Gaming

Blog 683: The Second Last Mission

I hark back to Star Wars: Empire at War every so often, but it’s more an interactive film than much of a strategy game. You build a huge fleet, set it loose, and turn on the autocamera mode — and it beautifully recreates space battles right out of the movies. Beyond that, there’s not a lot to it.

As with many games, it took an expansion pack — Forces of Corruption — to really bring it to life. A larger tech tree, of new pirate units alongside a mix of stolen classic Imperial and Rebel craft, a more involved plotline in a single longer campaign rather than split between two sides… It’s still far from perfect, but it made good progress.

And that expansion brought with it one particular mission that’s a real favourite of mine, despite its flaws: a raid on the Imperial Archives on Coruscant.

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Gaming

Blog 430: Star Wars: Empire at Blog

The most striking thing about Star Wars: Empire at War is that it doesn’t kick seven shades of pain out of the original trilogy lore, unlike secret-Sith-apprentice-but-actually-a-pretty-cool-guy-unprecedented-force-powers-self-insert-central The Force Unleashed. Having said that, characters like Mon Mothma and Han Solo do crop up, and R2-D2 and C3-PO seem to form the entire Stealth and Infiltration division of the Rebel Alliance.

Luckily since it’s a little bit old (but not that old), it runs beautifully at maximum power. It’s a very pretty game, with all the usual dramatic Star Wars scenery. While the game itself seems a bit lacklustre in places, the expansion pack Forces of Corruption is rather satisfying…

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