EMPIRE AT WAR: GAME REVIEW 

Game review:  Star Wars: Empire at War

LucasArts' Empire at War, its second in the RTS genre, has great graphics and well-designed battles.

BY A CORRESPONDENT

31 March, 2006
MUMBAI, INDIA

LucasArts delivers yet another breathtaking RTS game, this time developed by Petroglyph, and set between Episode III and Episode IV, promising to capture in exciting detail the wars that follow Anakin's betrayal and set up the stage for Luke's emergence as the Rebellion hero. Using a Petroglyph original engine called Alamo, the game allows players to play in Skirmish mode, where players can play on land or sea; the Story mode where the campaign builds up to Episode IV events, and the Galactic Conquest mode, where players can fight to win the Rebel Alliance's freedom, or aim at galactic domination with the Empire. The modes are played in real-time and galactic time pauses during battles for skirmish time. The overall package merits the hype as strategic and tactical options are made available thanks to a dual-layered design that covers over 40 planets including Leia's home planet Alderaan, Yoda's retreat Dagobah, the political hub and once home to the Jedi, Coruscant, and the birth planet of Anakin Skywalker, Tatooine.

The game is reminiscent of the best of the classic Civilization, allowing players to view units and structures as well as make decisions based on the different resource options different planets provide, including supporting space stations, and land buildings such as barracks, mining facilities, factories, or even planetary defense systems like turbo-laser towers or massive ion cannons that can attack units in space. Big ships like the Mon Calamari cruisers and the Imperial Star Destroyers can only be built on certain planets.

While the Empire usually has a much larger supply of funds, and consequently, the ability to overwhelm the Rebellion with a powerful economy that can sustain massive forces, the Rebellion is able to steal money and technology from the Empire and weaken it, in addition to being able to land small raiding parties that bypass Empire security.

With great graphics and sound, impressive land battles comprising of the massive AT-STs, and well designed space battles, there's little left to ask for. Oh yes, did we mention the hero units, that are pretty hard to kill and extremely powerful? Luke, Palpatine, Mon Mothma, R2D2, C3PO and Boba Fett… need we say more? This is a must-have game that combines the best of strategy gaming with a truly Star Wars experience.

The game was released on February 17th in Europe and carries a list price of $49.99. It comes in single player as well as multiplayer mode and is playable on the PC.

Minimum System Requirements: DirectX 9.0c compatible, Windows 2000/XP, Pentium III or higher Processor speed: 1 GHz or equivalent; RAM: 256 MB or more; Video Card: 32 MB or more with Hardware Transform and Lighthing Capability; Hard drive space: 2.5 GB.