| My First Impressions Of EAW. | |
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Ex-Rauc - Student |
I bought Empire at War on its release day, hoping LucasArts would redeem my faith in them. What did I think of it? Time to find out. The autorun menu is the stereotypical LucasArts menu, which is a good thing. The menus are presented in an easy to navigate way. In the single player menu, you'll find Skirmish, Galactic Conquest, and Campaign. Skirmish is a single battle where you capture outposts that give you money for you to spend either upgrading your stronghold, or buying more troops. Skirmish has three modes: Land, Land Control, and Space. Land and Space are basically the same concept: Kill your enemy before he kills you. Land Control focuses more around the capture of all the outposts. I will get to the battle-by-battle gameplay later. Galactic conquest is the mode with lots of planets that you are supposed to conquer. This mode also gives you objectives, such as destroy the Death Star, kill the Emperor, defeat all the Rebels, etc. I went through this mode once in hard as the Rebels and again in hard as the Empire. This brings me to my next point: The AI, to be blunt, is retarded. In 55 in-game days as the Rebellion, the Empire never went on the offensive once. Wow, how fun, I'm just farming a bunch of immobile units. They spent all their time and money making star destroyers. I was faced with a conundrum here: Do I attack their fleet of star destroyers and risk losing, or do I use a raid force to attack Coruscant directly? I attacked their fleet. They promptly retreated from a fleet half their size. No wonder they lost the war in the movies. My second time through, I was the empire. The AI impressed me by going on the offensive in a hurry, but the surprise quickly faded as I realized: They only sent Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2-D2, C3P0, and 3 artillery units. They did this. Twice. So don't expect stunning strategies from their attack force. The AI seems to enjoy mass-producing the same unit. Space combat is entertaining. It looks good from far away and the battles should keep you entertained for a while. The moment you start using strategy against the enemy, though, is the moment they lose. Concentrating your fire on one ship at a time will generally bring the enemy's fleet down quickly. The AI prefers to shoot at all of your ships at once, instead of one ship at a time. This means that even though you may be horribly outnumbered in a space battle, some planning will result in your victory. The ground AI is brutally stupid. We're talking about stupidity that could only be surpassed by putting Britney Spears and Madonna in a room together. Even then, the AI may still struggle. The AI may have a massive army, but they'll send them at you one-by-one, sometimes they'll send two at a time, but they'll never send enough to beat you. Lots of times you can just capture two build nodes, put up one anti-infantry turret and one anti-vehicle turret, and you'll be farming them. Add an artillery unit in there and you have a bucket of laughs as they try to get to you in their futility. All they do is run right at you. No surprise, no strategy, just straight forward assaults. I killed the Emperor on Coruscant before I left my original reinforcement point. They would send him towards me, my artillery would hit him hard, he'd run away, come back with the same health he left with, get hit, rinse and repeat. Soon, the battle was over, I had won, the galactic conquest had ended in a way that had me question why I even bother thinking that LucasArts understands the concept of "quality". If all you're looking for is a good singleplayer RTS experience, this game is not for you in any way, unless you enjoy beating the pulp out of the mentally impaired. If you are looking for some multiplayer fun, then this game will probably be good for you to get. It comes with skirmish and campaign as multiplayer modes, so you can get the same experience in singleplayer, except without the AI involved, which is a good thing. This post was edited by Ex-Rauc on Feb 28 2006 09:22pm. |
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| Comments |
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Alex Dkana - Staff 
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Quote: Republic commmando multiplayer in my eyes is very fun, so is single player. I have played the E@W demo and i find it very fun. Yeah i thought the RC multiplayer was okay, not exactly the pinicle of FPS mp, but still okay for a laugh, certainly played worse multiplayers. _______________ To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield | Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken | Rhaiko D'kana - SWTOR EU Guild Co-Founder | Is it what the teacher, teaches? Or what the student learns? A Dkana |
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Seaon - Student 
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Republic commmando multiplayer in my eyes is very fun, so is single player. I have played the E@W demo and i find it very fun. _______________ Proud member of the Nomadic Jedi Order. |
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Ex-Rauc - Student |
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Quote: Multiplayer is balanced, and skirmish mode is fun against other players. Single player, though, is a joke. Like SP in games is ever better than MP... In Republic Commando, SP was fun, multiplayer was probably the worst multiplayer experience I've ever had. In Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, SP is fun. Multiplayer feels like a completely different game. The co-op suffered from severe instability and the mercs vs spies gamemode wasn't even as fun as getting kicked in the crotch. Would you like me to conitnue? |
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SaZ - Student 
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Quote:
Quote: Multiplayer is balanced, and skirmish mode is fun against other players. Single player, though, is a joke. Like SP in games is ever better than MP... SP roxorz in many games  _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana |
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Ashyr - Student 
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Quote: Multiplayer is balanced, and skirmish mode is fun against other players. Single player, though, is a joke. Like SP in games is ever better than MP... _______________ Top ten reasons to get a better computer...|My fan |
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Raziel Anjelis - Student 
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Sounds like Battlefront 1 mixed with LOTR:Battle for middle earth.....that game was bs. _______________ Proud owner of El Vee For's 200th Comment, and Wicek's 2600th comment  DaMi3N's 400th, Trad Redav's 666th.
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Bubu - Hubbub 
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ROFL _______________ make install -not war |
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SaZ - Student
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even before the release from thos demo videos i could see that game is goin to be pooish... _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana |
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Ex-Rauc - Student |
Multiplayer is balanced, and skirmish mode is fun against other players. Single player, though, is a joke. |
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LoneWolf_ Mintaka - Student 
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Well after reading your review .... I do say I probably won't get it. Even though I waited an extremely long time. A serious let down ..... Later _______________ Honor, still counts for something. Loyalty, is hard to come by. Integrity, is something to strive for. |
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Aiddat - Student 
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Too bad. Do you think it would still be better than Battlefront 2? How much better is Battlefront 2 over #1? _______________ -Aiddat, the Gran with the green blades. "You have a right to be angry, but believe me when I say you don't want to feed that emotion." - Kyle Katarn {Owner of Liso Jowol's 550th comment, Conchris Chaotic's 80th, 150th and 350th comments, Pink Floyd's 200th comment Tyrant's 695th comment, D@RTHM@UL's 10600th comment}, accidentally tricked Pink Floyd into giving me his 1700th comment, I also have Alexander D'Kana's 1950th comment, Mindrith Pride's 1850th comment and I used the same accidental trick on Lewis's 100th comment, and I have Aiddat's 1992nd comment (birthyear), and #Elmo's 450th comment. Unsuccessfully tried to prove Senor Hat's theory wrong. Click for screenshots. Padawan of R2-D2. |
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SaZ - Student
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have you played multiplayer? is it balanced? if its not then its not good for multiplayer either  oh and were u playing at hard difficulty setting if there is such thing ? _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana This comment was edited by SaZ on Feb 20 2006 02:06pm. |
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