Rev. Dustin ParkerSins of A Solar Empire
The basic functional formula for making a game seems fairly straight forward. Find something cool to keep the player interested, immersed and coming back for more. Sins of a Solar Empire (which from now I will simply call SINS) does this without the need of a high quality 3-d engine, a complicated user interface, or anally retentive micro management.
The basic premise of the game is simple and elegant. You are one of three races in the galaxy, go forth and bring the beat down to the others. The races are the TEC, who are your basic earthlings; The Vasari, who are your standard hivemind, overly aggresive xenos and of course the Advent who were originally the scum of the TEC but were sent away and returned as religiously fanatic Bene Gesserits. And that's all you have as far as the story goes.
To say that the game sounds simple is an overstatement. The closest game I can liken it to is rock paper scissors. It's almost as simple as rock paper scissors, except you have several pairs of hands each and any result can work against any other. SINS has attacks, counters and counter counters. The speed of the game is slow, which may chafe some, but in my case, seemed only to lull me into an almost hypnotic state of obedience. If you've played any of the Civilisation series, then you are aware of the almost Pavlovian (not the dessert) addiction to pushing the "Next Turn" button. The other very interesting feature was the almost completely open tech-tree. Play style is not simply limited to one's faction, but also the nuances of that faction. For an arm-chair general, or in this case admiral, like me this is almost as good as a shot of heroine (not that I do drugs or endorse it. They'e bad for you, mmmmkay?). I'm yet to venture into the multi-player game, which ironically enough it was designed for, but I've found the skirmish play to be satisfying in the extreme. The economic structure is based around three different resource types; credits, metals and crystals and the game incorporates a very basic market system, where if you sell alot of something, the selling price goes down, but if you buy a lot of it, the price goes up. The ability to hurt an opponent on this plane is rare in most games, but I think in order to see it at its best, I will need to take on a living, breathing human.
The graphics are presentable. Not so beautiful that you need an amazing graphics card, but they are far from ugly. And this is one of the biggest selling points of a PC game. The fact that an older machine can play the game without the person feeling excessively cheap means that Stardock have managed to hit an amazingly large audience. The sound, both the music and the voice acting are nothing memorable. The interface however, is perfect. I don't mean Saviour of mankind, Holy and Annointed Son of God perfect, but as far as things go for an RTS game, it's among the best I've ever used (the best was easily Dungeon Keeper for the ability to slap people). The entire game is controlled on only one map, with no minimap or taskbar which after I grew accustomed to, I thoroughly enjoyed. Everything is clean and simple.
My overview of the game is that while not being completely perfect (some of the waiting is dull, and the lack of 3-d combat while not being an oversight is something that I would like) it is at the very least, one of the current best releases this year. SINS is well worth the minor amount of money that the publisher is asking for, and will provide a lot more bang than the buck suggests.
Video Gamer Kids
Little Green Foosballs
PolyKicks
probably not.
But it might tide you over until Blizzard bring out either Ghost or World of Starcraft.
JZ