A Change of Heart

Novaya

Deep in the depths of the wide expanse of my mind video games seems to always stay a constant factor in what entertained me as a child and now as a teenager. It was my dad who really got me onto the endless track of my seemingly never-ending video game collection and I was appreciative of what he did, there were always classic games I would play on his old dell laptop like Quake, Star Wars: Battlefront, and Age of Empires. Though there was always one game that always sparked my interest more than any of those, Empire Earth I had been playing this game since I was very little and I loved it with a whole heartedly good intentions any chance I got to play this game and even its sequel I took, even sometimes to the extent of bringing a flash drive to school and playing it on school computers I was very firmly addicted to this masterpiece of a game. The game was a real time strategy game a “Build your base collect resources and invade the other player game” somewhat in the same style as its cousin Age of empires. It had been a summer afternoon and I had been staying with my father and we had been talking about some of the old video games I used to play he had brought up Empire Earth and a brief wave of nostalgia came over me I needed to play, I returned over to my computer which was firmly seated on the kitchen table and I logged in. the search began I searched high and low for this game on the internet for this game until I found a video linking to empire earth, it was a review of the game and had a download link in the description of the video it was a google drive download I hesitated “ the video did seem pretty legit” I thought thinking nothing of it I clicked on the link and the download began immediately I waited for a couple of minutes before I saw the folder it downloaded in my “downloaded” folder I clicked on the folder, found the application and clicked on it I waited a couple of seconds and saw the familiar sierra logo at the beginning I skipped the intro and was brought immediately to the title screen, it seemed completely normal, I clicked on single player I looked at the options I was presented with it had the casual “single player game” and “learning campaigns” and I had remembered something “the campaigns” I said to myself I clicked on the “campaigns” button and I saw the 4 options I had to choose from  the Greek campaign, British campaign, German campaign, and Russian campaign the first three were based actually off of historical events like the Greek campaign had a mission which was based off of the conquests of Alexander the Great ,the British campaign had a mission focusing on the Battle of Waterloo, and the German campaign had a mission based on the beginning of WW2. The Russian campaign however focused on the story of Grigor Illyanich Stoyanovich a Russian street criminal which would eventually lead one the most powerful empires known to man, I cancelled on the other 3 campaigns and decided on the Russian campaign I began completing the first few missions which took me a couple of hours but I eventually beat them until I got to a specific level “A Change of Heart” I groaned “I hate this one” and grudgingly clicked start game, something was off though as soon as I clicked start, it immediately went to the game. and usually before starting the game at all it would give you a briefing like hints, objectives, and even history this time it didn’t I was just popped into the game and even further It didn’t include an opening cinematic, I simply shrugged this off as a glitch due to the newness of windows 10 and the oldness of this Empire Earth being released in 2001, It just put me into the game I was confused and I had remembered what I had to do for this mission. Invade Cuba, siege Havana and put a capitol on the ruins of the Cuban capital building I played and I noticed something else which was strange the lack of resistance that the U.S and Cubans gave me and I remember this mission being extremely difficult it was a cake walk making a base on Cuban soil and sieging Havana, I very easily did this and as usual I was greeted with a cinematic of the leader of the Russians Grigor the II telling his general, Molotov to kill the entire Cuban population, now in the regular game general Molotov defects and joins the U.S to stop the Russians here he responds with “ As you wish commander” I got treated to my forces killing all of the Cuban units on the map then after I was greeted to the usual “You are Victorious!” message and then the game crashed. I cursed furiously and later calmed down I then went to bed for the night. The next morning I went to speak with my father to see if he wanted to play a game he responded “maybe in a little bit” I as I was leaving he asked me a question “did you hear what happened in Cuba?” I turned around and muttered “no, what happened?” he gave me a puzzled look and told “apparently there was some sort of coup that killed a lot of people in the, thousands it’s all over the news” I turned around, left my dad’s room and went to the kitchen and went to my computer and I booted it up I checked my downloads folder and the application was gone.