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Jan 12th, 2007 at 01:44:51 - Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption (PC) |
[several hours later]
After acquiring a Death Star, I now had the galaxy at my feet. It comes with its own "garrison" of a sizable fleet, as well as a wonderful little superlaser which can target and instantly destroy any enemy capital ship or space station. A real timesaver, and perfect for defensive playing; simply hold back until it recharges, then send out a scout to spot targets, and in no time they're fleeing! Each opposing side has one way to destroy the Death Star: the Rebels have to defeat the rest of the fleet AND have a certain "hero" unit (Wedge Antilles) in their own fleet. The Consortium can send one of their heroes (IG-88) to "Hack the Death Star" for a sizeable chunk of cash, which causes it to destroy whichever planet it's currently orbiting, and has a good chance of destroying the Death Star itself as well. To attempt to avoid this, I kept my Death Star in movement so there wasn't any time for it to be "hacked." I have steadily gained ground and staunched the flow of new fleets against my planets. Cash is also building up, which goes toward building up defenses on border planets and de-corrupting the core planets.
The "heroes" aspect of the game is a reasonable one, considering that it's a game based on movies featuring all the "heroes" of the Galactic Civil War, but in some cases they seem overpowered; I have been invading whole planets with two heroes, thereby avoiding sending costly troops and machinery. When heroes die, they almost always return after a significant period of time (every so often they're removed forever). Even when I realize I can't win, or when the enemy ambushes a lightly-protected system, I pull the ol' "load up a previous save" trick and then make a remarkably prescient move to avoid it.
I think this would be a wonderful game to play with a friend; the only problem is that one would need many hours at one's disposal to finish a reasonable game. Another irksome thing is that there are several recurrent and glaring bugs which really should not have made it past testing. None are game-breaking, but sometimes very annoying (my expensive space stations suddenly thinking they belong to the Consortium). This is even after a patch, which as far as I can tell simply added more issues. Apart from this, though, the game is of the sort that keeps me up all night, as there is always something more to do in the very near future, and each given action requires several tangential actions on the way there, and will probably be interrupted by an unexpected battle. I'd better finish up now, else I won't have much of a weekend...
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Jan 11th, 2007 at 23:38:50 - Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption (PC) |
This game is a long-awaited triumph from LucasArts, who has tried several times to produce a reasonable RTS. It is arguably the spiritual successor to 1998's Rebellion, in which the player chose to play as either the Rebel Alliance or the Empire, and, using a combination of diplomacy, subterfuge, and all-out war, fought on a planet-by-planet basis for control of the galaxy. That, in my mind, was the last good non-flight sim Star Wars until Lego Star Wars in 2005. LucasArts tried to cash in on the RTS field with 2000's Force Commander. The gameplay was bulky and stodgy, and the 3d models left much to be desired; furthermore, the single-player campaign forced the player to start as the Empire and then defect to the Rebels, rather than getting to choose one and play it through to the end. It was perhaps too early for a 3-D RTS, so LucasArts next released Galactic Battlegrounds (2001), an Age of Empires clone which was adequate but unexciting. Just as the situation seemed hopeless for a good RTS or an updated and improved Rebellion, LucasArts released one game which pulled off both.
Developed by Petroglyph, the game takes place in three planes: the Galactic view, where the player manages and builds fleets, armies, and defensive/productive structures on each of the planets or areas they control. This part is very much like Rebellion, although simplified in a few ways; diplomacy is no longer an option and one needn't worry about popular support. On the other hand, one cannot use popular support to start a revolt on an enemy planet. Therefore, fleets and armies are all the more important, and these are dealt with in the two other modes: Space Tactical Battles and Land Tactical Battles. Each planet has its own maps for each sort of battle. Rebellion also featured a 3-D space battle portion, but the new and improved graphics and engine of Empire at War allow for tastier battle scenes, including piece-by-piece destruction (one should always take out the enemy's engines first so they cannot escape). The textures and effects manage to work out quite well even on my aging laptop, which is quite pleasant. If one wins the space battle above an enemy planet, one can then invade the planet proper, and thus starts the Land Tactical Battle. Rebellion had no such plane, and simply dice-rolled the various armies until someone lost everything. Because it's only a third of the game, this part isn't quite a full-fledged RTS, but comes awfully close. the attacker lands their forces (up to a limit determined by the number of "reinforcement points" they've captured), and hopes to use them to defeat the home army as well as all their buildings (many of which produce garrison units until destroyed). To help both sides, there are scattered and strategically-placed Build Pads, which, upon being captured (by having infantry units of only one faction near them for 10 seconds), can be used to build turrets of either the anti-vehicle, anti-infantry, or anti-aircraft sort, or structures to heal infantry or vehicles. As a defensive player, I tend to seek out and hoard these pads, especially for use as anti-aircraft turrets. As well, there are sometimes special buildings on a map which either provide free units, paid units and upgrades, a cash influx, or reveal the entire map. If the right sort of fleet is overhead, one can call in bombing runs or orbital bombardments to devastate enemy emplacements.
Alternatively, one can choose to play Skirmish battles in either Space or Land. This works much the same on the surface, but inherits all the usual Galactic tasks. Space stations are directly upgraded, units, upgrades, bombing runs, etc. are directly bought and produced, and both sides have bases on the map, so both are attacking and defending.
Late last year the expansion Forces of Corruption was released, which not only added new units for the Empire and Rebels, but added a whole new faction, the Zann Consortium. Set up as a criminal syndicate, it is a little contrived that such a consortium could seriously challenge the supposedly behemoth Empire, but Petroglyph managed it fairly well, with significant play differences that truly add to the game on all sides. I have been playing as the Empire since my very first Star Wars game (The flight sim TIE Fighter from 1994), and the opportunity to place galactic policeman against not just the plain ol' Rebels but some real criminals was a tasty one. Little did I know that the computer knew just how to manage the Consortium in a most annoying way. As the Corrupt side, the Consortium has the ability to "corrupt" planets without actually controlling them. Various types of corruption can provide cash, strategic info or advantages (like preventing structures from producing garrisons), allow the building of enemy types of ships, provide access to the "Black Market" where significant unit upgrades can be purchases, or provide easy access for saboteurs. Although when I played as the Consortium earlier I found that corrupting many planets instead of simply invading them was prohibitively expensive and not terribly useful, when I was on the other side, I found that I was being overwhelmed by the yellow clouds which indicate corruption has taken hold on my planets. A certain few "hero" units have the ability to remove corruption; for a price even greater than the Consortium spent on corrupting them in the first place. I was having trouble even making enough fleets to head off the Rebels, and I certainly couldn't afford to decontaminate all my planets. The Rebel AI is also sort of monotonous and repetitive, sending fleet after fleet at the same two planets. A blessing on sort, since I didn't have to worry about spreading my limited forces out, but it gets to the point where i can't manage my galactic stuff for more than 20 seconds without being thrown into another battle. The game allows you to "auto-resolve" any given battle, but almost assuredly will completely destroy your fleet, even against underwhelming odds. Recently, however, I have started to build a Death Star, which I imagine will help to turn the tide.
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