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> Results: Star Wars: Empire At War
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That quote from Obi-Wan Kenobi at the end of Revenge of the Sith reflects the expectation many Star Wars fans have for Empire at War. Despite having truly excellent games in the role-playing, action and first person shooter genres, previous attempts at making a real-time strategy game in the Star Wars universe have been lackluster and poor. The good news is Empire at War delivers a deep strategy gaming experience that includes satisfying strategic elements and nicely captures the look and feel of a galaxy far, far away.
The solo campaign allows you to choose either the Rebel forces or the Empire, with galactic domination as your ultimate goal. There are two other game modesﾗGalactic Conquest and Skirmishﾗwhich are free form ways to play the game. Each force has various capabilities, bonuses, and available heroes. Gameplay consists of building space and land forces at a planet you control, reinforcing defenses, taking over new worlds, and advancing technology and your chosen side's capability along the way. There are many special objectives you need to accomplish but none of these get in the way of carrying out your Galactic Conquest in the manner you see fit. This game mode is balanced between land and space battles, forcing you to constantly balance the capabilities of your planets to maximize effectiveness. Space battles are particularly exciting and can be very fast paced and challenging. The cinematic view mode helps immediately show you good and bad strategic decisions on the map.  The game mixes game types freely between single and multiplayer, allowing you to accomplish many of the same tasks in either mode. The ability to play the campaign mode against another human makes it even more enjoyable. Multiplayer allows you to customize nearly everything, switching from skirmish battles to a near-perfect reproduction of the single-player game. Matchmaking works well and provides access to a smooth multiplayer experience. Multiplayer keeps you going for a long time, constantly changing the course of Star Wars history. There are some minor issues. Individual single player sections feel like they end too quickly, and ground battles lack some of the depth and excitement of the space battles. Despite this, the game measures up for both strategy and Star Wars fans alike. Star Wars fans rejoiceﾗthis is the Star Wars strategy game you've been looking for!  
Kids love Star Wars. Adults love Star Wars. The epic struggles from the ﾑOriginal Trilogy' of the late 1970's to early 1980's are ingrained into our popular culture. The mythos provides an immediate understanding of all units in the game, their purpose and application, and obsoletes the nice unit guide in the documentation before it was even printed. Familiarity allows kids to get to the deeper part of the strategy quicker than with many other games and allows them to get over-zealous and make foolish mistakes. But that is the source of valuable learning. My kids were very excited about this game and had fun just playing around with land and space battles after trying out some of the single-player game.
The T-rating comes from large scale battles in which many combatants from both sides perish. However, the perspectives for playing the gameﾗeither top down isometric or cinematicﾗdetach you from the action, and there is no blood or gore to be concerned with. I think that puts the game closer to a ﾑPG' rated movie than something that would warrant a ﾑPG-13', and I think that kids ten and over are ok to play this game. As guidance, the action compares well with the violence and intensity of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi or Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. This review edited by Dave Long Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Star Wars: Empire At War |
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