Product Details
 | Star Wars Empire At War Gold Pack |
| List Price: | $19.99 |
| Price: | $19.37 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
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Product Description
Star Wars: Empire at War Gold Pack PCProduct Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1455 in Video Games
- Brand: Lucas Arts
- Model: 99998
- Released on: 2007-09-04
- ESRB Rating: Teen
- Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows 2000, Windows XP
- Format: CD
- Dimensions: .32 pounds
Features
- Star Wars: Empire at War Gold Pack PC
Customer Reviews
AMAZON'S PICTURE IS MISLEADING (thanks JJAV)
I like Star Wars as well as your average 30-something red-blooded
American male, but I am by no means a fanboy; in fact, I have found that
most Star Wars related games in the past decade are kind of 'meh'. With
that said, I loved the original Empires at War, it was a great game
that combined a strategic game of planet conquering with two types of
RTS games in which you fought for control of planets on land and in
space - it didn't rest on the Star Wars Franchise to please the user,
the Star Wars heroes, vehicles, and troops are just an added bonus. User
created mods are freely available on the net, and that expands
replayability immensely. I pulled it off the shelf the other day to find
some of the new mods use the expansion - the original expansion no
longer seems to be available from Amazon, but the gold package has both
the original and expansion. The original was a great twist on the basic
RTS style of game, and one of my favorites, gameplay-wise. Eye candy
isn't as good as more modern titles, but gameplay has held up well.
IMHO, the original game is still worth the price, and I'm sure the
expansion just sweetens the pot.
Note that their cover art for this product is for the original game,
not the gold edition; I was waffling on whether to buy it until I saw
the customer pic, as it didn't seem the gold edition had the expansion
and there is no mention of it in the product description. Per Lucasart's
website, the gold edition does indeed have the Forces of Corruption
expansion included (and looks like the second picture in the gallery).
Thanks to 'JJAV' for the clarifying customer pic.
Good Value, Nice Mods, Great for Star War Fans
Positive Side: This is a very good value. For two games you get them
for only $30. I remember the time it was out, it was $39.99 in Bestbuy
for only the non-expansion game. This one is a deal although it is a bit
old now. Still, it's very fun. There's more to it in the game. If you
search on Google for Game Modifications, you can download a few you like
and add features and new units to the game for free. In fact, some game
modders go all the way to the extent of modifying the whole game.
(Note: Many games are also modded.) Very nice, and very fun in
multi-player. The game can run at high settings perfectly on my desktop
and notebook PC. (My computer can barely run Crysis on medium settings
on my desktop (Intel Quad Core Processor, NVIDIA 512 MB GeForce 8600GT)
and almost not playable on my notebook PC except on low settings (2.2
GHz NIVIDA 256 MB 8600m GS)).
Negative Side: The land battles tend to get a bit boring since they
are similar to other strategy-based games (but the heroes were fun to
play with). Also the computer tends to be relaxed and not attack you
unless it's part of the storyline. This is not really a challenge
although you can search around for MODs that make it harder. The
graphics are not the best but at least they do not stress a computer
like Crysis.
Overall, the game is best for its space battles. Go to Youtube to
see some of it.
Fun, but hogs resources and gets repetitive
It may matter that I'm a Star Wars Geek. Actually, I'm a polygeek. I
geek out on all sorts of things, but I do like Star Wars quite a bit.
So this set of two games appealed greatly to me. The characters,
planets, and actions all reflect fairly faithfully the expanded Star
Wars universe, which I never got much into but it beats the Star Trek
universe (Luke Skywalker never tried to hook up with a green alien with
sucker-fingers, for instance).
What the game got most right from an RTS perspective is the
comprehensiveness of spacefaring combat. You must defeat orbiting
defenses before landing to assault planets. This is something that some
games (the aged but respected Imperium Galactica II) got right, and
others (the disappointing Master of Orion 3) got dead darned wrong.
Every battle is, strangely, centered on a planet, rather than in
midspace, and the planetary maps are pretty tiny, but the idea is there.
If you want to conquer territory you need a space fleet and a sizeable
landing party.
The coolest feature of the games is undoubtedly the "movie mode"
where your camera view attempts to follow the action. When it gets it
right, it's bloody cool. When it gets wrong (the camera is stuck behind
an asteroid or somehow grabs the wrong section of space), it's a little
lame.
However, the game gets a bit repetitive. There's unfortunately not a
lot of strategy - overwhelming force is really what wins, especially
since there are a lot of artificial limits on how many units you can
bring on ground battles. I mean, c'mon, if I've got 11 platoons in my
landing party, why only let me land 3 at a time? Command and Conquer is
often dominated by the tank rush strategy (though the Generals games
often sidesteps this through terrain and technology, forcing a
technology-oriented solution), but there's no getting around it in
Empires at War.
Space combat is entirely 2-D, which is really disappointing.
Considering that Homeworld, Hegemonia, Imperium Galactica II and every
space-based shooter since 1998 have successfully implemented 3-D
battles, there's no excuse for a lack of a Z-axis. True, the ships kinda
hover around the Z-axis on their own, but there's no surrounding your
enemies in 3-space. You simply mass your forces, use their special
abilities (some of which are lame) and hope to destroy them. That's it.
Dragging down the fun are the system resources required. The game
says it'll run on an NVidia 3-series chip. I've got a 6-series on a very
new dual-core HP 5600+ with 3 GB RAM, which I know means I'm a year
behind on technology, but any more than a dozen units and the game
DRAGS, especially in ground combat. I fault the game design here - I can
run Generals:Zero Hour with 100+ units going at once with no slowdown
or frame breakup, but for whatever reason, Empires at War just crawls.
And it has crashed twice to the dreaded BSD while playing. I've run
every maintenance check and can find nothing wrong with my system. Maybe
there's a patch I'm missing somewhere out there?
In conclusion, this is a fun game for die-hard Star Wars geeks, but
RTS fans will want to look elsewhere.
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