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PC | Strategy | Star Wars: Empire at War

Boxart for Star Wars: Empire at War
Star Wars: Empire at War 54 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.0
  • SOUND: 4.0
  • CONTROL: 4.0
  • FUN FACTOR 3.0
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.4
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.7

Review: Star Wars: Empire at War

Review by Boba Fatt | 02/22/2006 | 10:37:48 AM PST

Star Wars: Empire at War is LucasArts' third attempt to deliver a faithful Star Wars RTS. But will Empire at War ignite gamers' lightsabers or lead them to the dark side?

Rising from the ashes of false promises delivered by LucasArts' first two attempts at a Star Wars real-time strategy game, Star Wars: Empire at War is LucasArts' latest attempt to appease fans who dream of collecting resources like Kaibur Crystals and Carbonite to construct massive armies of AT-ATs and TIE Fighters and crush the puny Rebellion.

Alas, like poor marksmen, they keep missing the target.

Sorry, wrong sci-fi film franchise.

Die-Cast Battlefront
Petroglyph is a studio founded by refugees from Westwood, architects of the RTS granddaddy Command & Conquer. In developing Empire at War, however, it seems like LucasArts didn't rely on Petroglyph's expertise in the RTS genre, turning instead toward their hit action franchise Battlefront for inspiration. As a result, Empire at War plays like a stitched-together version of Battlefront, only with teeny-tiny units. In toy terms, it's like playing with the die cast vehicles after putting down the full-blown action figure-scale spaceships.

Designed like Battlefront's Galactic Conquest mode, Empire at War allows you to assimilate planet after planet in your quest for domination. You can deploy structures on your captured planets, which help you create more powerful vehicles as your tech tree advances. Or you can choose to populate your empire with mines to increase income in order to finance bigger, badder ships and units. Some planets have more building slots, while others offer the opportunity to gain military or economic bonuses.

In both space- and ground-based combat, conflict is played out with RTS-sized units, with little connection between them. There are exceptions, like ground-to-space firing Ion Cannons and the occasional sub-orbital bombing run. But for the most part, each planet has two distinct, separate theaters of war--ground and space. Each map allows you only a limited number of units--fans of the large-scale RTS games will probably find it extremely limited, actually--with the opportunity to call in reinforcements. Battles rage on until you succeed or fail in a specific mission objective, or simply run out of reinforcements.


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