of the best. Why? Because to portray the "star wars", you can show it from many different

perspectives and thus use it for many different genres. Like the FPS genre; you can show the

war from the ground. Or the flight sim genre and you can show it from space as an X-wing

pilot trying to destroy a capital ship. Or you can show it from the RTS standpoint. Because

let's face it, a real war requires strategy. It requires planning and it requires intelligence

other than just shooting things in front of you.

Here we have Star Wars: Empire at War. This is one of many Star Wars RTS's and as far

as I know, the latest one to be released. Now as you can see, in this game you can play

both on the land and in space. And both actually are played more or less identically. Now there

are three different game modes. There is the campaign, where it follows the story showing

the rise of the Rebellion! And then there is Galactic Conquest, where you can play as

either the Rebellion or the Empire. You can try to free the galaxy as the Rebellion or

try to conquer it as the Empire!

Now basically, this is probably the most fun mode in the game. Essentially, you actually

conquer the galaxy in a fairly realistic way. Each planet that you could control has to

have certain number of buildings that you then use to produce the units that you want.

You have to have an upgraded starbase to of course produce the higher level ships. You

have to upgrade the ground facilities to produce higher level ground units. And you have to

use both space and ground units to conquer plants. Before you can conquer any world you

must of course defeat their space fleet, but that doesn't mean you win the world! Instead,

you have to land on the planet and conquer it on the ground. And of course, once you

conquer the planet, you can have more credits, have more buildings and things of that nature.

It's a highly dynamic mode of play and is quite enjoyable to say the least.

And then finally you just have the generic Skirmish maps where you can either play in

space or ground. The multiplayer for the game is fairly good. You can do Galactic Conquest

competitively and you can do just Skirmish maps.

The graphics for Empire at War are really quite good. They of course have aged a bit

in the intervening years, but for the time, they looked pretty damn impressive.

One of the best aspects of this game, though, when it comes to graphics, is the fact that

you can toggle a cinematic cameras. That way you don't have to look at it from a God's

eye perspective but instead go right into the action. And damn, is it entertaining to

watch. In the end, I am actually a pretty big fan of Star Wars: Empire at War. In fact,

this was the RTS that actually got me into RTS games. And is one that I cannot recommend

enough. And so, this is Jon, signing off.