Sins Of A Solar Empire (PC)
£19.99
A rare gem of a game - OK, first of all, I have never in the past had any time for RTS games, I loved the Total War turned based strategy type games (and still do). I thought that no other game would ever surpass Rome Total War for the excessive amount of time I spent on the game (my wife even called herself a Rome Widow !)Until this little gem of a game. It is a, at first, slow burning strategy game, with a very intuitive interface (absolutely no need for the keyboard, everything can be accessed using the mouse), nice graphics and very clever AI (If you do not make alliances, you will be beaten!) It just pulls you in until at some point, you realise you ve just spent four hours on one of the smaller scenarios, when you think you ve only been playing for half an hour or so!It is so deep and challenging (on the harder difficulty levels), that I find myself doing what I did when playing Rome, I spend time at work thinking about the best strategy to expand my empire - do I kill them with commerce, or a fleet of heavily armed, levelled up battle cruiser and frigate fleets, or a sprinkling of both? The game, like all good strategy games, makes you think about your choices, and penalises you if you make the wrong ones (like I did when I thought I d just sit it out until I had enough money, crystal and metal to level up my planets and resources....)If you like strategy games, be it RTS or turned based, you cannot fail to like this game, it is fun, clever, nice looking, easy to get into and quite addictive, a rare combination in these days of looks are everything with game play an afterthought.Highly recommended, and excellent value for money. It has changed my views about RTS games forever.
Good idea, but no fun to play - There really isn t much strategic content to this game.Battles are entirely automatic -- ships position, target, and fire automatically. They are too long to be interesting but too short to adequately re-deploy troops to reinforce. In most cases, the weaker force simply withdraws from the field.Research and investment are very straightforward. In no case do they change the game dynamics (analogous to siege equipment or cavalry units). Instead, they simply augment existing capabilities to a large extent.I agree with another poster that Homeworld was much better.
its no homeworld 2.. - First impressions of this are that it has an interesting mix of ideas. ships gain levels like hero units in other games making them more powerful etc which adds a different element to the game play. The game does many things at the same time.The responses from units feel tacky and almost has a feel that this games target audience is people under the age of 20.The games graphics are not bad. Theyre not cutting edge which you would expect from a game these days, but overall theyre not bad. Im running mine on max settings for everything and 2560 X 1600 res on a 30 inch monitor and I must say I have seen older games which look better visually. The main dissapointment I am getting is just seeing a gauss cannon station that fires with zero recoil or firing animation bar a muzzel flash. When you take into consideration all the other stuff this game is attempting to do though I think you can look over that - but personally it doesnt give the feel of the large battles that I had gotten from homeworld 2 where individual cannons on the larger ships tracked targets and each barrel had its own recoil / missiles had launch animation. The tutorial is good enough to get players into the game right away and the number of factions is also good as it all adds depth. Overall I think its a decent game but could have done with more attention to detail but then I dont think we will get another homeworld 2 any time soon.
A good game, not what I thought tho - A good solid game, I ll admit to not playing it fully but thats the reason why I only gave three stars. The single player game (for which I bought it for) plays just like a multiplayer game with A.I simply taking a player slots, theres no story line driving the game and feels very much like a gank-fest.Single player game starts off with you choosing a map and building up your empire/ships quick as possible with random scripts jumping in giving you tasks as you go.Don t get me wrong, this is a damn good game... Multiplayer. Just a bit shallow (if you merged counter strike in space with civ 4).
Breaking the ice of a sub-genre - Sure this game has depth with scenarios consisting well over 100 systems, It would take you weeks, many mugs of coffee and a hermit-like lifestyle if you wish to play till the end. Single player is good but nothing mind-blowing, the AI can be difficult but also boring and dormant. Multiplayer is where its at but because of the depth of this game small scenarios work best. You re looking at 2hrs+ for a game that has ~16 systems.Tech tree s are interesting and well structured and its up to you whether you want to build up military force or economics first, or do both like me sometimes.Visually its great for a RTS (4x) style game with good accompanying sounds. The only other thing I could compare it too visually is Empire at War or Homeworld. Though the scale of this game is epic the units and structures are somewhat rather small and don t feel like the vessel they are. Take the Capitol ships for example, if only they were like those from X3:Reunion, that would rock.I took a gamble buying this game as its something of a new genre (sub-genre?) having not played anything like this before. This game has so much potential its screaming out for further development. Luckily the devs are releasing a new patch sometime this month, par on expansion-like size so they say which will be interesting. If in doubt stick it out otherwise buy it! :)