Nor, we fear, does the law of the review. The third instalment in the franchise tries bloody hard to please, and in fact, it makes all the right noises at the outset. That can't, however, change the fact that the game ultimately finds itself tottering unsteadily along the dividing line between mediocrity and being genuinely awful. Mad Doc's whole approach with Empire Earth 3 is all about two things; simplification, and diversification. So, the large number of different civilisations you could play as in the previous games have been chopped out, and replaced with three forces - the West, the Middle East and the East - which are more significantly different from one another than the old civilisations. The eras you progress through have also been chopped down, and there are now only five transitions between banging rocks together and marching giant death-robots across the scorched nuclear wastelands. In theory, these are good ideas, and we were impressed by their potential!