• Manufacturer: ELECTRONIC ARTS
• Machine: Sega Genesis

Jan 19, 2018  Centurion - Defender of Rome is one of the greatest early war games ever made for a console & also for DOS. You start off controlling only one territory, Italy, and from there you have to expand and take over other countries, such as Germany, Britain, Egypt, and so on. Along the way you will have to defend your empire from rival nations. Centurion: Defender of Rome shares a lot of similarities with Kellyn Beck’s previous hit, Defender of the Crown, another game which garnered more praise for its visuals than its gameplay. For what it’s worth, the Genesis port mimics the original well enough but the limited color palette saddles the game with a muddy look, particularly during the battle scenes.

Electronic Arts is turning out to be the redemption of sophisticated and eclectic Genesis owners. While other publishers spend most of their energy churning out side-scrolling shooters or Mario-style slugfests, EA seems to be producing a line that spans strategy, arcade, sports, martial arts and the totally unclassifiable. Centurion is yet another of its meticulous PC-to-Genesis conversions, and it's a real smorgasbord of a game: an overall flavor of strategy/war gaming with a lot of arcade sequences, superb graphics and sound effects on the side.

The game is one long, towering task of conquest: you must rise from the lowly rank of legionnaire in the province of Italia to become ruler of all of Europe, including portions of Asia and Africa. This is liable to take many hours. While the game lacks a battery backup, EA has included a password feature to preserve your progress in the game. It's a big password, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

Conquest is only part of the equation. You can't expect your armies to do their best if they're taxed beyond reason, bored or otherwise demoralized. You'll spend a lot of time and money just trying to keep all your subjects happy: holding gladiator fights and chariot races, throwing Christians to the lions or participating in any of several bloody extravaganzas. This is where much of the fun arcade play comes to bear. Holding these events calls for many talents (the coin of the realm), so when money is scarce, you may find your-self having to plunder recent conquests and play pure strategy for a while to line your coffers.

It's impossible to please everybody all the time - particularly those you've subjugated by invading their province and declaring yourself their ruler. So aside from issues of taxation and entertainment, the game mainly consists of pitting your legions or fleets against those of rebellious citizens, invading armies or neighboring provinces.

The battles give you a chance to try out your war-gaming strategy. No hexes here; each side is given a representative number of troops and you decide how best to deploy your side: flanking maneuvers, frontal assaults, wedges and other formations. You can also change tactics in the midst of battle, but this rarely seems to affect the outcome. In fact, the overriding factor in all these battles is numbers. Whoever has the most men wins..independent of battle strategy. The outcome didn't always make sense to me. I had enemy generals waving a white flag within moments of the start of the battle, but his troops never retreated. Eventually, my own general ended up surrendering too - and I lost the battle.

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Many of the graphics are lush, digitized pieces of art, very atmospheric and highly detailed. They're the same as the graphics of the IBM VGA version, so the use of color and shading is excellent. Actually, a TV is hardly capable of doing these visuals justice. However, during battle sequences on both land and sea, the scale of the on-screen objects is quite small, so those parts of the game are graphically unimpressive. The sound effects are great. You'll actually hear the whinny of horses (which is nearly constant and almost annoying in battle), the trumpeting of elephants, the clang of swords, the rumble of hoofbeats and more.

If you're seriously into war-gaming, Centurion may be a little too thin for your tastes. Likewise the arcade-style play, since you may have long stretches without such game play. But if you're up for a little of this and a little of that, Centurion offers a satisfying menu.

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