That Age of Empires is superior to Empire Earth

Without further ado, I will begin my refute. Pro's first argument is simple and clean. It lists the top 7 reasons why he believes Age of Empires 3 is, as a whole, better than Empire Earth 3 For that I thank him because now I will quote each of his reasons consecutively and write an argument for them. "1: Age of Empires generally is more loved by the critics. Age of Empires 3 got a Metacritic score of 81, compared to Empire Earth 3's score of a mere 49. " Pro states here a comparison of critical scores set by the professional reviewer website "Metacritic". Before I refute this portion of his argument, I'd just like to say that I find this completely irrelevant to the debate because sites like Metacritic are hosted by professional critics and not the people that actually play the game. Pro takes his reviews from a website called Metacritic, which are very similar to say, IGN or Gamespot; The difference is in the "Metascores". Taking a review from Metacritic is irrelevant because: 1. Metacritic reviews are all done by professional critics, instead of the people who purchase and play the game; The users. .. This might seem insignificant but it is actually important, because critics take apart the game and notice things the common gamer does not. 2. Metacritic has been known to give false reviews and has sparked considerable controversy because of it. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia article: Many video game reviewers take issue with the way Metacritic assigns scores. When a game reviewer gives a video game a rating of "A", Metacritic assigns it a value of 100. When a reviewer gives a game a rating of "F", Metacritic assigns it a value of 0—although some reviewers think a score of 50 is more appropriate. [1] When a reviewer gives a game a rating of "B-", Metacritic assigns it a value of 67—and many publishers, developers, and websurfers think that the score should be closer to 80. [2] A former editor at the review site Game Revolution, Joe Dodson, criticized Metacritic and similar sites, saying their conversion system was turning their reviews into scores that were too low. Another reason Metacritic's review is irrelevant. Seeing this, I have decided to look on a particular website, IMDB, a movie guide where the users vote on a game. Here is the IMDB rating of Age: . http://www.imdb.com... And here is the IMDB rating of Empire: . http://www.imdb.com... If you looked on those pages, you could see that Empire Earth 3 gets a disastrous score compared to Age of Empires 3 - I'm not defending that; But if you look a little more you'll also notice that the particular review was done by the users, and not critics. ----------------------- "2: Age of Empires is more complex and thus more engaging. Age of Empires 3 has 3 resources, whilst Empire Earth has only 2. Age of Empires 3 has 5 ages, whilst Empire Earth has only 3. " This is entirely opinionated and not fact. Pro states that because AoE is more complex, then that makes it more engaging. As you can probably see, this is completely Pro's opinion and not a fact. Some people prefer simpler games where you can make a peaceful life of farming and gathering lumber. ------------------------------- "3: The AI (artificial intelligence) in Age of Empires 3 is far superior. I've never lost a game of Empire Earth 3, but the Age Empires 3 AI surprises me frequently. " Here, Pro states that the AI in Age is better than that of Empire Earth. What he says here is again not based on fact, and the topic of AI was promising. .. until he made his refute, that is. Pro says that "I've never lost a game of Empire Earth 3, but the Age Empires 3 AI surprises me frequently. " This is understandable, but it is his skill and again a preference over true fact. For some, Aoe3 AI could be a piece-of-cake whilst EE3's could be overwhelming. It's just one's skill and cannot be put in this argument. As I said above, the argument topic of AI looked promising, and Pro could have easily made some good points, but in my opinion he failed badly. In Empire Earth, I will admit the AI is stupid; The units clunk around and cannot form a line army if their lives depended upon it ( if a computer has a life. .). Pro, however, decided to go with his opinion of the difficulty of said AI vs Age of Empires'. --------------------- "4: Graphically, Age of Empires 3 is again superior. While Empire Earth lags and achieves only cartoonish graphics, Age of Empires 3 has a realistic physics model, complex shaders, hundreds of units and one of the most immersive worlds I've ever seen - and I used to run it off a 32MB graphics card! (not at stunning speeds, but it was playable)" Pro makes a great point here with graphics-comparison. I will agree that Age's graphics are stunning whilst EE3's are not. But I believe the developers intended it this way. Pro makes a point by saying that EE's world is cartoonish, however I think it was meant to be that way. I don't know for a fact though, so take it or leave it. Larz, I must agree, AoE takes the trophy for best graphics, in comparison to Empire Earth 3 at least. ----------------------------- "5: Age of Empires 3 has more expansions than Empire Earth 3 (2 against 0), so after you get bored of the games you can only pick up an expansion for Age of Empires. " This is a good example, although Empire Earth's world is much bigger and AoE's in my opinion feels enclosed, which is why there was the need for said X-packs. ----------------------------- "6: Age of Empires 3 has an award winning soundtrack. Empire Earth 3 barely has a soundtrack at all. Steven Rippy is a legend! " In reason number 6, Pro states that Aoe3's music is award-winning, and that EE has little-to-no soundtrack. This is completely ridiculous in that Empire Earth 3, although panned by critics gameplay wise, has been praised for it's sountrack. Look at this IGN article for info: . http://music.ign.com... I will agree that Aoe3's soundtrack is great but it is not award-winning. IGN mentions that it "does not stand-out", here: . http://pc.ign.com... -------------------------------------- "7: Age of Empires 3 is focused on one area of the world in one time period with some vague interaction with the rest of the world (home city). This is more realistic than the Empire Earth model, where you command a large portion of the planet at any one time - after all, no ancient commander had as much power as Empire Earth would suggest, however, several American pioneers did found cities and defend them against a rival faction's city in early America. " Pro states why Empire Earth, being much larger in scope than Aoe3, is inferior. I find this laughable, because in AoE, you have limitations and re-playability is highly limited in my opinion, because of the lack of variety. In Empire Earth, you are able to do anything from war with rivaling chieftains in the age of Cavemen to sail the high seas of the Imperial Age. This is just one example but you can see the gameplay as compared to Age, where you are limited to the Colonial period of history. I must agree with Pro's praise of the Homecity system that AoE introduces - it is a nice touch but I wouldn't consider it major addition to you, the audience's final vote. ------------------------------- I await my opponent's response and hope the voters' opinion has swayed just a bit. Sources: AoE rating: . http://www.imdb.com... Empire Earth rating: . http://www.imdb.com... . http://en.wikipedia.org... . http://en.wikipedia.org... IGN's EE3 music review: . http://music.ign.com...