monitor all areas of your civilization to visually spot inactive soldiers. This puts you at a major disadvantage when time is of the essence, and you are fighting off attacks while trying to figure out where all your soldiers are.

An interface quark in AoM: when you select a group of units, your HUD display shows all like units with one icon and a number representing how many are grouped. In this mode, you cannot manage an individual units using the HUD display (which worked much better in Age of Empires). The Titans expansion did not fix this either.

Summary
Age of Mythology is an exciting and fascinating real-time strategy game. It provides some serious fun in terms of building up a society and waging battles with other civilizations on the map. The game engine features awesome graphics and sounds, and the Titans expansion adds some amazing new creatures as well as new features and battle strategies. Building monstrous Titans to wipe out an entire city was a neat twist, and the feature to allow you to move buildings was among my favorite new features. The 12-level campaign in Titans was fun, but I felt it was far too short. The strength of these games for single player mode is the campaigns. Age of Empires is still my favorite of this genre because it had such a vast variety of different campaigns. AoM, on the other hand, came with just one campaign, and the Titans expansion only come with one campaign, and less than half the number of levels. The game AI works well in the campaign, but suffers a great deal in the custom single player games. Basically, the AI is grossly unbalanced. The campaign, however, is thoroughly enjoyable, and for gaining the new features and creatures that come with the Titans, this expansion set is worthwhile.

Pros:

• Awesome graphics and effects
• Cool new units and game features
• Great new 12-level campaign
• New "God" powers

Cons:

• AI unbalanced in custom single player games
• Needs more built-in campaigns
• Norsemen builders difficult to manage
• Grouped units not shown individually

Overall Rating:

3 out of 5 Mice