Star Wars Empire At War

[Hepcat]

Ugh. Just about *any* strategy game would be better than Rebellion. It had a lot of cool concepts, but was very poorly executed. Trying to play that game was just an exercise in frustration.

I agree, Rebellion kept me entertained (years ago) for a while because of how different it was from anything else at the time, but then the gameplay got repetitive and frustrating.

As for Star Wars: Empire At War, my friend got it and then convinced me to play a LAN game against him, it didn't really appeal that much to me, it's kind of hard to explain why but it just didn't appeal to me.

[Lehesu]

In defense of Rebellion, the game just needed some polish and a bit more of a cleaner layout. It is kind of the Hearts of Iron of the Star Wars universe.

[lars573]

In defense of Rebellion, the game just needed some polish and a bit more of a cleaner layout. It is kind of the Hearts of Iron of the Star Wars universe.

So plain graphics that has incredibly boring gameplay that only appeals to a small minority of grognards. Got it.

[Martok]

So plain graphics that has incredibly boring gameplay that only appeals to a small minority of grognards. Got it.

It wasn't so much a problem with the graphics or gameplay per se. It was more of an issue (at least for me) that Rebellion employed the most byzantine & ass-backwards interface ever conceived. Not only did it seemingly take a zillion clicks to get to the screen I wanted, but a lot of the commands & controls were simply counter-intuitive and/or nonsensical.

With certain game UI's, one sometimes gets an impression that the designers didn't necessarily have the best interests of the player in mind. With Rebellion's UI, one gets the impression the designers actively hate your friggin' guts.

[Ser Clegane]

With Rebellion's UI, one gets the impression the designers actively hate your friggin' guts.

lol - quite true.

I still loved the game and "wasted" quite a lot of time on it when it was published.
Had the AI been better and the tactical space combats a bit more tactical I would probably still play it from time to time - fantastic concept, suffering from a lack of polish

[Vladimir]

Agreed, somewhat, about Rebellion (or “Empire” in the UK, you dirty Imperialists). The game was unfinished and allowed for a lot of cheese. Y-wings pwned all, and after playing TIE Fighter you learn just how easy they are to shoot down. The “rebellion” cheese allowed you to use your imperial officer’s leadership skill as diplomatic skill, and numerous other details. Overall I’m glad I bought it so long ago; now, it’s just too easy.

[Navaros]

I finally got around to picking Empire at War up.

After playing it for a few days and doing most of the Empire campaign, I'm finding that most of what I'm doing during battles is watching the ships fire at each other. Occassionally force firing on a single target or hard point on a cap ship/station. Occasionally using a few special abilities. But it seems like even if I'm being very vigilant with using these things, 90% or so of the gameplay in space is still just me watching rather than playing, since it seems aside from doing those things occassionally, watching is all there is to do.

After having this experience, I decided to check out the reviews for this game to see how many professional reviewers bothered to point these deficiencies with the game out. I found all the comments in the linked-to review here to be immaculately correct:

http://www.pro-g.co.uk/pc/star_wars_...ar/review.html

Basically the game is a lot of flash, cool license, yet very very little "meat and potatoes" in the gameplay.

The only thing I would change about the review in that link is, I would add some comments about how crisp the writing and voice-acting is when the Emperor, Vader, Grand Moff etc. present the story to you via the holocron. I very much enjoy that aspect of the game. And also It's cool to get to control Vader himself directly, something most Star Wars games never make use of. For those things I might knock the score up to 6 or 6.5.

That so many reviewers gave it upwards of 85% shows that the gaming site/magazine industry is extremely corrupt. A rating of 85% or more for this game is ludicrous. In my view those reviewers were either paid-for by someone involved with making the game (most likely, I think), or simply incompetent at reviewing RTS games for failing to notice that EAW has hardly any meat to it.