Star Wars Empire At War Gold Pack

by LucasArts

Product Features

• Star Wars: Empire at War Gold Pack PC

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000SOYG8U
• Item Weight: 5.1 ounces
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: September 4, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,266 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #38 in Video Games > PC Games > Action

Product Description

Star Wars: Empire at War puts the power to mand 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 pletely scalable and accessible gameplay. Set a few years before the events of Episode IV A New Hope LucasArts new PC game 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 the Galactic Civil War.Using an entirely new game engine created by the Las Vegas-based developer Petroglyph Empire at War features beautifully rendered land and space battles set on memorable plas such as Yavin IV Tatooine and Dagobah as well as never-before-seen environments taken directly from the Star Wars films and expanded universe novels. In the game players choose 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.All of the gameplay and action within Empire at War is persistent meaning that strategic and tactical elements from previous events will have a permanent effect on the galaxy. In addition to the single-player campaign mode the game includes a two-player campaign mode and online skirmish modes for up to eight players.Product Features: Wage war on ground and in space battle it out in space and then send down your remaining forces to invade the pla.All action is persistent every decision affects the next battle and ultimately the fate of the galaxy. Play out your own personal version of Episode IV: A New Hope.Real-time strategy (RTS) 3D gameplay set in more than 40 ground and space locations including Yavin IV Tatooine and Dagobah - each has its own specific advantage and/or resource.Construct gr

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AMAZON'S PICTURE IS MISLEADING (thanks JJAV), January 9, 2008

By 

D. Donovan "carbon blob" (Milwaukee WI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Star Wars Empire At War Gold Pack (DVD-ROM)

I like Star Wars as well as your average 30-something red-blooded American male, but I am by no means a fanboy; in fact, I have found that most Star Wars related games in the past decade are kind of 'meh'. With that said, I loved the original Empires at War, it was a great game that combined a strategic game of planet conquering with two types of RTS games in which you fought for control of planets on land and in space - it didn't rest on the Star Wars Franchise to please the user, the Star Wars heroes, vehicles, and troops are just an added bonus. User created mods are freely available on the net, and that expands replayability immensely. I pulled it off the shelf the other day to find some of the new mods use the expansion - the original expansion no longer seems to be available from Amazon, but the gold package has both the original and expansion. The original was a great twist on the basic RTS style of game, and one of my favorites, gameplay-wise. Eye candy isn't as good as more modern titles, but gameplay has held up well. IMHO, the original game is still worth the price, and I'm sure the expansion just sweetens the pot.

Note that their cover art for this product is for the original game, not the gold edition; I was waffling on whether to buy it until I saw the customer pic, as it didn't seem the gold edition had the expansion and there is no mention of it in the product description. Per Lucasart's website, the gold edition does indeed have the Forces of Corruption expansion included (and looks like the second picture in the gallery). Thanks to 'JJAV' for the clarifying customer pic.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Value, Nice Mods, Great for Star War Fans, December 24, 2007

By 

Awesome Student "Smarty" - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Star Wars Empire At War Gold Pack (DVD-ROM)

Positive Side: This is a very good value. For two games you get them for only $30. I remember the time it was out, it was $39.99 in Bestbuy for only the non-expansion game. This one is a deal although it is a bit old now. Still, it's very fun. There's more to it in the game. If you search on Google for Game Modifications, you can download a few you like and add features and new units to the game for free. In fact, some game modders go all the way to the extent of modifying the whole game. (Note: Many games are also modded.) Very nice, and very fun in multi-player. The game can run at high settings perfectly on my desktop and notebook PC. (My computer can barely run Crysis on medium settings on my desktop (Intel Quad Core Processor, NVIDIA 512 MB GeForce 8600GT) and almost not playable on my notebook PC except on low settings (2.2 GHz NIVIDA 256 MB 8600m GS)).

Negative Side: The land battles tend to get a bit boring since they are similar to other strategy-based games (but the heroes were fun to play with). Also the computer tends to be relaxed and not attack you unless it's part of the storyline. This is not really a challenge although you can search around for MODs that make it harder. The graphics are not the best but at least they do not stress a computer like Crysis.

Overall, the game is best for its space battles. Go to Youtube to see some of it.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun, but hogs resources and gets repetitive, June 10, 2008

By 

J. Loscheider "No one knows I'm a radical" (Midwest) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Star Wars Empire At War Gold Pack (DVD-ROM)

It may matter that I'm a Star Wars Geek. Actually, I'm a polygeek. I geek out on all sorts of things, but I do like Star Wars quite a bit.

So this set of two games appealed greatly to me. The characters, planets, and actions all reflect fairly faithfully the expanded Star Wars universe, which I never got much into but it beats the Star Trek universe (Luke Skywalker never tried to hook up with a green alien with sucker-fingers, for instance).

What the game got most right from an RTS perspective is the comprehensiveness of spacefaring combat. You must defeat orbiting defenses before landing to assault planets. This is something that some games (the aged but respected Imperium Galactica II) got right, and others (the disappointing Master of Orion 3) got dead darned wrong. Every battle is, strangely, centered on a planet, rather than in midspace, and the planetary maps are pretty tiny, but the idea is there. If you want to conquer territory you need a space fleet and a sizeable landing party.

The coolest feature of the games is undoubtedly the "movie mode" where your camera view attempts to follow the action. When it gets it right, it's bloody cool. When it gets wrong (the camera is stuck behind an asteroid or somehow grabs the wrong section of space), it's a little lame.

However, the game gets a bit repetitive. There's unfortunately not a lot of strategy - overwhelming force is really what wins, especially since there are a lot of artificial limits on how many units you can bring on ground battles. I mean, c'mon, if I've got 11 platoons in my landing party, why only let me land 3 at a time? Command and Conquer is often dominated by the tank rush strategy (though the Generals games often sidesteps this through terrain and technology, forcing a technology-oriented solution), but there's no getting around it in Empires at War.

Space combat is entirely 2-D, which is really disappointing. Considering that Homeworld, Hegemonia, Imperium Galactica II and every space-based shooter since 1998 have successfully implemented 3-D battles, there's no excuse for a lack of a Z-axis. True, the ships kinda hover around the Z-axis on their own, but there's no surrounding your enemies in 3-space. You simply mass your forces, use their special abilities (some of which are lame) and hope to destroy them. That's it.

Dragging down the fun are the system resources required. The game says it'll run on an NVidia 3-series chip. I've got a 6-series on a very new dual-core HP 5600+ with 3 GB RAM, which I know means I'm a year behind on technology, but any more than a dozen units and the game DRAGS, especially in ground combat. I fault the game design here - I can run Generals:Zero Hour with 100+ units going at once with no slowdown or frame breakup, but for whatever reason, Empires at War just crawls.

And it has crashed twice to the dreaded BSD while playing. I've run every maintenance check and can find nothing wrong with my system. Maybe there's a patch I'm missing somewhere out there?

In conclusion, this is a fun game for die-hard Star Wars geeks, but RTS fans will want to look elsewhere.