Empire at War Demo
January 19, 2006Played the entire demo last night - it wasn’t too bad. If Warcraft 3 and RTW were an A+, then I would give this game a B-. Graphically, I don’t think the game makes as good a use of DirectX9 as AOE3 does. I wonder whetherthat was deliberate, so as to allow the game to be run on Low-Spec computers.
From the previews, it looked as though EAW was going to be a cross between Masters of Orion(sic?)/Homeworld/Command and Conquer. And that’s pretty much what we got - although I think it’s a simplified version. Space combat is pretty similar to Star Trek: Armada rather than Homeworld, as ships didn’t use the 3D-plane at all. I beat the Imperial fleet by building bucketloads of fighters. I don’t think Ground combat makes very good use of physics. When troops are hit by artillery they don’t go flying everywhere, as you would see in DOW. The ground portion is really more of a throwback to RA2 and C&C rather than DOW or WC3.
Purely from the demo, I don’t think this game is going to be remembered as a classic. There’s something missing from this game that only just prevents it from being a classic.
