That game is Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War. You might remember it from the spectacular trailers of the last E3-show and the lesser pleasant fact that this is also the last game of the now defunct Stainless Steel Studios (SSSi), company of ex-Ensemble guru Rick Goodman. The Brand Manager of Midway stated that his firm also didn't like the closure of SSSi but that they couldn't do anything to prevent it. It's the product that counts and the San Diego Midway studio has taken over the development after SSSi's departure. With the help of some ex-SSSi devs for a couple of critical game elements, the game is almost finished. So, Midway isn't trying to add or remove features, they just want to give it that crucial finishing touch.

For those who have just heard about Rise & Fall: this is a historical real-time strategy game but one that doesn't really attempt to simulate everything in a realistic way. It's more a collection of all things that could make a fun game out of it.

Romans, Greek, Egyptians and Persians fight out their feuds on large battlefields and during long sieges. Next to big armies there are also legendary characters like Julius Caesar or Achilles which take part in the battles. You can even direct them yourself in the much hyped Hero mode. With a simple double-click on the hero-icon in the upper left of the screen you can fight from a 3rd person cameraview. Heroes have different attacks, as well for close as for ranged combat. Right after the trailerpresentation we could amuse ourselves with Cleopatra in a previewversion. Especially her bow attacks were quite nice, nothing is more pleasant to see some Romans fall off a tower when you've just hit them. Another extra is the fact that even while in 3rd person you could still manage to steer your troops (in a limited way by aiming your crosshair at a certain point and hitting a certain quick key, so surrounding troops would go to that point) and encourage them while they are fighting.

The use of the Hero mode is limited by Stamina that will run out. You can earn some of it back by smashing some pitchers across the map. So, it's definitely not a case of running around constantly in Hero mode and gaining victory in Dynasty Warrior style. No, you need to use this mode effectively and only when necessary.

For example: the mission we got to play (the same one as in the demo) required my hero to search for a transport boat since Cleopatra was the only one able to swim across a river that blocked the path of my troops. She quickly made her way to the other side, got attacked by Roman soldiers and fought her way through their base where she found the ship and stole it. This happened with a remarkable ease, the constant switching from the traditional strategic overview to Hero mode feels fluid enough.

Despite all the attention for the Hero mode, which is entertaining to a certain point, I personally think that the naval combat is the most important feature. Most trailers already showed what happened when a trireme at full speed rammed another ship; a fatal, spectacular impact.

That isn't the only cool aspect about fighting at sea, the fact that you can actually see your troops on the ships and the slaves rowing to gain speed makes things a lot more lively. These are things you'll notice in Ancient Wars: Sparta too, but Rise & Fall will come out a lot sooner. It's not only the graphical detail that makes such a difference but you can even decide for yourself which troops you want on deck (ships act as mobile barracks).

A ship fully loaded with archers will wreak havoc from a distance but once they have been entered by a galley full of sword fighters, their song is over. Yep, ships can be boarded (if you have a Sailor unit on deck, he has a grappling hook) and captured by your units. Once you research more technologies ('ageing' up in this game actually means levelling up your hero) you can even place catapults on your naval vessels.

If you still want to load some land troops then you have to find a decent spot to land your ship (temporary scaffolds are being put up then next to both sides of the ship) so your army can enter. This might all sound quite cumbersome for a fast RTS but that fear evaporates when you can really play the game. It never feels like a drag because of the intuitive interface. The only fault I could see was the selection marker which you can't drag further than the area you are viewing, a feature many games of this kind have lost in the past few years for no good reason at all. But beside that, you get all the traditional functions (creating of groups with Ctrl-button, rotating camera by holding both mouse buttons, etc.).

To keep on nagging about the previewversion; during our short playtime there were some shocks (although the laptop which we were playing on could have had something to do with that) and the camera in Hero mode clearly had a couple of issues when you were standing right next to walls or cliffs. And after further inspection of the demo, there were some other minor bugs like the galley slaves that keep on hanging in the air for a while when their ship has been destroyed and some AI-issues. Of course, those are things that can (and hopefully for Midway, will) be solved. Graphically everything looks pretty good, maybe just a bit less detailed than Dawn of War (but then again, a complicated detail like lipsynching for heroes does make its presence during prerecorded in-game scenes). But the whole really looks like it will deliver those kind of great moments you might remember from grand scenes out of film classics as Ben Hur and Spartacus.

The special trailer we saw also featured elephants participating in the battle; their riders rained death from above with arrows and such and the war beasts themselves threw soldiers away like it was nothing. These giants will also have a special Trample Mode with which they can not only kill infantry that gets in their way but also crush trees. On some maps it'll be a must to have these war elephants, so you can have a fast way of bypassing big forests instead of slowly waiting on your slaves to cut the trees.

Superweapons, like the Achilles Claw (a stationary construction on walls to grab and crush ships that fare along), seem to be bound to certain maps and thus won't be found everywhere. We didn't get much intel on the multiplayer part, only that we can expect most of the standard options and the fact that the population cap will be a bit lower than in singleplayer games. That cap was limited to 250 units in the singleplayer mission but who knows if that'll be the real number in the end? We'll have to wait and see. The singleplayer campaign will feature a linear chain of missions, in which each side will make its appearance.