IHC Online review of 'Empire at War'

[Chao]

It was early, on the Thursday morning above the Mon Calamari shipyards. Admiral Ackbar had stopped off to inspect the new cruisers, as well as let Luke Skywalker and the rest of his flight squad a chance to get out and do some maneuvers. Luke was out flying through some asteroids when suddenly a few wings of TIE fighters came screaming in at him. Their screeching engines shattering his focus, and their green turbo blasters relentlessly chasing him and his fellow pilots. Of in the distance, he could see another ship coming in at him fast.
Slave 1, Boba Fett was here. Luke saw some A-Wings heading him off, trying to bait him into coming after them into the asteroid belt. Boba turned in pursuit, and the rest of Rogue Squadron turned to follow him. The battle was starting to get intense, and Luke fought for control of the Force to make it out alive. Moments into the battle, Boba let out sonic blast charges…Almost all of the ships were damaged, systems failing, it was not looking good. Luke turned to flee, he had to meet back with Ackbar and get the fleet out of here. He was almost to the ship when he saw it. Imperial Interdiction ship. No ships could hyperspace out now, and even worse, more Imperial cruisers were approaching. All hope was looking dark.


I love Empire at War. Yes, that is how I want to start this review. I find it amazingly complex while fairly simple game play. I’m not even sure where to start, but I want to finish this so I can get back to playing it.

Single Player Campaigns:
There are over 40 planets to fight for control, a vast map of trade routes, and strategic defense. You use each planet to build construction points, defensive structures, or mining facilities. You have 10 land slots for ground troops that will be used for defense. You also have 3 space slots. This is great so you can move your ships around into other fleets, and separate ships to move later.

Down side, Bases are pre-designed; you don’t really get to say what goes where. And for Galactic Conquest battles you only have the troops available to you there, you do not have a way to build more in battle. The computer opponent however can build more troops, so you will have to disable their factories in the battle.

Multi Player Maps:
In addition to 1 on 1 conquest there are also multi player maps for both ground and space. These can go up to 8 on 8, where 8 Imperial teams will fight side by side to wipe out the pitiful 8 Rebel armies. What I like about this is all teams on your side share 1 base, so if one player upgrades a factory, all players benefit from this. On these maps you must find and hold mining facilities to make money, and build your troops up from that. You will be able to build in combat here, so have a good strategy in mind.

Down side, if your team is not careful, they may leave the enemy an opening to come in and destroy you, so use good tactics to not only watch yourself, but keep an eye on your team as well. Your AT-AT may be the difference in their battle.

Hero’s are very cool in this game, as each has their own ability on the playing field. Boba Fett has a small ship in space, but the bombs he can drop are very powerful on other small fighters, he can also be used on the ground with a jet pack for high mobility, and a flame thrower to wipe out a large area of infantry.

Some hero’s are only good on ground or in space; Grand Moff Tarkin for instance flies in a very weak lambda shuttle in space.

All in all, this game has a TON of cool little things that make it worth every penny. The Cinematic View in combat takes you to ground level of the fight, as the camera pans, dives, follows, and cuts to battle scenes around the map. Very stunning in space.

The controls are pretty straight forward, drag across the troops you want to command, click on what you want them to shoot. Enjoy the carnage.

Warning, there are some bugs in the program you will need to fix on your PC before you can fully enjoy the game in Multi Player, Network something rather that wont sync up your PC with others in large battles. The fix is very easy, and you can find more info on the Empire at War website.

There are a hundred more things I could say about this game, but I want to go back to playing it.

For IHC Online, this has been
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