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Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Saga

Published By: Alan Bell On: 05/04/2007 10:00
Rating: PG Difficulty: Medium Learning Curve: 15 Min

THE SCOREBOARD

7.5
Good

Gameplay	7.0	"Worth the price of entry but far from the best available"
Graphics	6.0
Sound	8.0
Value	8.0

By Alan Bell

Way back when, an unknown developer cranked out a little game called Age of Empires. The whole world changed. Suddenly real time strategy (RTS) games were seriously cool again, in a way they hadn't been since Warcraft 2 and Command & Conquer were at the peak of their popularity. The game engine worked very well, had the right stuff in the right places and generally didn't get in the way of the gameplay - which itself was very nicely presented with great detail and lots of extra touches.

Star Wars, well, we know all about that - if you don't then I suspect this whole interweb thing is overwhelming enough so I wont confuse you by explaining what Star Wars is.

Combining the two, then, is an extremely logical money-making game concept. It's certainly no surprise that this game exists. Should you bother playing it, however? Particularly now, given that it was originally released in 2001?

The game, a combination of the original Galactic Battlegrounds and its expansion, Clone Campaigns, is set throughout the Star Wars universe as it existed in 2001. In addition to all the classic locations from the first three movies (episodes 4, 5 and 6) you also have content from episodes 1 and 2, although not episode 3 as it wasn't out at the time (someone is going to dig this out of a hard disk in 200 years and wonder what kind of crazy accident with a prophylactic and a time machine resulted in that particular flow of movie releases).

You take control via the familiar RTS mechanic of looking down on your forces from a thousand feet up in the air, and issue orders to your various subordinates via a series of mouse selections and option icons. Attacking things is as simple as selecting your units and right-clicking on the enemy units. Simple stuff which doesn't get in the way of the action which, lets face it, is all about blowing stuff up as you set about altering history so Darth Vader crushes his sissy-boy son under his black-booted foot.

The classic "order your peons to harvest some resources so you can buy bigger, meaner things to shoot other things with and then decimate the enemy" gameplay mechanic is very much the order of the day, with the occasional minor variation on the theme.

It's classic RTS action at its very most classic - so long as you don't go into it expecting cutting edge, seat-of-your-pants, intelligent AI-riddled gameplay you'll not get upset with that. The AI is even pretty tough from time to time, so you'll have to think a bit to beat him.

The presentation is packed with Star Wars stuff. There are generals and AT-AT walkers and millenium falcons and droids and lots more... but... it doesn't feel like Star Wars. Not even one little bit. It feels like Age of Empires through and through. The actual presentation of mission objectives and the guy that reads them to you is downright anti-Star Wars, even. Without knowing that it was Star Wars you'd certainly never guess that it was.

The graphics have aged quite a bit - even at their maximum setting it feels low res and blocky. Not painfully so but noticeable nonetheless. The sound holds up alright but when you've got lots of movie assets to draw from you'd have to consider yourself a terrible failure as a game sound guy if you didn't deliver. He (or she!) delivered in 2001 and it still sounds just fine in 2007.

Should you buy it? At the price this represents great value. The game is solid, the interface mechanic is still sound and you get to build and control lots of your favorite characters from one of the most endearing (despite George Lucas's recent efforts, seemingly to the contrary) film franchises of all time. Sure, Empire at War kicks its ass six ways from Sunday, but that game isn't perfect either and it sure isn't as big as this - even if it does actually feel a lot like the source material it's derived from.