I finally got Empire at War

[Guest]

This seems like a dumb topic, least of all belongs in the EAW general discussion. But since a lot of stuff has been deleted and even before that the boards were slow, so lets liven things up a little. I got Empire at War. Some of you will reel in astonishment if you were present on Lucasarts back in the day. I was a huge antagonist of Empire at War. I thought the game sucked and it looked like it did for a long time. Even when it was released I held off on getting it (mostly because my PC was a P.O.S.) then when I did get a new computer I got AOEIII, HW2, and borrowed several games from my friend.

 

but now I have it. I got for half price a mere $20 rather than the $40-$50 it still costs in most stores. I didn't get a used copy or off ebay. I got it from best buy. but that is not important. Now you get the Cheeseinator's review for a game that I hated so much cause it was stupid.

 

 

but first.........

 

Background info.

Way back when on Lucasarts when EAW was first introduced. I looked at the screen shots, and LAUGHED. They SUCKED. Explosions that looked like reeses puffs or cheese curds, star destroyers with little texture, and my personal favorite... The 2 storm troopers running in front of an AT-AT. They were pointy and their guns were little more that black textureless toilet paper tubes. My conclusion, the game sucked. I posted about it and the long argument that eventually ended up in a "flame war". More screen shots came in and I laughed some more. mostly at the bad scaling. Darth Vader was about 3 feet shorter than an AT-ST and storm troopers were at least a head taller than the tanks. As time went on I mocked, complained, and bashed several things about the game. I said it had horrible graphics, bad scaling, no space battles on a 3D plane, nothing new, etc, etc, etc. By about the end of the flame war i ran out of things to complain about. Eventually it erupted into ghostly substance and I throwing insults at each other. This was back in like 2005. Here are some fun quotes from back then.

 

Cheese and his gang piss me and everybody else off. They never give up on harassing and banning wont do anything so call the FBI and take his computer away 

theres nothing good on there now its mainly Cheesinator (who needs banning from the Internet completely) and the rest that whine and moan because there games aren't as great as promised.

And others that I can't dig out from there because Lucasarts deleted all my posts and anything that had to do with my posts. Anyway eventually Lucasarts got moderators that made sure that there was no flame around. Then I used loopholes to my advantage and flamed EAW other members but in a discreet way as to not get banned. If you read through this post here this happend to be an instance where several people wanted me to be banned but i won the day because technically I didn't do anything wrong. (my posts in there were deleted but you can easily see what I said in it)

http://forums.lucasarts.com/thread.jspa?threadID=92921&start=0

After a while I infiltrated this forum PFF in hopes of causing as much discontent and discord among here as I did in Lucasarts. But I knew I had to be careful here the members are more attuned and intelligent than the idiotic mods at lucasarts. I kinda was a annoying my first month or so here under the name Beowulf. I came close to crossing the line several times but never did. Eventually however I came to see this site populated by mostly intelligent members and moderators who didn't ban at a whim. So on lucasarts I slacked off on the Flaming of EAW and other people. I inserted a few snide comments about the game here and there but then I ignored it after a while. Eventually when I had driven most of you away from lucasarts I mellowed out a bit for a long time at lucasarts and became a regular poster on lucasarts. I was mistakenly banned once in a sock sweep by the mods but the dark moose recognized the mistake and unbanned me. So I was just being a good person for a while. But alas' it was not to be. The moderators finally got me on hugely trumped up chargers. I was banned for posting a topic in the SWBF2 board about "How to have fun and piss off other people in space battles". The topic was immensely popular but Catch 22 said I was banned for saying "piss off"   :-\ Then began what I like to call "The Cheeseinator's Trial" You could look over it on the Lucasarts boards but every single post of mine and other's associated with them are now deleted. Anyway the trial went on for about 3 weeks. I argued with Catch 22. I pointed out that the mods were cussing their heads off but I got banned for saying piss of?! It went on and on and eventually the final verdict was that I was banned for "rude words and other stuff"...................... other stuff?! @#$% Catch 22 he is going to moderator Hell. After a year or so I came back every now and then and asked if I could get unbanned. They didn't even respond..... I even asked Fosh if I could be unbanned when he became a mod on that site but he just ignored me. Eventually I forgot about EAW and focused on making lucasarts a hell hole by making endless accounts. Most have been banned but there are a few still active on Lucasarts even at this very moment...... In the meantime I stayed on these boards and saw the good in EAW.....

