I played the demo of this and really didnt think it was anything special. Also even though in the demo I cranked all details to max I remember it looking far FAR worse that those screenies.
I guess they may have left some stuff out or something.
Nice review, I can't help but notice that the unit detail seems a bit low. I suppose it might need to be considering that there can be several hundred on screen at once. Oh well.... :)
I might just need to check out the demo.
P.S. Sorry for nitpicking, but it's spelled Foliage, not Foilage
The graphics in this game are lame compared to what's done nowadays in RTS. I can't believe it's still receiving decent reviews, especially considering that the gameplay itself isn't anything special.
Having played the demo im not going to get the full game. Its just like XXXX: Total War series but set in space. Without the tactics when you get into a battle. Not exactly innovative in my opinion.
space battles are fun, ground battles are less fun but still ok
personally i just like sending waves and waves of x-wings and y-wings at star destroyers, its fun :D
The demo didn't have any of those extra graphics features (bloom, heat distortion etc.) all together the graphics are nice for an RTS, though they could be better. BFME2 will be around the same graphics by the looks of the movies and ss.
Great review though, one thing I'm curious about is antistoperic filtering. You might be able to force it through the drivers settings, works with some games but crashes others.
Originally Posted by automagsrock Nice write-up, but I remember playing Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 with bloom before Valve ever mentioned Lost Coast or HDR :)
Deus EX 2 has bloom and came out before HL2 aswell.
Ah, Dark Forces and Jedi Knight... what fun games. This looks interesting enough, but I really don't like RTS gameplay so I'll be passing it by methinks. Actually I haven't been doing a whole lot of any gaming recently, but you can only have so many CSS matches before it starts to get a bit repetative.
Originally Posted by Firehed Ah, Dark Forces and Jedi Knight... what fun games. This looks interesting enough, but I really don't like RTS gameplay so I'll be passing it by methinks. Actually I haven't been doing a whole lot of any gaming recently, but you can only have so many CSS matches before it starts to get a bit repetative.
The KOTOR and JK series are suprisingly good fun to replay.
Shall I be good or nasty ;)
Star Wars strategy games, however, have less of an endearing legacy - Galactic Battlegrounds and Force Commander both utterly failing to set the world alight.
You are forgetting Star Wars Rebellion...I may be the only one, but I fount it incredibly addictive. Yep, it had a clunky interface and the AI...let's say it had much of A and little I... but it was very deep, had a huge number of units, and against compenten human opponents, it was loads of fun. And I found the mix of slow-paced kind of turns (wich weren't turns in fact) and real time space simulator worked pretty well.
Of course, it can't touch the two best SW games ever (Tie Fighter and X-Wing), but I believe Rebellion was an underrated game with great potential for Star Wars geeks and non-RTS strategy lovers...
Originally Posted by Shadowed_fury The KOTOR and JK series are suprisingly good fun to replay.
Heh, if you liked JK much, you'd be suprised to know that the JK gaming and editing communities are still rather alive. Check out Massassi and the JK Editing Hub. Massassi used to be the center of all stuff JK years ago, but is more of a community now. The hub is where it's at for editing...and mostly in the IRC channel.
It's actually quite impressive what we can still do with the game. The Rebirth mod is much the same as the System Shock 2 rebirth mod. It already replaces many of the original character and weapon models with newer versions. There's also Sith 2, a complete engine rewrite, which is nearly finished, save the lack of a physics engine (which has stagnated development). And then there are some patches to remove internal engine limits and extend scripting functionality...fun stuff.
But yeah, I might get Empire at War. Looks decent enough. Honestly, I think KotOR and KotOR II are the only really, REALLY good games since JK/MotS in 1998. Flight sims aside, of course. I mean, there have been good ones. JO/JA was pretty good, but nothing astounding like KotOR or JK.
I have not yet decided if i want to get this, but to me the best star wars strategy game is Star Wars Supremecy much like the new EaW game but more technical and micro-mngment ish
This played OK on my Dinosaur system
Athlon 64 3700+ (754)
Biostar NF325A7
1 gig Corsair XMS Ram
Geforce FX 6200 AGP
Win XP
WB 80 GB SE 8 mb IDE
Maxtor 200 GB Sata
It ran great at first, no glitches slow downs etc, but I used default settings that it chose, my only issues were later in the game I got really bad slowdowns and 1 fps in space battles (only for like 15 seconds at a time). Even saving, then restarting didn't help this.
I LOVED the space battles, and now I think I'll pull out my homeworld and homeworld 2 discs and play. I didn't really care for the ground battles though. Rebellion has those frak/missile tanks that pretty much 2 could decimate an entire army. Was great as Rebellion.. sucked when played as Empire.
