Nothing says fun like force-crushing a taun taun
For quite a few years, I wasn't interested in real-time strategy games. Sure, Command and Conquer was cool, but eventually everything started to look like variations on a theme. Lord of the Rings: Battle For Middle Earth was what brought me back to the fold. It discarded certain inappropriate conventions of the genre and twisted the entire gaming experience towards a single goal: achieving awesome cinematic moments reminiscent of the LotR movies. It succeeded, and for that I will always love it.
Star Wars: Empire At War is a game that succeeds in the same way. Forget, for a moment, all the hairsplitting details. This is a game that allows me to wage pitched space battles against the Empire while orbiting above strategic moons. Admiral Akbar can cry 'Concentrate fire!' at critical moments, directing entire swarms of X-Wings at key hardpoints on an approaching Star Destroyer. Obi-Wan Kenobi can sacrifice himself heroically to hold off Darth Vader. Chewbacca can hotwire and steal AT-STs. The Death Star is a playable unit. Seriously, what isn't there to like? Not much.
Gameplay revolves around a clean spacey-looking galactic map. Garrisoning troops, building spacecrraft, launching invasions of enemy-held moons, and so on all happen at that high level. Once you've built up a fleet, you can sling it from planet to planet until it meets resistance, triggering a real-time space battle. Unlike most RTS games, it's impossible to build new units while you're in combat. You prepare your forces during the lulls, and find out how well you've done when combat commences. If you're victorious in orbit, you can send down a first wave of transports to launch a land battle. Capturing key points around the map lets you pull down additional reinforcements from your orbital fleet, but the no-new-units-in-combat rule holds true. If you come to a fight with a weak mix of forces, there's no way to recover save retreat.
The three modes -- map-based resource allocation and fleet-building, real-time space combat, and real-time ground combat -- make an interesting mix. In addition, whenever a battle is initiated it's possible to auto-resolve the conflict. Rather than sloging through a fight yourself, the computer can skim the statistics for the two warring fleets or armies and figure out who'll come out on top. If all the battles are skipped, Empire At War actually reminds me of old galactic conquest sims from my early gaming days.
After playing, though, it's not the tweaky details that stand out. It's stuff like 'The Millenium Falcon chasing down a Tie Fighter while Chewbacca growls victoriously.' It's a good season for geeks, I think. Even though the latest Star Wars movies were cringe-laden franchise-milking, the games hitting the market capture the fun I remember from the first three films. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to take down some AT-ATs...
whoa
I think ur absolutly right, as i play empie at war too. there are may interesting fetures of the game, only i wiss there were more types of units and better construction options. If u find a game of the sort that meets my requiremaents, please email me.
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