 

Okay, that was fun now for my EAW review.

 

First Impressions:

  I have only had the game for few days now so I can't publish my whole review just yet. But my first impressions are good ones. First I started out with just doing skirmish battles. I had several memorable battles that I hugely enjoyed the first few times. With my new computer I was able to pump up the graphics really high and EAW looks real good on high graphics. They fixed several things that I hated in the demo. The Heroes aren't as overpowered to the extent that they can single handedly win a battle like in the demo I like that each unit has a special ability and by using them right can greatly diversify the battles. The AI is not too easy (not yet anyway) I still struggle against medium AI. Resources are simple and efficient by getting money instead of each individual resource. The sound effects are excellent and bring back good old memories of the original trilogy. It has nice feel too. It feels like you really are playing a star wars game (unlike SWBF2).

 

I'll elaborate on the good things later cause it's late and I'm really tired right now but here are the bad things:

-Pop cap is way too small for my tastes in skirmish battles

-Rebels are overpowered but not as much as I'd thought they'd be

Those are the only two serious things that I don't like about the game so far.

 

bad things that are trivial

-lack of.....variety every space level has several nebula's and asteroid fields

-made up units, again no huge problem but I'd rather see canon ships like the lancer frigate instead of the tartan. And the Ineptly name "broadside cruiser" and the fake assault frigate

-scale still, someone has told me that you can change the scale but I don't have clue how too.

 

The thing that really bugs me is the "balance". They went too far with the balance issue, even to the point of unrealistic-ness. ATATs destroy tanks in a matter of seconds but it takes longer to kill a group of infrantry. Same with the snowspeeders too, they destroy light vehicles in nothing flat but they will take all day to kill troopers. That is really unrealistic. I know that some vehicles are'nt designed to kill troopers but surely lasers that can blast through tanks can instantly kill troops scattering them in every direction like in battlefront. However there is one unit that defies this... The seemingly invincible rebel aretillery. They destroy anything with ease and then pack up and outrun AT-STs and kill troopers by making roadkill out of them.

[Ghostly_Substance]

Wow long post........ya those were good noobie times for all of us but theres till mini wars goin on here and there so everybody had their share of wars and memories. Well EAW is great and I continued with my campaign to conquer the galaxy. Its fun until a trap gets sprung and you loose 20 of your ships in your fleet  :-[ I lost 10 though which was annoying  This game is good on high graphics with all those little effects and damn the Rebels are annoying  :

[Cain]

Wow - Great post and scary story Cheese Mia casa su casa in the end ... I will read more soon. Edited September 20, 2006 by Cain

[NOT Hadoken13]

i still can't beleive you posted here without owning it XD

 

but yes, you seem to have the same opinion as everyone else, EaW is generally a good game, with a few flaws that stop it from being a great game.

[Mikan Cyclone]

HEY MA! OINKEYS GOT WINGS!

 

But seriously, congrats on teh game Cheese.  Glad to know you re-evaluated your....why am I even posting this?  I avoid EAW like the plague!  AND I DONT KNOW WHY!  But, I still like the coding though

[Controller]

im like mikan here*shudders* the only time i start EAW is to test the code of the two mods i work on.other then that i avoid EAW(it might bite me.and i think is planing on taking over my comp evil thing)

[Guest]

?!!??!!??!? 

 

I thought every single member of PFF was pro-EAW!?

[DragonShadow]

Nope. I am...but some aren't. Glad to see you've seen the light, Cheese. ;D While flawed, the game is still good. Mikan and AT-AT are more coders then gamers though, hehe.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn 889]

i'm pretty Pro-EaW but i'm not against constructive critcism.

Although i'm more Pro-FoC More than EaW now.

