Offering not much new to the real-time strategy (RTS) genre, “Star Wars: Empire at War” is, nevertheless, a rock-solid representation of it. What’s more, it plays heavy on the Star Wars trademark, now a complete package, which makes it better than the previous “Star Wars” RTS attempts known as “Galactic Battlegrounds” (2001), “Force Commander” (2000), and “Rebellion” (1998).
In a myopic sense, “Empire at War” is the very best “Star Wars”-flavored RTS out there, just bear in mind that it’s gone the way of “mass appeal,” whereby true RTS fans will find it satisfying but cumbersome.
“Star Wars” nuts, on the other hand, will find “Empire at War” a superb introduction to the freakishly finicky handful that is the RTS genre while also fulfilling still more “Star Wars”-
ian fantasies, overseeing huge fleets in space or entire garrisons, plus midsized raiding parties in between. Sometimes you mix it up between them.
The micro-managing, resource-hoarding, unit-building and troop-deploying gameplay, situated within the 18-year hiatus between the last of the new, first-trilogy movies, “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith,” and the beginning of the old, second-trilogy, “Episode IV: A New Hope,” is on a galactic scale, allowing you to view and plot conquest (or defend against it) on a map of some 40 planets, or zoom right down to an up-close-and-personal view of your hero, Obi Wan, for example, rampaging through a score of stormtroopers.
“Empires at War” also has the distinction of looking drop-dead gorgeous, but you have to zoom in to really appreciate the attention to detail (though the audio is consistently excellent).
The problem, of course, is that this is still an RTS, so seeing as you spend most of your time rifling through menus or dragging, dropping and otherwise mouse-clicking little icons in multiple clusters of action over large-scale battlefields, then you’re often left to take the prettiness on faith; just know (or rather, hope) that the little green square off on the left is actually a beautifully rendered X-Wing gunning for the flight deck on a Star Destroyer.
LucasArts; PC; $49.99. Rating: Teen (13+) (fantasy violence)
Shaun Conlin is a freelance games reviewer for Cox News Service; e-mail him at shaunconlin@evergeek.com.
