Star Wars:Empire at War Demo
SWEaW comes out on Feb 16. Too late to be a viable gift for VDay, but close enough that many a man will sleep on the couch for skimping on the girl's gift to afford the game... You can DL the demo at the game's website (which I'm too lazy to link to here). There're five sites that Lucas Arts recommends DLing the game from. I'll start there. I found ONE that didn't require a subscription to download the free demo. ONE! Lucas, it's a FREE DEMO. Don't redirect me to a site that expects me to pay a fee to download the FREE DEMO. I don't want pay a monthly fee to somebody so that I can download trials of games. Hell, I refuse to pay a monthly fee to play a MMORPG that I have to pay for in the first place right now. That's why my MMORPG of choice is Guild Wars. Sheesh.
So anyway, the server without a subscription fee did DL at 11okb/sec, which meant it took like an hour and a half to get the file, compared to the 9 fucking hours it took to DL the Battle for Middle Earth II demo I'll be testing tonight. So, props there.
Now, let's review the game. First, I have a tendancy to dislike demos. I have a few theories on this. Especially for strategy games, I'm a man that likes to read the book cover to cover. Most RTS games are either a left or right-click action based system, with a lot of similar commands. Ctrl+# creates a squad of that number, shit like that. Hell, they usually have a customize keyboard option that lets you set up your own controls. Empire at War is just different enough from the last three RTS games I've played to throw me off. Nothing major, though, but I didn't find the tutorials helpful enough to immerse myself in the demo. The problem there is that it seems they took the first five tutorials from the real game and used them in the demo (there are more than 5 because after the fifth you get a message that says the tutorials continue in the full version). Now, that's not a bad idea business-wise, but let's remember one thing. The full version comes with a manual to accent those tutorials.
Playwise, let's see. The Rebles are SLOW. Now, I know that speeder bikes are fast. Speeder bikes can drop a thermal detonator and run away faster than you can shoot em. That's a handy trick, cause I found most of my rebel units couldn't fucking run away from the damn thing in time. Thing is, speeder bikes are fragile as fuck, so it shouldn't have been a problem. I musta had some drunk rebels or something. But I digress.
Tactically, each unit has strengths and weaknesses. I love the space battles. Fighters are good vs. fighters. Ships are good vs. different kinds of ships, etc. Bombers are great, because they can surpass a ship's shields and attack specific hardpoints. Purty sweet to send a flight of fighters to distract the enemy fighters, then have the bombers do a run on the hangars to keep enemy fighters and bombers outta service, then run on the shield generators. Once a ships shields are down, all ships can target hardpoints, but while the shields are up, only bombers can do surgical strikes and ship to ship combat is all a matter of whose got better shields. Tactics are very important than. In one scenario, two star destroyers and four frigates make short work of a BAD ASS space station, no tactics. In the space battle demo level though, good tacts let me destroy two star destroyers and a space station with two blockade runners, two frigates, and a large fleet of Y-wings and X-wings. I used the tactics above and focused on one ship at a time. Wasn't any way my little ships could split up and tackle the star destroyers.
Ground based combat is a whole different ball of wax. The same strengths vs. weakness apply, but it seems to move faster once combat is entered (unlike when you're trying to explore the map with fucking slow ass rebels). I might be missing something, or it might not have been available in the demo, but I didn't see any means of building big structures in battle. You build that shit before on a galactic level. It might be different on defense, but on offense, nope. There are build points you can capture, but you can only build turrets, repair facilities, and sensors on those. Instead, there are reinforcement points you have to capture. Each point gives you more units to bring in from orbit in space (I know on defense there ARE prebuilt facilities that crank out the units). However, at least in the demo, the build points don't necessarily coincide with the reinforcement points. So I found myself with anti-vehicle turrets put up in a perimeter around the map while I struggled to defend a distant reinforcement point. Sidenote: USE THE MINIMAP for quickly navigating the battle. The screen moves to slow otherwise.
Now, a lot of the possibly cool features were also turned off in the demo. One that wasn't was the movie button. During the course of the game, you can switch to a cinematic camera, whereupon your view goes all wide screen and the camera starts to make sweeping angles and replicate movie action. It's pretty cool, but impractical, because I don't think you can issue orders from there. Still, when you're sweeping into the enemy base with victory tied up in a sling, it's fun to switch to that view and watch your TIE bombers come zipping over the ridge and kill everyone... It's ALMOST worth the price of admission for that alone. Other features mentioned, but not in the demo, include the ability to control 16 movie personalities (including Vader) during battle. I know you can hire Boba Fett, but you can't control him. He just does his own thing on the battlefield fucking people up.
