Localisation for any game is tricky, especially with the European with all its different languages and political sensibilities in our lovely little  region. But no jpeg illustrates this more than this gem I unearthed while searching for screenies for the upcoming Citizengame Empire Total War review, special thanks to Mark O’Connell (SenseiTW) for this compilation:

Sean Bean got no rights for this....

Guns baby!

When I walked into work today, I was greeted with something surprising and incredibly exciting, Empire Total War. Unbeknown-st to me the game defied the traditional Friday release date to be released simultaneously with the Steam release on a Wednesday.

No, no, no you don’t understand this is hugely important, the PC market is supposed to be in recession. Yet Sega and their incredibly innovative developers Creative Assembly were brave enough to release their game early and make a declarative statement to the rest of the market- when its released on Steam it should be out in stores.

Despite the issues which arise when a developer forces customers – and more crucially retailers – to use, what is essentially, a digital distribution service Sega have somehow married the two incompatibles into a flawless launch. Admittedly there was a few issues such as a lack of pre-load option for Steam buyers, therefore crashing the service when everyone tried to download it at once, but Kudos to Sega, Valve and retailers who showed how PC games should launch from now on.

Synchronicity is the name of the game and this has been punctuated by the fact that Empire is a truly excellent title. It is very rare for flawless launch to be reported as news but what occurred today has set the standard for Steam and retail releases in the future.

Go buy it

Bah to Friday release dates, who needs you.

N.B: Just wanted to give a quick heads up that my most  recent review of Race:Pro has been published here,