Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War, Midway's foray into the RTS market, features four different civilizations to choose from in your bid for raising your civilization while felling the other three. This game, as its name and theme implies is all about combat in the ancient world, featuring lots of onscreen units, detailed and appropriate architecture, and interesting units to control and fight against. The amount of onscreen units is absolutely insane and the battles feel just like an ancient battle should feel: messy and chaotic. The brilliance is that the player still has absolute control over his units and can position them according to the player's wishes with the simple click of a button.

The four civilizations turn out to be Persian, Greeks, Romans and Egyptians. Each side has its own campaign scenarios and story, so there is some replay value to be had in exploring the other sides of your conflicts that you will encounter during the game. There are "Hero" units during some scenarios as well, such as Alexander for the Greeks and uh, other guys for the other three sides…maybe Sargon for the Persians… aw heck, who knows what other heroes the Romans, Persians and Egyptians had anyways? Everyone knows it's all about Alexander the Great!

In terms of other units shown, there were infantry, archers, and cavalry, of course, but also beefed up specialty units like elephants, catapult ballistae, and siege towers. Naval combat will also play a role in many scenarios during a campaign, so this was showed off as well. These different units all add up to a variety of ways to decimate your opponents, and what units you pick to go into battle will be important, since the type of fighting (laying siege to a city, naval combat, etc.) will lend itself better to different types of units. There are even chariots to ride too---that will get the blood pumping for some good full-on chariot battles as you zip around the battlefield.

The naval combat was particularly exciting, as you can man your ships however you want in terms of units. I also witnessed some cool-looking ship ramming with the Greek ships smashing into the Persian ships quite violently and with a satisfying crunch. Some fortifications on city walls feature giant winches capable of propelling a large hook into the side of a ship and then reeling it in…somewhat like a giant stationary fishing pole. The ships can also go down in fiery oblivion, if they take too many fire arrows or fiery pitch from ballistae. Also enemy ships can be captured and used against them if you can pull off a successful boarding action versus your opponent, which involves firing grappling hooks to their ships and dragging them over---then it gets messy with the hand-to-hand portion of your swashbuckling endeavor.

Another aspect to this game which sets it apart from many other RTS titles is the ability to control your Hero unit and fight up close and personal with him. The camera swings down to a traditional 3rd person view getting down and dirty with enemy units and fighting toe to toe with them in the streets of the city that would soon fall by the Hero's hand. The Hero has a sword to mow down the enemy, or he can pick them off from a distance using his ranged weapon of choice. The view actually creeps into First person mode for this. The ranged weapons will more than likely be a bow and arrows. It was quite enjoyable to watch the dev hack and slash at the enemy units with his mighty hero as the rest of the battle raged around him. The Hero also gains experience during battles, so there will be a light RPG element to this title as well, allowing for upgrades to the Hero character. Another interesting gameplay mechanic is the ability to hire advisers during the course of your campaign who may give you good advice and training. These advisers can get better with time, too.

In keeping with more traditional RTS games, there will be many RTS scenarios focusing solely on the aspect of core RTS, but since there is the Hero aspect to the game, some scenarios will focus on using the Hero unit more. Hopeful scenario designers should be happy to learn that the game will ship with the scenarios editor that the devs are using to create the scenarios for the main campaign stories. With the devs lending that support to the scenario editing community, there should be hope for some good content being churned out from the RTS community that picks up this title. In terms of other online options, the game will of course feature multiplayer battles.

There are still several months left to polish up this already promising looking and interesting RTS title. Perhaps Midway's foray into RTS will prove successful.