Star Wars: Empire at War review

Early impressions are good. There’s enough wow early on in Star Wars: Empire at War to have you wanting to dig deeper. And the game will certainly keep you busy and entertained. But after a while you realise that you’ve pretty much seen the game in your first day or so and that it’s lacking something, it’s lacking the epic scale of the movies.

As I said though, those first impressions are rather good. There’s certainly plenty of choice in how you will play the game. Two campaigns offer a linear progression through the game’s geography and chronology – and I doubt I was alone in choosing to play as the Empire first of all.

That's Never James Earl Jones?

The campaign begins well; Darth Vader and his detachment of troops have landed on a planet to route out some rebels. There are a couple of platoons of stormtroopers on call and some Scout Walkers (AT-ST). Despite the terribly unconvincing Darth Vader voice the action feels suitably Star Wars. Kill, smash destroy, and Owen’s your uncle.

You can’t beat a bit of Star Wars, those authentic laser noises, stormtroopers who couldn’t hit a lake from the bottom of it and the sights and sounds you come to expect from Lucas’ fantasy universe. Yet it doesn’t quite add up. Take this first mission for example. It lacks grandeur, would Darth Vader really be wasting his time wandering around some planet with just two platoons of troops? I don’t think so.

Minor Skirmishes

Gamers expecting ground battles on the scale of Rome Total War are going to be rather disappointed. Empire at War never achieves the scale that the movies had, even the largest of battles feel like minor skirmishes compared to actions we’ve seen in the films such as the Battle of Endor or the Hoth.

There are several reasons why this is the case. Firstly the maps are too small, often with areas you can’t even move units to anyway. They feel like those little maze-like maps you used to play through on Cannon Fodder, not the location of epic struggles over the fate of the galaxy. It’s very rare to feel like a battle is taking place; rather the action seems to result in a number of small meeting engagements as each side brings in reinforcements.

Tank Rush

Now I do welcome the way reinforcements are used in the game and in the galactic conquest mode how there’s no base building to be done in the actual ground battles. Yet victory still seems to come when you’ve built up enough forces for a tank rush. The battles can be fun and exciting, despite the slow moving units and poor maps, but I couldn’t help think things would be a lot more fun if The Creative Assembly had developed the game.

The shadow of the Total War developer looms large over the proceedings, in galactic conquest mode especially. Here we see Empire at War at its best. While the strategy is pretty light, building up and sending fleets to capture planets is a lot of fun. If you’ve not done enough recon, the moment you send a new fleet into a system is tense. Will it meet resistance? How big will the enemy fleet be? Then suddenly you’re involved in a planetary battle to control the orbital space of the world before you can even consider landing your troops.

To Infinity and Beyond

My favourite aspect of Empire at War is the space battles. A quick glance may lead you to believe that they are simply the same as the ground battles with the background faded to black. It’s easy to see how that mistake could be made. Unlike more epic space strategy games such as Homeworld, the action remains firmly in the plane of the ecliptic. The scope for tactical decision making is higher than the ground battles though, as you choose how to take on enemy capital ships. Should I send the fighters in to destroy the defences, or should I engage in a ship-to-ship broadside? Destroy the enemy offensive capability first or his ability to manoeuvre? Now my fleet is engaged how should I tackle the new corvettes moving in on my flank? It’s all good stuff.

Problems remain though. While the ground missions are often slow and ponderous, the space missions often seem too quick. The maps are pretty small and despite the supposed large size of the ships involved, everything seems so fast and frenetic. The space battles are the best the game has to offer yet they are over too quickly. A better use of scale would have benefited these missions immensely and allowed the player more time to make decisions.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This

The technical aspects of Empire at War mirror the gameplay, in that it’s all pretty good without every aspiring to greatness. The space battles sure do look pretty and when you use the option cinematic camera to place your view in the action it looks even better. But given the toll on system performance at the top end of the graphics scale I would have expected more quality. The 3D models, especially the ground units, aren’t particularly good and the textures never seem quite sharp enough when you zoom in.

I don’t want to give the impression this is just another lazy Star Wars game, because it’s clear a lot of love has gone into the game. But there’s a lack of ambition at the heart of Empire at War that is the ultimate reason for its failure to be a really great strategy game. Imagine the rolling hillsides of Rome Total War, place in that some true-to-scale AT-ATs, a few battalions of Imperial Stormtroopers and well-defended Rebel base and you’d have something truly wonderful. As it is, what we have isn’t too far away from Command and Conquer with the added bonus of some fun space missions. Good, but not great.