Empire of the Ants Single-Player Campaign Review
This is not the anthill to die on.It may be nice to look at, but Empire of the Antsās single-player campaign is outright terrible and dull. Itās around 12 hours worth of missions that pivot between being pointlessly easy ā due to a passive enemy AI that doesnāt even know how to use powers to buff its troops, which is crucial to success ā to obnoxiously difficult on a dime, and it doesnāt let you save mid-mission. Most infuriatingly, thereās one where nine waves of enemies spawn and attack from all directions, and you instantly fail if you lose control of a single one of the seven nests you have to defend ā so many that itās impossible to upgrade them all with effective defenses. That last wave is a doozy, too, which meant I had to replay it from the start multiple times just to overcome the final challenging moments where they come in large enough numbers to be a threat.
Mixed in with those combat missions are absurdly tedious ones where you only control your single ant as you hunt for tiny bugs ā which are usually very effectively camouflaged thanks to the realistic art style ā spread across a big map. Youāre guided only by a non-directional proximity sensor, so you have to run in circles to triangulate each bug. There are also āstealthā missions that donāt actually care if youāre detected as you scan enemy legions (dying has basically no consequences either), and these similarly amount to running around a map looking for things. Sometimes youāre told to catch butterflies or fireflies that fly away when you get close ā the only way I found to do it was to wait for them to repeat their scripted movement pattern and land right in front of me, and that is exactly as much fun as it sounds.
Considering you can climb any object and walk on the ceiling, itās surprising that only a couple of the missions make any use of this ability at all, and those that do are mostly the boring, non-combat variety. (There was only one mission where my units fought upside-down, which was very funny because the corpses of dead ants rained down.) Similarly, the only thing Empire of the Ants does with its impressive sense of scale is give you a few objects ā like a glass bottle or a toy giraffe ā to run around, picking up little glowy things as you explore them. Iāll grant you that this does remind me of how Iāve seen real ants figure out if an object is something they want to eat, but I donāt think ants are doing this for fun, and I am not having much fun doing it either.
I donāt think ants are doing this for fun, and I am not having much fun doing it either.Ā
You arenāt forced to do all of these missions to complete the campaign ā you select missions by speaking to quest-giving ants in a sequence of hub areas that serve as a sort of menu ā but I donāt recommend any of them, or the campaign in general. The nicest thing I can say about it is that itās not all that buggy (other thanā¦ you know).
The other thing you do in these hubs is talk to ants. I havenāt read the books Empire of the Ants is based on, but if the Wikipedia synopsis is anything to go by this gameās story isnāt even close to following them because there are no human characters or secret ant weapons to make it remotely interesting. Iām going to assume that its numerous conversations about how your nest is threatened by termites and other visually identical ant species or floods donāt do the novels justice. Even the ant civil war that breaks out is over almost as abruptly as it begins, ensuring thereās no substance there either.
VerdictWhile Empire of the Antsās nearly photo-realistic world looks incredible at first glance, its boring and annoying real-time strategy campaign is the ant-ithesis of that. Combat missions are mostly trivially easy because the AI doesnāt seem to understand crucial mechanics, and those that arenāt are obnoxious because you canāt save mid-mission to replay the tough parts without trudging through the easy setup; Meanwhile, all of the non-combat missions are tedious searches for needles in haystacks and the story fails to make ant politics intriguing. Itās easily the worst single-player campaign Iāve played in years.
awful
Pretty to look at but painfully dull and frustrating to play, Empire of the Ants’s single-player campaign has none of the depth of the multiplayer and packages bad AI with boring missions and a meandering story.
Dan Stapleton
