Written by Jeff Buckland, 3/13/2006
Played on:
Windows
There is a huge range of Star Wars games out in stores nowadays, and a pretty good majority of them are decidedly mediocre. While LucasArts has had good success in the RPG and action genres, they've had less-than-stellar results in trying to get various developers to make strategy games that really capture the feel of the movie battles. Star Wars: Empire at War from developer Petroglyph is their newest attempt. While it's a fairly solid game, it, like other Star Wars strategy games, just winds up missing something that makes it really unique or fun.
The biggest feature that LucasArts has touted with Empire at War is the ability to fight both in space with the classic Star Wars ships as well as on the planet surfaces. Throw in resource management on a galactic level and the ability to use signature heroes from the movies, and this is pretty much a sure-fire winner, right? Well, the lackluster graphics and overall lifeless gameplay really drag down the potential that this wonderful RTS idea started with. Petroglyph really nailed a few key parts of the Star Wars mythos, but failed at other major parts.
Playing as the Rebels is very different from controlling the Imperial fleet. As the Rebels, you'll steal technology instead of develop it, smuggle your money from the Empire rather than extract it from the planets you control, and use your own unique complement of troops and ships. What this adds up to is a largely different set of tactics necessary to win as the Rebels as compared to when you play as the Empire. Sadly, the annoying and boring parts of this game are just as evident no matter which side you play as.
On your galactic map you'll be able to build factories and barracks on planets - from there, you can produce troops, tanks, speeder bikes, and other stuff that makes up a mix of old Star Wars favorites and new additions. There are certain planets that will give you bonuses to building certain units, and the upgradeable space stations orbiting above planets allow you to build a full complement of ships. You can then move these ships around the galactic map in a semi-real-time interface and attack the planets controlled by enemies as well as defend the planets under your control. This might mean a two-pronged strategy where your combat ships tear down enemy fighters while your transport ships containing ground troops will have to be protected for the next step. Once you're done there, your troops will be sent down to the planetary level to fight the enemy.
Ground battles are probably the low point of Empire at War. Sure, you can bring in stuff like AT-ST and AT-AT walkers, Han Solo, Darth Vader, ground troops, and speeder bikes, but the combat is just stale. Petroglyph has attempted to spice it up with different installations you can capture and build, but since you don't actually build troops on the planet (you only call them down to your "Reinforcement Points" from the stock of troops you brought with you to the planet), the whole thing moves slowly. There's little micromanagement to be done, so you get to sit around and watch while firefights, which have a distinct quality of being both slow and dull, drag on. The planet surfaces themselves look ugly and while you'll see dozens of units at once pretty often, zooming in on them with the game's Cinematic Camera shows you some hideously low-detail character models fighting eachother in awkward ways.
To contrast, the space battles both look and play much better. Bringing in capital ships with fighter and bomber complements give the player a much more visceral kind of satisfaction, and the inclusion of the game's biggest ships (including the Death Star) are much more impressive. It's too bad that you'll have to fiddle around with countless piddly land battles (or space battles where you fend off one Corellian Corvette and two squads of X-Wings) in trying to keep all your captured planets from being whittled away by the enemy. You can have the game "auto-resolve" non-key space and land battles, but even if you do this often, you will likely still spend hours in a campaign game waiting to get to the good stuff.
Multiplayer modes are included, and to make it more interesting, Petroglyph allows you to focus these games down to just the planetary side or the space-battle side of things without the galactic map (and the normal game is also available as well). These three game styles, each with their own unique attributes, are all available for internet or LAN play. But aside from a few cool moments you'll find in the space battles, I think many will still find themselves very quickly bored with Empire at War's multiplayer modes. There just aren't enough cool ships or terribly exciting things happening at any one time to make this game worth most players' hard-earned cash (or their time spent actually playing).
Since this does happen to be a Star Wars game, you know you'll be hearing the many signature sound effects from the movies. The classic John Williams soundtrack has been evoked once again, and the game does put it to pretty good use. Sadly, though, most of the hero characters have voiced lines that sound nothing like the original actors, and this also extends to non-combat characters like Grand Moff Tarkin. The people they got to impersonate Han Solo, Mon Mothma, and Boba Fett were fine, but Darth Vader? I recall doing a better impersonation of him when I was 14, standing in front of a fan (Chris Farley-style). When I look at the game's soundscape as a whole, I'm really annoyed that they put such a half-hearted effort in. To put it plainly, the same old sound effects and music have been heard before in over a dozen games, and the voice acting is only barely passable.
While Empire at War does have an overall decent gameplay system that requires a mix of strategies, as well as a story-based campaign that can be played from the side of either the Rebels or the Empire, there's just not enough here to pull you away from the many great strategy games that are available today. The mere inclusion of classic Star Wars music, sound effects, worlds, characters, ships, and vehicles is simply not enough to really make it worth playing when the gameplay is just plain dull. While the interface is slick, the worlds and unit graphics are often uninspired and muddy. Sure, you'll find plenty of semi-interesting tactical options in the three main fields of battle, but none of this really helps too much because Star Wars: Empire at War still feels like a boring by-the-numbers strategy game.
