There's always been a huge criminal underworld just beneath the surface veneer of Imperial control and Rebel do-gooding that has been underexposed by Star Wars games. It's a splendid idea, and makes full use of the Star Wars background materials. The Forces Of Corruption expansion actually has an entirely new core premise: a third galactic faction that uses intrigue, guerrilla warfare and criminal exploitation to get what it wants. Forces Of Corruption does little to change that fact, even though it has suicide bomb-Ewoks.Īnd no, that idea does not justify an entire game, at least not in this case. They might have been pretty, but they were also utterly unexceptional in a time of demanding, highly accomplished RTS games.
If anything it was the real-time combat sequences that really bored me. The tactical campaign maps lacked the nuance and versatility of something like the Total War maps, but it nevertheless provided the kind of challenge that keeps you wanting to push forward, defeating intransigent enemies and spreading your colour all over the galaxy.
So the towering sales figures might have been a testament more to the number of satisfaction-starved Star Wars fans than to the quality of the game itself, but I doubt many of the people who bought the game were particularly disappointed. For the rabid few, however, it was a godsend: a Star Wars RTS that wasn't rubbish. Empire At War might not have stunned us with its mild innovation and even milder Star Wars battles, but it was nevertheless an engaging and time-gobbling RTS-with-tactical-campaign-map-management-stuff.
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