Much like the mouse Brain from the animated series Pinky and the Brain, I too have world-domination aspirations. Well, digitally speaking of course - studying Economics has taught me enough about how much it would suck to be the leader of the free world. Instead of conquering nations in wet-space, having my digital armies march forth to conquer and erect my grand empire is much more fun. There's no social cost to my decisions, no real people hurt, and nothing really broken. It's like a perfect war.
So, when midterms are otherwise tearing me apart like a school-yard gang of black holes, I like to kick back and play some video games. Usually, I take out the day's aggressions with a fuillisade of trick shots in Counter-Strike Source. Recently, though, I picked up Stardock Studios' (the guys who brought you Galactic Civilizations I and II) new game: Sins of a Solar Empire. And man, am I hooked.
Sins is a fusion of the Civilization-style empire-building genre, and the Warcraft 3-esque heroic real-time strategy game. In it, you control one of three races as you attempt to conquer anything from a solar system to a galaxy using a variety of methods. From military brute force to cultural submission, your empire spreads like a cough on a plague-wind. It's a ton of fun, and mind-blowing in its ability to unify two seemingly disparate types of strategy games into one.
What's great about Sins is how it takes what works from 3X strategy games and imports them into a traditional build-attack-conquer RTS chassis with a minimalistic design. The last part's important, because in larger games you're easily controlling fleets of hundreds of cruisers, thousands of lances of fighters, and several behemoth capital ships as you rain death and mayhem on your enemies. It would be downright impossible to control each front directly, much less the front you're on itself, had Stardock not used its professional UI-design acumen (otherwise garnered from their line of XP-theme products like Object Dock and Windowsblinds) to produce such a fluid interface. You flow in and out of sector wide battles, zooming in effortlessly to a fighter's bombing run on an enemy carrier and coordinating that lance's attack only to seconds later fly out to another system and control the exchange of goods to maximize your revenue. This game is brilliant with the polish of such excellent user controls, which makes it all the more pleasurable when crunch-time comes and you're facing off against a massive armada of enemy vessels.
Capital ships act like hero units in Warcraft 3, and gain a certain importance with your ability to name them (you can also name your planets). With a fleet of smaller cruisers and frigates behind them, you can coordinate impressive strategies for maximum effect. Once you can control the multiple elements of a fleet, you can time your strikes on enemy outposts by waiting for your ships' antimatter (read: mana) to peak. Then, in unison, your ships crystalize at the edge of their current planet's gravity well, and blast into the dark wilderness between planets and asteroids in preparation to make an Inchon-style landing in enemy territory. During their travel, controlling your empire Ala Civilization is key. Making sure you have reserve forces, optimum economic policies, and key research going in-synch is important. You can even hire pirate forces to raid enemy systems, thus allowing you to pull Divide-and-Conquer sorts of shenanigans on an interstellar scale.
Battles are furious and intense, though the formation element of each fleet (read: control group) is a bit limited. I'd like to have seen the ability to set formations like the Total War series, but I can only specify how close I'd like each unit to be as they travel. While this is enough for mitigating the effects of area effect weapons such as nukes, it does little justice to a 3D naval space combat engine. I'd love to have been able to march outward with an armored speartip of battlecruisers, but instead I get the same sort of wall of ships every time. These faults are more than made up for by the inclusion of fighter and bombercraft from deployable carriers and fighter bays in capital sihps. This adds a huge level of depth, as intelligent use of fighters and bombers can turn a dull frigate rush into a mad orgy of laser fire and missles. The graphics are beautiful, and extremely optimized so that even a midrange system could smile at all the pretty colors.
I like to measure my level of enjoyment of certain games in how much time I'd blow on them, given the chance. The dark circles under my eyes should be testament to how much I love this game.
I guess it's just another case of the same thing we do every night, Pinky: try and take over the world.
So, when midterms are otherwise tearing me apart like a school-yard gang of black holes, I like to kick back and play some video games. Usually, I take out the day's aggressions with a fuillisade of trick shots in Counter-Strike Source. Recently, though, I picked up Stardock Studios' (the guys who brought you Galactic Civilizations I and II) new game: Sins of a Solar Empire. And man, am I hooked.
Sins is a fusion of the Civilization-style empire-building genre, and the Warcraft 3-esque heroic real-time strategy game. In it, you control one of three races as you attempt to conquer anything from a solar system to a galaxy using a variety of methods. From military brute force to cultural submission, your empire spreads like a cough on a plague-wind. It's a ton of fun, and mind-blowing in its ability to unify two seemingly disparate types of strategy games into one.
What's great about Sins is how it takes what works from 3X strategy games and imports them into a traditional build-attack-conquer RTS chassis with a minimalistic design. The last part's important, because in larger games you're easily controlling fleets of hundreds of cruisers, thousands of lances of fighters, and several behemoth capital ships as you rain death and mayhem on your enemies. It would be downright impossible to control each front directly, much less the front you're on itself, had Stardock not used its professional UI-design acumen (otherwise garnered from their line of XP-theme products like Object Dock and Windowsblinds) to produce such a fluid interface. You flow in and out of sector wide battles, zooming in effortlessly to a fighter's bombing run on an enemy carrier and coordinating that lance's attack only to seconds later fly out to another system and control the exchange of goods to maximize your revenue. This game is brilliant with the polish of such excellent user controls, which makes it all the more pleasurable when crunch-time comes and you're facing off against a massive armada of enemy vessels.
Capital ships act like hero units in Warcraft 3, and gain a certain importance with your ability to name them (you can also name your planets). With a fleet of smaller cruisers and frigates behind them, you can coordinate impressive strategies for maximum effect. Once you can control the multiple elements of a fleet, you can time your strikes on enemy outposts by waiting for your ships' antimatter (read: mana) to peak. Then, in unison, your ships crystalize at the edge of their current planet's gravity well, and blast into the dark wilderness between planets and asteroids in preparation to make an Inchon-style landing in enemy territory. During their travel, controlling your empire Ala Civilization is key. Making sure you have reserve forces, optimum economic policies, and key research going in-synch is important. You can even hire pirate forces to raid enemy systems, thus allowing you to pull Divide-and-Conquer sorts of shenanigans on an interstellar scale.
Battles are furious and intense, though the formation element of each fleet (read: control group) is a bit limited. I'd like to have seen the ability to set formations like the Total War series, but I can only specify how close I'd like each unit to be as they travel. While this is enough for mitigating the effects of area effect weapons such as nukes, it does little justice to a 3D naval space combat engine. I'd love to have been able to march outward with an armored speartip of battlecruisers, but instead I get the same sort of wall of ships every time. These faults are more than made up for by the inclusion of fighter and bombercraft from deployable carriers and fighter bays in capital sihps. This adds a huge level of depth, as intelligent use of fighters and bombers can turn a dull frigate rush into a mad orgy of laser fire and missles. The graphics are beautiful, and extremely optimized so that even a midrange system could smile at all the pretty colors.
I like to measure my level of enjoyment of certain games in how much time I'd blow on them, given the chance. The dark circles under my eyes should be testament to how much I love this game.
I guess it's just another case of the same thing we do every night, Pinky: try and take over the world.
1 comment:
It sounds like Homeworld on crack. I'll have to pick up a copy of this.
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