Star Wars: Empire at War demo

Publisher's description of Star Wars: Empire at War demo

view larger

Star Wars: Empire at War puts the power to command an entire war for the Star Wars galaxy in the hands of players, giving them the freedom to determine how they play the game within the completely scalable and accessible gameplay. Set a few years before the events of Episode IV: A New Hope, Empire at War lets players wage war on ground and in space, as well as experience the creation of the Rebel Alliance, the strengthening of the Empire, and the beginnings of galactic civil war.

Using an entirely new game engine, Empire at War features space battles set on memorable planets such as Yavin IV, Tattoine, and Dagobah, as well as never-before-seen environments taken from the Star Wars films expanded universe novels. In the game, players decide to join either the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire, building and setting up tactical forces to unleash upon the enemy in real-time 3D. Memorable Star Wars hero characters can be brought into the action to help turn the tide of the battle as players build, manage, and upgrade their space and ground-based units, vehicles, troops, and base structures.

See more CNET content tagged:

Star Wars,

LucasArts,

entertainment,

attack,

gameplay

Editor's review of Star Wars: Empire at War demo

Building off the success of its recent first-person shooters, LucasArts hopes to further Star Wars' video-game influence with this ambitious real-time-strategy game. This official demo shows off deep gameplay, polished graphics, and classic Star Wars characters we've loved through the years. A well-designed, five-part tutorial teaches the basics of controlling both the Rebel and Imperial units, and the available single-player mission lets you control the Rebel Alliance in an assault on an Imperial space station and a raid on the planet Tatooine.

Basic gameplay will be familiar to many RTS gamers (for example, right-click to attack), but even at a fundamental level you can see the differences between playing as Rebels or the Empire. For example, whereas the Empire gains resources only by planet domination, Rebels can increase their resources (in the form of "credits") by employing smugglers (such as Han Solo), who can then be thwarted by Imperial bounty hunters.

Battles are mostly divided into space and ground melees, with a wide variety of specialized units available for both. Valuable reinforcement areas provide the bulk of the ground strategy, while space battles are a mixture of managing bombers and positioning the bigger gunships. All units in space and on land have a specialized ability or attack, such as thermonuclear bombs (speeders) or ion cannons (Y-Wings). Space units and ground units can sometimes assist each other, the most basic ability being troops calling in bombing runs. The in-game control bar is laid out logically, and all the special space and ground moves have logical keyboard shortcuts. R2D2's holographic projections of mission updates are another nice touch.

Prequel detractors, have no fear! The game is set in the years immediately before the original Star Wars movie (Episode IV: A New Hope), and it's a very familiar environment for fans of the original trilogy. The included mission won't provide countless hours of entertainment, but the valuable tutorial, quality graphics, excellent interface, and sheer fun of directing Tiefighter attacks help the demo easily earn a top rating.

User reviews of Star Wars: Empire at War demo

• Average user rating: out of 85 votes
• Your rating: Write your own review

This software version | All versions

• [+] Expand review

  Star Wars: Empire at War demo

  Another good game from LucasArts

  by: darkagent3 on 02-Feb-2006 08:49:56 PM

  Pros: Its nice to see another RTS from LucasArts it brought back my liking for them. Anyways, this game has good graphics and sounds.

  Has some good features, plently of units in the full version, and just a well put together game. If you like Star Wars I recommend you download this and play it. I guarentee you'll like it and want to buy it.

  Cons: I encountered a few bugs, nothing bad.

  Was this review helpful? Yes | No (12 of 16 users said yes)

  Flag for offensive content Reply to this review (0 replies)

• [+] Expand review

  Star Wars: Empire at War demo

  Star Wars lives again!

  by: NILZER on 21-Feb-2006 01:23:36 AM

  Pros: After seeing lots of screens and movies about the game it got me all excited, downloaded the demo and it just made me a very big fan of the game. Now finally having the full version in my PC, I can't stop playing!

  When LucasArts tried the RTS genre before they just delivered a standard game who couldn't win from the other RTS's out there. Now years later LucasArts tries it again with Empire at War. Hiring Petroglyph (former Westwood) was one of the smartest ideas they ever had. This game really has the Star Wars feeling! When playing Big space battles and also battle it out on the surface untill the whole galaxy is yours is just spectaculair! The game plays between episode 3 & 4, that means some favorite characters are dead or just don't exist yet; Like Luke Skywalker is still a pilot in this game and hasn't even heard of a real jedi, but we get Darth Vader/The Emperor/R2D2 & C3PO/Han Solo & Chewbekka/Old Obi-Wan (Uncle Ben). Building units and buidlings are all done from the build menu in a large space map enviroment. You also have to conquer the space around a planet untill you can get to the surfice, that means a space battle and ground battle most of the times. If you are a real RTS and/or Star Wars fan you can't miss this game!