I bought EAW off ebay and It installed well and such, But when I battle against the computer wins the war, I can win battles at a cost, But I can't hold what I've won and I'm playin on the side of the Empire too, Hey I like the Big ships and what not I just run into planetary caps on production of units. :( :(
Otherwise It works pretty good on My 2nd PC:
Asus K8N-DL v1.03 motherboard(w/1007 Bios),
2-SuperTalent 1Gb Reg/ECC PC3200 128x72 64x8 Dimms(Samsung/D32RB1GW),
1-AMD Dual Core Opteron 270 2.0GHz @ 2.4GHz E6 cpu(OSA270FAA6CB),
Silverstone SST-ST56F 560w Power Supply,
Leadtek PX7800GTX TDH 16x PCI Express Video Card w/256MB ram,
X Black Mid-Tower ATX case(Modded),
WD 80Gb 7200rpm 2Mb cache hdd,
IBM 48x black cd-rom drive,
1-Delta 120x38mm 150cfm exhaust fan,
2-Thermaltake 80mm 75.7cfm fans(For Chipset),
1-80mm 32.5cfm fan(door),
Vantec Nexus silver 5.25" fan controller(Blue LEDs),
1-zalman 9500LED cpu heatsink,
usb ActionStar/LinXcel hub/vga/kvm switch(Shared),
usb Canon CanoScan D1250U2F flatbed scanner(Shared),
usb Teac 1.44Mb fdd(Shared),
usb MS 5 Button Optical mouse(Shared),
usb BTC AT keyboard w/ps/2 adapter & ps/2 to usb adapter(Shared), Microsoft Windows XP Pro x64,
nTune 3.00.15.05(Beta).
Comments 1 to 17 of 17
I guess they may have left some stuff out or something.
I might just need to check out the demo.
P.S. Sorry for nitpicking, but it's spelled Foliage, not Foilage
*hides under desk*
Roll on Supreme Commander and Mark Of Chaos!
-wolfman
personally i just like sending waves and waves of x-wings and y-wings at star destroyers, its fun :D
Great review though, one thing I'm curious about is antistoperic filtering. You might be able to force it through the drivers settings, works with some games but crashes others.
Deus EX 2 has bloom and came out before HL2 aswell.
The KOTOR and JK series are suprisingly good fun to replay.
Shall I be good or nasty ;)
You are forgetting Star Wars Rebellion...I may be the only one, but I fount it incredibly addictive. Yep, it had a clunky interface and the AI...let's say it had much of A and little I... but it was very deep, had a huge number of units, and against compenten human opponents, it was loads of fun. And I found the mix of slow-paced kind of turns (wich weren't turns in fact) and real time space simulator worked pretty well.
Of course, it can't touch the two best SW games ever (Tie Fighter and X-Wing), but I believe Rebellion was an underrated game with great potential for Star Wars geeks and non-RTS strategy lovers...
It's actually quite impressive what we can still do with the game. The Rebirth mod is much the same as the System Shock 2 rebirth mod. It already replaces many of the original character and weapon models with newer versions. There's also Sith 2, a complete engine rewrite, which is nearly finished, save the lack of a physics engine (which has stagnated development). And then there are some patches to remove internal engine limits and extend scripting functionality...fun stuff.
But yeah, I might get Empire at War. Looks decent enough. Honestly, I think KotOR and KotOR II are the only really, REALLY good games since JK/MotS in 1998. Flight sims aside, of course. I mean, there have been good ones. JO/JA was pretty good, but nothing astounding like KotOR or JK.
Nikumba
Athlon 64 3700+ (754)
Biostar NF325A7
1 gig Corsair XMS Ram
Geforce FX 6200 AGP
Win XP
WB 80 GB SE 8 mb IDE
Maxtor 200 GB Sata
It ran great at first, no glitches slow downs etc, but I used default settings that it chose, my only issues were later in the game I got really bad slowdowns and 1 fps in space battles (only for like 15 seconds at a time). Even saving, then restarting didn't help this.
I LOVED the space battles, and now I think I'll pull out my homeworld and homeworld 2 discs and play. I didn't really care for the ground battles though. Rebellion has those frak/missile tanks that pretty much 2 could decimate an entire army. Was great as Rebellion.. sucked when played as Empire.
Otherwise It works pretty good on My 2nd PC:
Asus K8N-DL v1.03 motherboard(w/1007 Bios),
2-SuperTalent 1Gb Reg/ECC PC3200 128x72 64x8 Dimms(Samsung/D32RB1GW),
1-AMD Dual Core Opteron 270 2.0GHz @ 2.4GHz E6 cpu(OSA270FAA6CB),
Silverstone SST-ST56F 560w Power Supply,
Leadtek PX7800GTX TDH 16x PCI Express Video Card w/256MB ram,
X Black Mid-Tower ATX case(Modded),
WD 80Gb 7200rpm 2Mb cache hdd,
IBM 48x black cd-rom drive,
1-Delta 120x38mm 150cfm exhaust fan,
2-Thermaltake 80mm 75.7cfm fans(For Chipset),
1-80mm 32.5cfm fan(door),
Vantec Nexus silver 5.25" fan controller(Blue LEDs),
1-zalman 9500LED cpu heatsink,
usb ActionStar/LinXcel hub/vga/kvm switch(Shared),
usb Canon CanoScan D1250U2F flatbed scanner(Shared),
usb Teac 1.44Mb fdd(Shared),
usb MS 5 Button Optical mouse(Shared),
usb BTC AT keyboard w/ps/2 adapter & ps/2 to usb adapter(Shared),
Microsoft Windows XP Pro x64,
nTune 3.00.15.05(Beta).