Medieval 2: Total War ? Kingdoms expansion pack Review (PC)

How does 100 hours more gameplay on Medieval II:Total war sound?

When faced with choice, there are two kinds of people in the world. The Doing Man prefers to get out there and pull the trigger, wading knee deep into the thick of the action. He loves Halo. The Thinking Man, however, prefers to stay above the battle, guiding the bigger picture with a sway of his hand, guiding the destinies of entire populations. He loves Total War.

Right from the start, it’s clear that Total War is the kind of game that warrants a lot of brainpower

. It isn’t a title that immediately flies off the shelf yet it’s probably the deepest strategy game that there’s ever been. And with Kingdoms, it just got deeper.

Kingdoms give the original game four extra campaigns. While this doesn’t sound like a lot, consider that each campaign involves taking over an entire country in which you can fight for every town, city, hill and river if you choose to. As ever, the focus of the series- the ‘Total’ in ‘Total War’- is the realism. Armies of archers, knights and pikemen in arenas of limitless possibility, when the terrain can be as much of an advantage as flaming arrows. If it mattered in real life, it matters here. Troops tire if they run for too long, struggle to throw spears uphill and can even rout, running away screaming if they see cavalry charging at them.

The camera lets you fly through all of these battles freely, letting you command it all from on high, beside or in the thick of the action. It’s really up to you. The graphics are top notch. Individually, the soldiers don’t look all that impressive, but in there hundreds (and I do mean hundreds) it can be a breathtaking sight. In fact, you’ll want a good machine to crank the detail up and appreciate this for what it is. You’ll benefit from a dual core CPU for certain.

The battles are clearly the graphically intensive focus of this game, and the most engrossing part of it for most of us. But it’s only half of what’s on offer, if you choose it. The campaign map goes into a ridiculous level of detail, incredibly even more that the original did. Once you capture a town, you can manage it, building barracks to provide you with more troops so you can do it all again. Now you can form alliances with rival towns, then crush them once your armies are up to strength.

Fight for control of America, centuries before they’d ever heard of Ronald Macdonald. Relive the Crusades only this time, do it your way. Fight for England, driving back the Welsh and the Scots (with triumphant glee). Or if you want to change sides and play as the Welsh, driving the Brits out of their own country. The key is choice, and it’s rare that a game has this much without being full of messy bugs.

If some of this doesn’t appeal, rest assured that Total War lets you skip the bits that you don’t want to play. You can spend most of the game on the campaign map, letting the battles resolve themselves (though it’s usually more rock-paper-scissors than it would be if you did it yourself). Just like the graphics, you can scale down your involvement in the bigger picture. Or the smaller picture.

The truth of Total War is that the depth is all hidden and you’d never know about it. Does that grass slow down your peasants? Are men on horseback more vulnerable than men on the ground? These are the questions that you end up asking yourself, and it makes you far more of a general than most of the games out there. It isn’t simply a case of ?two swordsmen are better than one? because where are they standing? Who’s got the element of surprise?

The game is likely to make you look are real life in a different way. And that can never be a bad thing. Who knows? Maybe even a young and budding Norman Schwarzkopf could learn everything he knows from a game like this one.Is that a good thing? I’ll say yes. Why not.