 

but my reaction to this was 'this is spam.'

 

Congrats on buying the game though... only 6 months late!

[Cain]

?!!??!!??!? 

 

I thought every single member of PFF was pro-EAW!?

 

Loll - we were pretty aggressive with it but in the same time you have the developers posting here ... so our aim was for us to be constructive and give them reasons to push harder in their work. Plus they have admin powers - and everything is unofficial.

 

A developer always appreciates constructive criticism more than any fan boy adulation... that’s because he can use that criticism to improve his product. This days no major sites like IGN, GameSpot... etc really promotes that criticism. Plus we are outside the main internet flow ... we look like an old car ... nothing fancy ... so only people interested and focused about games really take time to register here. Therefore we increase the value of our feedback exponentially.

[Relentless]

?!!??!!??!? 

 

I thought every single member of PFF was pro-EAW!?

 

A big disapointment but still an ok game.

[Baron_Fel]

S'all well and good, only one thing to say:

Dont judge the game on the sp portion only, the campaign is the only good part. In sp GC the AI spams tartans/vetts and nothing else.

No, what you need to do is get in the mp. Thats where the fun begins.

[Star Wars Man]

I'm on E@W a lot of the time, and I mostly design mods that conform to realism in Star Wars. That, and I like big explosions.

 

Anyway, congrats that you got the game, Cheese. I never knew you didn't, lol.

[Eric072691]

MP is the better part of EaW, my only want is to have an in-game mod menu Now I do know that it's impossible.

 

Well, congratlations to you for getting EaW. I got the collectors edition

[Jedi Master Tofu]

What version did you get Cheese? Collectors or regular? (Collectors wasn't worth it  )

[Grand Admiral Thrawn 889]

wasn't the collector's edition exactly the same as the regular price and everything although it was meant to have some new maps or something...

[Guest]

I got the regular version. I don't see what is so special about the collector's edition, in fact when I bought it from best buy it was the only copy on the shelf and for such a low price of $20 I knew that now was the time to buy it ;D

[Lord_of_the_Sith]

You got the game? Well your oney were really well spent!!Trust me!

 

(TRUST NOT THRUST! guys read what you type please! Grd. adml thrawn 889)

Edited September 28, 2006 by Grand Admiral Thrawn 889

[Guest]

yes I'll trust you if you spent $20 or maybe $30 but not the $50 it came out with 

[Jedi Master Tofu]

lol...http://pff.swrebellion.com/index.php?topic=2466.0

[VZaknaril]

Maybe it's because I'm old and see things differently, but I see all these "highly technical" reviews and such of EaW and it makes me wonder...

 

What about the question "is it fun?"  ...???

 

That's why I play EaW...because unlike many of you I'd wager...I saw *all* the movies in the theatres (not counting the re-release of the original trilogy a few years ago) and I know what it was like growing up wanting to be like Luke or Han and such.  Now I get to live out my childhood dreams of leading the rebellion to victory over the evil empire by controlling my own fleet on land and in the darkest reaches of space.  HOW COOL IS THAT!? 

 

Sure, the game has flaws, it just plain pisses me off from time to time...but its FUN!

 

Anywho, I suppose "to each his own" as there are apparently a lot of people who get a bigger kick out of modding a game than playing it and so on.  Hope you are having fun playing it Cheese!

[Guest]

I'm starting to get bored of EAW  And only after 3 weeks! good thing I only played $20 for it. Anyway I tried to download some mods but I can't get them to run or whatever.  ??? I downloaded a few from gamespot and it saved all the stuff in a folder but how do you launch it?  ??? Any help would be appreciated.

[Controller]

you have to make a .bat file and run that

[Jedi Master Tofu]

What? All I do is place the mods in the proper folders (ex. model.dat would go in C:\Program Files\Lucas Arts\Game Data\Data\Models\)

[Guest]

uhhhh........  ??? So like where do save mods? I saved one in C:\Program Files\Lucas Arts\Game Data\Data\mods

 

How do you launch it? And what the heck is a .bat file?  ???