Star Wars: Empire at War Preview

But then of course, when fighting a galactic war, it's all a matter of scale and supremacy. The might of the Empire is often seen in its destructive weaponry and devastating vessels that roam the galaxy in search of fresh prey. Ultimately, you get to use weapons like the Death Star, which may be used to wipe out entire planets. Although its fire power is greater than half the star fleet, the Death Star moves really slowly and is open to attack.

Pretty blue special effects usually spell trouble in space.

Beware of my pointy end, balloon planet!

The fact of the matter is that Star Wars: Empire at War strives to offer something a bit different from the standard RTS material we're used to playing these days. It will be interesting to see a space battle with a fully operational Death Star that instantly torches enemy frigates. If the battle takes place in orbit, players will also be able to assist their fleet with additional fire power from the planet surface - enter the ion cannon. The ion cannon can easily disable enemy cruisers and may decide the outcome of the battle. Fighting on land denotes an equal amount of challenges. Regardless if you prefer playing with the Empire or the Rebels, fighting on different planets means getting used to different topography as well as varied weather conditions. Some worlds are harsh and will put your armies to the test with severe snow storms, sand storms, rain and even tornados.

According to the developers, the game was created from scratch. Using a new engine, called the "Alamo," Petroglyph managed to incorporate a great amount of detail into each map. Additional effort went into lighting and from what we've witnessed you can look forward to some mighty sweet explosions. The engine has the ability to render a large number of units, and it appears that every single unit was carefully modeled and animated.

The audio was placed into the hands of experienced sound editor Frank Klepacki, whose previous work includes the Dune 2000 soundtrack, the much admired electronic/industrial scores of Command and Conquer, the music in the adventure Blade Runner etc. Right now he's working on the score for Empire at War and mixing a variety of his own tunes with John Williams' celebrated Star Wars soundtrack. We can hardly wait to hear how that turns out.

In closing, Petroglyph is an experienced team with professional game designers and programmers, whose joint effort could easily make this game one of the best strategy franchises in 2006. Let's keep our fingers crossed.