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I like games that force me to think. I'll be sitting at my computer and when my wife comes to talk to me she finds me in another world. I am leading my army in the time of the European rape of the Americas, the conflict over the Holy Land during The Crusades, the Teutonic Order's conversion of the pagans by death, or the conflict for control of the British Isles in the years after 1258. As I played Medieval II Total War: Kingdoms, I felt compelled to forgo sleep and meet the sun above my computer until I had wrung every detail of the design out of the game. I hope I can get some sleep now.

The Kingdoms expansion for Medieval II Total War encompasses four separate games on four separate maps for a total of 4 gigabytes of space. I had to resign myself to giving what I felt was a massive amount of hard drive space. In fact, I had to put a new hard drive on my system since the old 120 GB drive wasn't big enough.

The game is both a strategic, turn-based strategy game with auto-combat and a "pause-able" real-time tactical game with an oblique view of the units on the battlefield. The turn-based strategy game has elements of real-time strategy games such as Westwood's Dune, Populous, Blizzard's Warcraft, Sid Meier's Civilization, Peter Molyneaux's Black and White, Colonization, Westwood's Command and Conquer, Starcraft, and many, many others too numerous to mention. I like this kind of game, and I seem to be the kind of person who cannot get enough.

I have the original Medieval II Total War; this is four times the fun of the original game because of the inclusion of the factions involved during The Hundred Years War. The Total War developers gave us four games in one box as an expansion (this explains the four times more hard disk space - see above).

Throughout the entire game, the unplayable ubiquitous rebel faction is always your enemy. I found the rebels very tough negotiators who can be more easily recruited by bribes than other playable factions. I surprised myself by killing a rebel unit early on, giving me a hero character that I could lead my armies with.

History, especially the history of warfare, holds a special fascination for me. I loved the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" with Orlando Bloom, with the Leper King who led the Crusader kingdoms of Jerusalem and Antioch (holy hand grenade of Antioch?); the European nobles who supported the Leper King with fiefdoms of their own; the ecumenical nature of the Leper King's commendable compassion and acceptance of all creeds and colors; the intolerance of Suleiman and the Moslem intolerance of anyone other than those who accepted the true messiah; the Venetian expansion' the Turks on their own holy jihad; and the goals of the Byzantine Empire all combine to make living this time in history a fascinating experience for me. The entire movie is played out in the Crusades scenario of Kingdoms. I enjoyed the historically accurate detail of the Mongols arriving on the scene on just the right date.

I love the dynamic Americas campaign, where the Native Americans have a chance of uniting the Apaches, Aztecs, Mayans, Chichimeca, Tlaxcalans, and Tarascans. The fact that they actually have a chance at surviving the brutal onslaught of the Spanish, English, and French whose countries' greed knew no bounds was really exciting. The chance to re-define history and help the Native Americans appropriately respond to the European invasion is one I gladly accepted.

A really neat feature was the warpath. This allowed two native chieftains to gain two full groups of units. Mastering the warpath was the only way I could challenge the European invasion for the dominance of mezzo-America.

I found the unplayable Baron's Alliance faction good allies through the game, and they helped beat down the English with the help of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and invaders from Norway. Just like the Mel Gibson movie, the mighty Scots had William Wallace and a marvelous insanity that allowed them to carry any battle, no matter the odds. Norway has a minor chance to win, but they are often eliminated from the game early on.

The Teutonic Campaign was the least enjoyable for me. I found it difficult to become emotionally involved with killing pagans as a Teutonic Knight; revenging myself against the Teutonic Knights as the unlockable betrayed Poland or the unlockable Holy Roman Empire; forming the Union of Kalamar with the Danes; achieving Hanseatic League affiliation, or even surviving the mindless onslaught of the Teutonic Knights as the hard pressed pagan clans of Lithuania. Picking the politically correct time for Lithuanians to convert to Catholicism for military advantages left me cold. The surprise of the ubiquitous unplayable Mongols arriving uninvited or the unplayable Norwegians invading from the north failed to turn me on in this Teutonic smorgasbord.

I enjoyed completing the quests to assassinate some historically accurate and particularly cruel and capricious faction leaders and commander heroes. Assassinating these characters was particularly satisfying. I completed quests for the acquisition of new cities, matchmaking a bride with a hero husband, and others that gave the game more depth.

As my son and I were playing the game early on, we were amazed and entertained at the animations, which made the game something like an animated film. Sabotage and the assassination of assassins and spying of spies have three possible outcomes: the agent can die before doing the mission and be discovered by your enemy; the undiscovered agent can succeed; or the agent can fail and get away. Each of these outcomes is accompanied by a group of animations that uses different background environments - such as that used in hand-drawn and three dimensional film animations. The animated characters and items play out the scene against these backgrounds. Some of the scenes are humorous. We laughed at the foolish assassin who waited behind the door for the enemy hero to come into the room and bash his nose with the door, or the snake that likes chasing mice rather than poisoning enemy heroes, or the guard too stupid to see the spy in the moving bush. We were surprised and amused by the animations and would have loved it if there was more variety and more physical comedy. Still, we owe the game designers a thank you for a wonderful moment of laughter.

I consider Kingdoms to be a very good game. It is well-thought out and well-executed. I only wish it had more polish, all of the little details. I would have loved more animations for the actions of diplomats and other agents. Those that were included helped change what is normally a very cerebral game into a more enjoyable experience. History buffs should give this game a try, they just might enjoy it. I know I did.