EAW Series
August 15th 2009 19:59
First off, I know that I said I would be reviewing new games. But three games a week do not come out, at least ones worth reviewing.
EAW, and EAWFOC represent the first ventures of the company Petroglyph into the game-designing world. And, as a first try, it was a pretty good representation of what I would like to see in an RTS.
First I will discuss the high points:
1. This game was a very well thought-out representation of the actual Star Wars series. It even strayed from the movie in some places, and added units only found in books. I particularly liked that.
2. The game had a learning curve of 5-10 minutes, as long as you had played ANY RTS before. If not, probably 30-40. Easy to learn.
3. The modding community really caught my eye with this game. Modders had come together to produce a few excellent mods, and of course there were HUNDREDS of smaller mods, some of them adding an individual unit. The mods added realism, added more units, changed gameplay, changed UI, etc.... I was impressed.
4. The space battles in this game are AMAZING! Aside from some of the larger units moving sort of clunkily, it handled like a dream! Watching the tiny little fighters dogfight was awesome too.
5. THE SOUNDTRACK WAS FREAKIN SWEET! The main menu screen for EAW would give me shivers every time I started the game. I would sit there with the volume all the way up and watch the space battle with tears of joy in my eyes!
Now for the low points:
1. Land battles are very clunky. Seriously, if anyone knows who was the lead designer for land battles, tell me. Then I can use this blog to get him fired. Units have a difficult time navigating the map, some of the mechanics with units being good against others make no sense, and even if you have an absolutely OVERWHELMING force, autoresolve will always lose you the day. I bypass land battles using the Death Star!
2. Most of the larger units, particularly those found in space, are very poorly modeled. The Super Star Destroyer is nothing but a bunch of rectangles, and looks poor even with the graphics options cranked.
3. Their Movie Cam thing was a great idea, but it is horrible.
Overall, with no bias from my love for Star Wars, here are the ratings:
Storyline: 7/10
Graphics: 6/10
Gameplay: 6/10
UI: 7/10
Overall: 6.5/10
EAW, and EAWFOC represent the first ventures of the company Petroglyph into the game-designing world. And, as a first try, it was a pretty good representation of what I would like to see in an RTS.
First I will discuss the high points:
1. This game was a very well thought-out representation of the actual Star Wars series. It even strayed from the movie in some places, and added units only found in books. I particularly liked that.
2. The game had a learning curve of 5-10 minutes, as long as you had played ANY RTS before. If not, probably 30-40. Easy to learn.
3. The modding community really caught my eye with this game. Modders had come together to produce a few excellent mods, and of course there were HUNDREDS of smaller mods, some of them adding an individual unit. The mods added realism, added more units, changed gameplay, changed UI, etc.... I was impressed.
4. The space battles in this game are AMAZING! Aside from some of the larger units moving sort of clunkily, it handled like a dream! Watching the tiny little fighters dogfight was awesome too.
5. THE SOUNDTRACK WAS FREAKIN SWEET! The main menu screen for EAW would give me shivers every time I started the game. I would sit there with the volume all the way up and watch the space battle with tears of joy in my eyes!
Now for the low points:
1. Land battles are very clunky. Seriously, if anyone knows who was the lead designer for land battles, tell me. Then I can use this blog to get him fired. Units have a difficult time navigating the map, some of the mechanics with units being good against others make no sense, and even if you have an absolutely OVERWHELMING force, autoresolve will always lose you the day. I bypass land battles using the Death Star!
2. Most of the larger units, particularly those found in space, are very poorly modeled. The Super Star Destroyer is nothing but a bunch of rectangles, and looks poor even with the graphics options cranked.
3. Their Movie Cam thing was a great idea, but it is horrible.
Overall, with no bias from my love for Star Wars, here are the ratings:
Storyline: 7/10
Graphics: 6/10
Gameplay: 6/10
UI: 7/10
Overall: 6.5/10
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