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 Star Wars: Empire at War Developed By: Petroglyph, LucasartsReview By: Archangel Written on: Friday, April, 21st, 2006 at 05:23:46 pm Rating: 85% Site: here System: PC Given the craptacular nature of most Star Wars games (*glares at Rebellion, Force Commander, and Battlegrounds), you\'d expect the latest \"excursion\" into George Lucas\' brain to be another piece of trash that will be swallowed up by gullible fans (like myself). Fortunately, those idiots at Lucasarts finally realized they can\'t make an RTS and decided to sub-contract it to Petroglyph, an enclave of developers/refugees from Westwood Studios (Command and Conquer, Red Alert, Tiberium Sun). I looked upon this new game with high hopes, and had most of them fulfilled. Should you choose campaign, the storyline is generally incomprensible, but that\'s forgivable given the actual gameplay. Unlike most RTSes which require you to gather resource after resource, you only need to hold planets to gain income here. Quite simplistic compared to gold, crystals, iron, wood, and mana. To take control of a planet, simply take your army, drag it into the planet\'s orbit, and then have them land. The graphics are pretty good for an RTS and the models hold true to fandom. The cinematic camera they introduced is pretty good for when you want to hang back and just watch your units pound away. It basically strafes around the battlefield from \"dramatic\" camera angles - not good for marshalling your faces, but most excellent for getting pretty, pretty screenshots. On the ground, the units on each side are your generic groupings: Air, anti-air, infanty, anti-infantry, and many large vehicles that tramp around the field of battle. Almost all the unites have some secondary ability of some sort, though it sometimes seems as those abilities were thrown in there for filler. Each unit has an equal and opposite on either side, making combined arms a must, but rather bothersome with the \"seven-against-Greece\" limit cap. Ground combat gets very tiring very fast. Build points allow to make turrets and other such gadgets to slow down the enemy advance, but they ultimately end up being speedbumps against units in groups of two or more. Generally speaking, it will take a continuous barrage of fire over the course of a minute to kill most units, though I\'ve seen some infantry battles last much longer, even when one side is outnumbered by a factor of three-to-one. The only relief to the quamire down on the ground comes in the form of vastly overpowered hero units who generally slaughter everything in their path. While it ground combat isn\'t quite as drab and dull as I suggest above, it does feel that way sometimes, especially when you get stuck in the hero routine. The real meat of the game comes in the form of space combat. Though some players may complain about the 2-D playing field, I find it quite beneficial, for it forces you to make the hard choice of whether or not to go through that obstacle to save your forces on the other side (g--d--- asteroid fields). The units hyperspace on the field in grand scale, and the limit cap is much more forgiving than on the ground. In space combat, the cinema camera is truly at its best, tracking the course of missiles as they track enemy space ships. Building up an armada and pounding the crap out of an enemy fleet as you sit back and watch the pyrotechnics is simply too good of an activity to pass up, and has unfortunately eaten up a good portion of my time. I haven\'t tried multiplayer yet, but I assume it can host at least six players based on the information provided to me on a large map. Overall, Empire at War is good for the graphics, the space combat, and the ease of use. The only real fault I can find with it is the repetitive ground combat, but that\'s just me. I give this game an 85: A good game, but just not great. Screenshots    write a review
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