So, there is hope for the game, but I found the demo disappointing, as I usually do.
So anyway, the server without a subscription fee did DL at 11okb/sec, which meant it took like an hour and a half to get the file, compared to the 9 fucking hours it took to DL the Battle for Middle Earth II demo I'll be testing tonight. So, props there.
Now, let's review the game. First, I have a tendancy to dislike demos. I have a few theories on this. Especially for strategy games, I'm a man that likes to read the book cover to cover. Most RTS games are either a left or right-click action based system, with a lot of similar commands. Ctrl+# creates a squad of that number, shit like that. Hell, they usually have a customize keyboard option that lets you set up your own controls. Empire at War is just different enough from the last three RTS games I've played to throw me off. Nothing major, though, but I didn't find the tutorials helpful enough to immerse myself in the demo. The problem there is that it seems they took the first five tutorials from the real game and used them in the demo (there are more than 5 because after the fifth you get a message that says the tutorials continue in the full version). Now, that's not a bad idea business-wise, but let's remember one thing. The full version comes with a manual to accent those tutorials.
Playwise, let's see. The Rebles are SLOW. Now, I know that speeder bikes are fast. Speeder bikes can drop a thermal detonator and run away faster than you can shoot em. That's a handy trick, cause I found most of my rebel units couldn't fucking run away from the damn thing in time. Thing is, speeder bikes are fragile as fuck, so it shouldn't have been a problem. I musta had some drunk rebels or something. But I digress.
Tactically, each unit has strengths and weaknesses. I love the space battles. Fighters are good vs. fighters. Ships are good vs. different kinds of ships, etc. Bombers are great, because they can surpass a ship's shields and attack specific hardpoints. Purty sweet to send a flight of fighters to distract the enemy fighters, then have the bombers do a run on the hangars to keep enemy fighters and bombers outta service, then run on the shield generators. Once a ships shields are down, all ships can target hardpoints, but while the shields are up, only bombers can do surgical strikes and ship to ship combat is all a matter of whose got better shields. Tactics are very important than. In one scenario, two star destroyers and four frigates make short work of a BAD ASS space station, no tactics. In the space battle demo level though, good tacts let me destroy two star destroyers and a space station with two blockade runners, two frigates, and a large fleet of Y-wings and X-wings. I used the tactics above and focused on one ship at a time. Wasn't any way my little ships could split up and tackle the star destroyers.
Ground based combat is a whole different ball of wax. The same strengths vs. weakness apply, but it seems to move faster once combat is entered (unlike when you're trying to explore the map with fucking slow ass rebels). I might be missing something, or it might not have been available in the demo, but I didn't see any means of building big structures in battle. You build that shit before on a galactic level. It might be different on defense, but on offense, nope. There are build points you can capture, but you can only build turrets, repair facilities, and sensors on those. Instead, there are reinforcement points you have to capture. Each point gives you more units to bring in from orbit in space (I know on defense there ARE prebuilt facilities that crank out the units). However, at least in the demo, the build points don't necessarily coincide with the reinforcement points. So I found myself with anti-vehicle turrets put up in a perimeter around the map while I struggled to defend a distant reinforcement point. Sidenote: USE THE MINIMAP for quickly navigating the battle. The screen moves to slow otherwise.
Now, a lot of the possibly cool features were also turned off in the demo. One that wasn't was the movie button. During the course of the game, you can switch to a cinematic camera, whereupon your view goes all wide screen and the camera starts to make sweeping angles and replicate movie action. It's pretty cool, but impractical, because I don't think you can issue orders from there. Still, when you're sweeping into the enemy base with victory tied up in a sling, it's fun to switch to that view and watch your TIE bombers come zipping over the ridge and kill everyone... It's ALMOST worth the price of admission for that alone. Other features mentioned, but not in the demo, include the ability to control 16 movie personalities (including Vader) during battle. I know you can hire Boba Fett, but you can't control him. He just does his own thing on the battlefield fucking people up.
So, there is hope for the game, but I found the demo disappointing, as I usually do.
posted by Amazing Shafeman at 6:03 AM
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