Praetorians (video game)

Praetorians PC Video Game

Developer(s) Pyro Studios
Publisher(s) Eidos Interactive
Director(s) Javier Arévalo
Producer(s) Ignacio Pérez Dolset
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)
  • PAL February 28, 2003
  • NA March 10, 2003
Genre(s) Real-time strategy
Mode(s) Single player, multiplayer
Distribution Compact Disc

Praetorians is a 3D real-time tactics[1] game developed by Pyro Studios, based on Crassus' battles in Parthia and Julius Caesar's campaigns against barbarians and Pompey.

Gameplay

Players are given two options of gameplay. Players may participate as Julius Caesar commanding forces of varying sizes against various barbarian tribes. Alternately, a skirmish can be chosen in which the player first chooses a difficulty level (easy, medium, hard or expert) then chooses up to 1 character and up to 7 AI players, commanded by the computer. These can be Roman, Egyptian or an anonymous barbarian tribe. Once this is completed, alliances may be created by joining two forces on the same team.

Members of an alliance may not attack one another. In times of crisis team members can call upon each other via the message line: "We need help." Allies will normally offer spare troops in assistance. 'Praetorians' differs from other games of its genre in that resources do not play a part in it. In most real time strategy games, items such as wood, food, gold, stone and glory must be collected, to be spent during the creation of troops. The only resource you need to recruit stronger soldiers are honour points. Honour points are earned by fighting and killing enemy troops.

GameSpot cites the difficulty of the zoom function and limits of the camera (For example, the camera is unable to turn 360 degrees.) as negative aspects of the game. However, GameSpot does praise 'Praetorians' for its gameplay and tactical depth, as well as its beautiful graphics. You also do not need resources, this is purely military. Game runs well on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Multiplayer Online

Originally, the game was designed to be played online in Multiplayer mode using GameSpy. The original installer of the game includes instructions and gives the possibility to install GameSpy Arcade. However, GameSpy Arcade no longer offers support for Praetorians game, since they have closed many servers. So the current players of the game are using Game Ranger to play online in Multiplayer mode. Game Ranger is an easy multiplayer game client that allows players to have multiplayers battle with up to 8 players in the same game room.

Marketing

The game continued to sell well even into 2008, maintaining a place in the top 20 Budget PC titles on ChartTrack.

Development

After the Pyro Studios producer of the title Javier Arévalo and Eidos' Jason Walker talked about sorting out a flaw in the multi-player game that was being exploited by gamers, an unofficial patch was released in October 2004. This helped catapult the game back up the GameSpy Arena charts.

The latest version of an unofficial extension, called MoD 4.1, became available 2004; it adds three new factions and many new maps. MoD 4.1 contains the unofficial patch to fix the multi-player game.

The next official extension is called MoD 5.0 released in 2013 by Pyro Studios. It sorted out a number of flaws, decreased the hit points of some troops, updated the start screen of the game, added brand new music and sounds, presented 40 new maps for battles.

In 2008 an unofficial map editor for the PC game Praetorians comes up. The map editor is programmed in the C++ programming language and uses the OpenGL computer graphics API. Nowadays over 100 maps for battles are available.

Reception

Publication Score Notes
IGN 8.9/10 "Great"
GameSpot 8.4/10 great
Game Rankings 77.97% (average of 30 reviews)[2] [None]

Reception of Praetorians was positive. GamePro noted that the game is "a healthy mixture of Medieval: Total War and WarCraft".

References

  1. ↑ "http://www.pyrostudios.com/?p=games&ref=18b33ea4a71456abd2ec09dd0b086888"
  2. ↑ "Praetorians for PC - GameRankings". Game Rankings. Retrieved December 3, 2010.

External links