Empire of the Ants Review – Mesofauna Mayhem
Empire of the Ants is an off-beat genre mash-up combining RTS and platforming with such slick presentation of the insect world I can forgive some of its shortcomings. From developers Microids and Tower Five, Empire of the Ants is both an adaptation of a 1991 French sci-fi novel and a reimagining of Microids’ 2000 game of the same name. Why the IP lay dormant for this amount of time is anybody’s guess, but bringing it back to consoles in 2024 with the fidelity capable in Unreal Engine 5 is a boon for a title that gives such a positive initial impression visually but takes a little while to warm the gameplay up to the same level with a fair few bumps along the way.
Empire of the Ants puts players in control of 103,683, an ant tasked with discovering the reasons behind a flood destroying the colony of Ta-Yu-Kan while fighting against encroaching termites. As quickly as I was captivated by the visuals, I was almost equally put off by the controls in the game, especially when attempting to do anything with a degree of precision. EotA is quite often a platforming game before it’s an RTS game, requiring the player to traverse environments on the lookout for other ants or locations important to their overall mission. Where this becomes a problem is the way the camera and control system fight against one another other, often when trying to manoeuvre over a large leaf, along a log or anything that requires going upside down. In these moments, the “stickiness” with which 103,683 clings to each leaf of a branch or rockface and subsequently begins rotating over and over again becomes frustrating, a feeling compounded by the occasional time sensitive mission.
Speaking of missions, there are a few different types that are rotated out by the game which helps to relieve the grating repetition that will set in unless EotA is played in shorter sessions. When undertaking RTS style missions, the controls are quite accomplished for a console release, allowing commands to be given at a distance to nests and units via line-of-sight controls or rotating though each unit using the shoulder buttons. Building up defences, generating units and then subsequently upgrading them is fairly simplistic with only a few unit types on offer and a scissors>paper>rock dynamic at play between the main four unit types; warriors, gunners, super predators and workers. Early scenarios allow players to gently build their forces before embarking on a campaign of destruction, while later scenarios throw players antennae first into extremely tricky situations that demand some level of mastery over the controls themselves and the strategies required to defeat varying enemy type configurations. Assisting this are ‘special powers’ the player ant themselves can deploy such as increased damage output or defence which keep conflicts slightly more engaging given the player is largely uninvolved outside of a directorial role. Without a doubt, these scenarios in the single player campaign which also make up the multiplayer mode are the highlights of Empire of the Ants.
Throughout each scenario the sense of scale works well much of the time, with a mixture of expansive open areas and claustrophobic underground tunnels keeping things from becoming too stale, unless of course you find yourself trying to locate another ant amongst an enormous environment in which they are often camouflaged. The embedded system for doing this – an increasing or decreasing horizontal bar indicating rough proximity – is quite useless for finding nearly anything outside of frustration and I would have preferred something more user friendly.
The single player campaign does a fine job of demonstrating the mechanics on offer, as well as showcasing the lengths the developers have gone to visually, but it’s an arduous affair with too much repetition and too little narrative pay-off. The multiplayer component is a superior way to extend the playtime and see the best of what the game has to offer, but will depend on a healthy scene or a few friends interested in an insect-focused RTS platformer hybrid. Empire of the Ants is an odd title and one that will appeal to some but is probably best indulged in at an economical price point; I can foresee there being a few very dedicated individuals for whom this game engages via the combination of hybrid mechanics and well-realised theme, while many others will wonder why they aren’t instead playing a better platformer or RTS game instead.
Empire of the Ants was reviewed on a PS5 console using code kindly supplied by the publisher.
