PC Games Star Wars: Empire at War Gold Pack

 Best Star Wars PC title in years but not without its flaws
I haven't played a Star Wars title for the PC that was this good since Dark Forces in 1995. Empire At War is possibly the best realtime strategy game. I have not played Lucasarts' previous attempts at Star Wars games in the RTS genre, Rebellion and Force Commander. Both these games pale in comparison to Empire At War. The game is set during the galactic Civil War after Episode 4: A New Hope. The Gold Pack features a new side to play as, the Zann Consortium commanded by crimelord Tyber Zann. Zann and his organization were created exclusively for this game and had not appeared in any previous incarnation of Star Wars media. The game itself is a huge improvement over the original version of Empire At War released in 2006. With addition of the Zann Consortium, the player has the ability to choose more land, space, and hero units as well as new units for both the Empire and Rebel Alliance. The gameplay can become some what repetitive in the later stages of the single player campaign with the player being required to complete very specific tasks in order to accomplish mission objectives. One example is the Consortium mission to Cloud City, where Tyber and his cronies are required to plant evidence to blackmail rival criminal organization, Black Sun. The mission involves escorting gas droids to collect 8 containers of gas and make sure that the droids are not destroyed by enemey forces. This becomes extremely frustrating due to the enemey AI's ability to launch randomly spawned opponents at your forces. The possibility of losing a gas droid is too hard to avoid and so frugal use of the save game function and strategic use of land units is heavily relied upon. The AI's ability to randomly takeover a planet late in the game is also somewhat frustrating as well. The player would be trying to concentrate on the next mission, when a land or space battle will randomly take place. If you don't have enough units defending one of your planets in space or situated at the land bases, then you can easily lose the battle and be back to square one reassembling your armies from scratch all over again. Another fault, is the ability to lose track of certain units on such a small screen. The battle map is rather limited in its view and the camera is hard to control especially for missions that require the survival of key land units (heroes) such as Tyber Zann for the Consortium, Han Solo for the Rebellion, or Darth Vader for the Empire. The game also has a few bugs that can be remedied by installing a patch from the Lucasarts web site. But I have heard the patch doesn't work well under Windows Vista.
Submitted by fixed99 (New York, NY, USA)
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 fun, but flawed
This is an incredibly fun game, but there are a few major bugs that can make it malfunction. Overall, I give it three stars (would be four but bugs are annoying)
Submitted by ilovecheez (Houston, TX, USA)
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 Some cool ideas, good value, but...
The Star Wars license always tends to be a mixed bag when it comes to video games. On one hand, Lucasarts has a track record for putting out some solid games which make great entries in their respective genres. On the other hand, if you're not totally into Star Wars, you may find the variety (or lack of) the setting offers a bit bland. The Expansion pack adds some new units for both the Rebels and Empire but still falls a bit short of compelling. To its credit the game does attempt to go outside the norm a bit, offering a number of scenarios and variations on gameplay under the same old RTS hood, all of which work pretty well. Overall your level of satisfaction may hinge upon just how much you like Star Wars, but there is plenty in this package to keep any RTS fan satisfied, at least until they get stick of building Storm Troopers; for $20 its a pretty good deal.
Submitted by DeadlyFred (Acheron)
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