  Cons: In most battles you can only use ground units that you have transported with your fleet in the Galaxy Map. You can then drop them as reinforcements but if you run out of those, you lose the battle. build units in skirmisch etc are also transported to you reinforcements tab, and don't come out of build building like most RTS games. You must then capture reinforcement point to drop your units. You can see that the creators have stolen a lot of those ideas from Battlefront (Star Wars-Battlefield), cause there you also must have reinforcent point to spawn at. If you lose all you loose the game. This can be very frustrating cause sometimes you loose all point while none of your buildings are damaged...

  Was this review helpful? Yes | No (7 of 7 users said yes)

  Flag for offensive content Reply to this review (0 replies)

• [+] Expand review

  Star Wars: Empire at War demo

  RTS with Combat Emphasis

  by: Floatingduk on 06-Feb-2006 12:59:19 AM

  Pros: The first thing I noticed about the demo was how great the sound was. The game does a great job of using Star Wars music and sound effects, everything from blasters to the distinct utterings of Chewbaca. When issuing commands to your units you'll often hear them responding with quotes from the movies.

  The gameplay was excellent and I enjoyed the fact that the emphasis of the action is based on combat and not largely on economics. There's only one resource to gather, which is a relief after playing games that require 5+. The game also has a nice interface making it easy to control different groups of units at the same time, which is a huge plus in any RTS.

  Cons: Space combat could have been better if the game allowed 3d movement in space. The hero units feel overpowered (even if it is Star Wars).

  Was this review helpful? Yes | No (8 of 10 users said yes)

  Flag for offensive content Reply to this review (0 replies)

• [+] Expand review

  Star Wars: Empire at War demo

  Don't buy the full game without reading my review.

  by: Joan1.0 on 30-Jun-2008 11:12:44 AM

  Pros: Fun at first.

  Cons: Demo takes forever to download, you can't really do much, if you buy the game you not only quickly find out how boring the game is, it screws up your computer. Me and my friends all have totally different computer models, being Star Wars fans we all bought it, and had to delete it within a month cause it was screwing our PCs up. These fan reviews are mostly from people who dont have the game yet. I know. I was reading these reviews before I got the demo, and bought the game. I thought it would be just as good as youre thinking it will be. If you like space battles buy Homeworld 2. These land battles suck majorly. It's really painful, as a Star Wars fan, to be assaulting Hoth with AT-ATs and full battalions of snowtroopers, and have fifteen rebels with blaster pistols and three with rocket launchers destroy your entire force. Ask someone reasonable who has had the game for a little while if it's fun. If they've had it for well over a week they will probably know how good it is. Sincerely sorry everybody for bursting your bubble.

  Was this review helpful? Yes | No (1 of 1 users said yes)

  Flag for offensive content Reply to this review (0 replies)

• [+] Expand review

  Star Wars: Empire at War demo

  Truly Star Wars

  by: mauro_vos on 28-Nov-2006 04:36:24 PM

  Pros: +Extremely cool looking space battles with nebula, asteroids and moving planets (!).

  -Somewhat borring though, after a while.

  +Loads of mods to be downloaded.

  +Map editor. -Doesn't work on my pc.

  +Lots of maps can be uploaded from other players, created with the map editor. Units that 'auto-spawn' won't be counted in the pop cap, this should compensate the cap in space.

  +Land battles are fun anyway.

  +Darth Vader and Obi-Wan (and others).

  +Galactic Conquest, just like in Battlefront.

  +Very simple to create a new account, all you need is a nickname and a password.

  +Star Wars fans MUST get this game.

  Cons: +Map editor. -Doesn't work on my pc.

  -Small scale land battles, so you won't exactly be able to reproduce the battle of Geonosis from episode II.

  -Also because of the pretty low population cap. Annoying in space.

  I thought my full game review could help you deciding about downloading the demo version.

  -No Super Star destroyer or playable Death Star. (you need the expansion)

  -Poor construction capabilities on both land and in space.

  -Larger amounts of infantry woud make the game more realistic. (battalion of 9)

  Was this review helpful? Yes | No (1 of 1 users said yes)

  Flag for offensive content Reply to this review (1 reply)

Submit your review for Star Wars: Empire at War demo:

You must be 13 years of age or older to submit personal information to CNET Networks. In compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, CNET Networks does not accept name and e-mail address information from users who are under 13 years of age.

All submitted ratings and written comments become the sole property of CNET Networks, Inc. (CNET) and may be used at CNET Networks' sole discretion. Ratings and written comments are generally posted within two to four business days in batch groups, not in real time. However, CNET Networks reserves the right to remove or refuse to post any submission for any reason. You acknowledge that you, not CNET Networks, are responsible for the contents of your submission.

CNET Networks is not responsible for the content of the publisher's descriptions or user reviews on this site. We encourage you to determine whether this product or your intended use is legal. We do not encourage or condone the use of any software in violation of applicable laws. CNET Download.com does not sell, resell, or license any of the products listed on the site. We cannot be held liable for issues that arise from the download or use of these products.