P.C. Shannon

It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that I have no life, but it is a fact that I haven’t been to a movie since October. Instead, I depend on Netflix to bring me movies. At this point, I think I’m still catching up on last summer’s releases. So I’m going to start reviewing these movies, even though they’re by no means current, hence “Too Late Reviews.”

But the catch is, I don’t have the greatest taste in movies. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy good, artistic films. I also have a fondness for popcorn flicks, even ones that aren’t very good; they’re entertaining. So my reviews are likely to favor these movies. Consider yourself warned.

I’m a sucker for Star Wars videogames, so I recently downloaded the demo for Empire at War, which is a real-time strategy (RTS) game set in the Star Wars universe. Last night, I played through the tutorial and the demo. It’s a pretty awesome game, but like I said, I’m a sucker for Star Wars games, so maybe you should take that with a grain of salt.

Empire at War goes beyond the basic harvest-build-conquer model of traditional RTS games. In fact, the resource management aspect of the game has a lot more in common with the classic galactic conquest game Master of Orion than with defining RTS games like Dune 2 or Command and Conquer. There are no resources to harvest in EaW. Instead you earn credits from each planet you control at the end of each galactic day. You can spend the credits on building installations on the planets you control, constructing warships, or recruiting soldiers. This is, for me, one of the most exciting aspects of the game, since I find harvesting to be the most annoying aspect of RTS games.

In the demo, I started off with control of Hoth and was ordered to liberate two neighboring systems from imperial control. First I constructed a large space fleet and attacked a well-defended asteroid system. The space battle was a lot of fun. The space units seem to have a rock-paper-scissors balance system: the capital ships are strong against fighters but vulnerable to bombers, the fighters are strong against bombers and other fighters but easily taken out by ships, and the bombers can make quick work of the capital ships but are easy prey for fighters. When attacking capital ships and space stations, it’s possible to target individual systems, such as the shield generator or a turbo laser battery, in order to weaken your opponent before going in for the kill.

Following the space battle, I amassed ground forces in an attempt to liberate Tatooine. This part of the game was much more frustrating as the control and view system is less intuitive than in the space battle. Also, not all of my forces were immediately available. Instead, I had to take control of reinforcement points, each of which allowed me to bring in a handful of units from my army. It seems like this part of the game could use a little work, but I strongly suspect that the demo I played was from the finalized game.

Empire at War will be released on February 15^th. Check out Gamespot for a full, professional review.

Merriam-Webster online defines compleat as meaning 3 of complete: “highly proficient; a complete artist.” It’s use in the title of this anthology suggests meaning 1: “having all the necessary parts.” That’s a minor quibble, I suppose, but from the reviews of Keith Laumer’s The Compleat Bolo on Amazon.com, you’d think it was a masterwork of science fiction. Instead, it’s crappy at best.

Most of the stories in this book were written in the early sixties and clearly reflect a Cold War worldview. Even though they’re ostensibly set in the future, there’s little to suggest high technology other than the Bolos, massive artificially intelligent tanks. In fact, several of the stories are set in run-down towns on distant mining planets that are more reminiscent of, say, the town in To Kill a Mockingbird than Star Wars.

To make things worse, Laumer’s stories are classist and jingoistic. The educated characters speak regular English, but mechanics, night watchmen, and other working class characters speak in an offensive vernacular that includes words like “spearmint” (instead of “experiment”) and “gubment.” In addition, all of the characters are clearly American, even when they’re terrorists who want to liberate Turkey from a united Earth government (which is ruled, in an oddly prescient way, by Emperor George).

I don’t think that either the worldview or the classism are hallmarks of the science fiction of the time. I’ve read Dune and Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and they’re both as good today as they were when they were written.

The stories themselves can be difficult to read at times. The events preceding the action of the opening piece are difficult to put together and seem very paradoxical as well. That same story is so overflowing with horrible similes that it was painful to finish.

I certainly won’t be reading another of Laumer’s books or stories, but I am looking forward to reading other books in the Bolo series–they’re written by other authors, so there’s hope.

Three words: so much awesomeness. Seriously. It’s hard to beat dual-wielding plasma rifles for sheer ass-kicking power, although sneaking up behind a chump in multiplayer and nailing him with the power-sword is arguably cooler. The really amazing thing about this game is that exceeds expectations, and that’s no small order. Halo 2 is perhaps the most eagerly awaited sequel since Star Wars: Episode I, except this time we’ve got something great instead of a turd.

The plot is still outstanding. Twists and turns abound, but I won’t spoil it here. The events are a little difficult to follow, but I think it will make more sense the second time around. The action maintains a pretty furious pace, but it can be somewhat repetitive at times. It’s always frustrating when getting through an area is just a matter of trial-and-error development of a tactical approach to the situation, but thankfully, this doesn’t happen very often. At times, the game gets downright creepy, like you’ve suddenly jumped into a horror game. For example, you have to move through a hotel in an early stage, but the power is out. You know the Covenant are coming, but you don’t know when or where.

This edge-of-your-seat excitement is enhanced by the gorgeous graphics. I really considered just replaying the first couple of levels over and over because they’re so enjoyable. I did notice a slight delay in loading some textures in early cutscenes, but it was just a mild annoyance. The rest of the game runs hiccup-free, except for a slight bump when loading each stage. Gone are the long loading times between levels.

I haven’t played multiplayer on Xbox Live yet, so I can’t comment on that. But I did get a chance to check out multiplayer on System Link with some buddies. The pistol was the most powerful weapon, in mutliplayer at least, from the first Halo, but it has been substantially reduced in power for the current game. The maps are all fun and run about like before, but with better balance between weapons that helps keep one player from dominating. The vehicles are fun, too, since now you can drive the Wraith tank, Warthog variants, and a few other new additions. The missile launcher will lock onto vehicles, or you can always hijack one from your opponent. With the tanks, first you bash open the hatch, then toss a grenade inside. Like I said, so much awesomeness!

I spent a few more hours with KOTOR last night, and I like it more. I’ve figured out the subtleties of the combat system, so it’s no longer annoying. I’ve also stopped transporting back to the hideout every few minutes to heal. It seems like once you clear an area and move on, it remembers that. It just reloads the bad guys if you leave an area prematurely — going back to a previous level or teleporting back to your home base — probably to discourage you from doing that. It worked on me.

There’s also a great sense of satisfaction in completing a quest. I only had to cheat once last — I had to lookup a walk-thru on GameSpot to figure out one section. But it turned out that I just didn’t understand how to do something rather than not knowing exactly what to do.

In summary, a very very fun game.

I played KOTOR for about 3 hours last night. I like it, for the most part. It does degenerate into a hack-n-slash adventure at times, which is really annoying when you’re trying to get thru a section and you keep getting killed in the same spot. What’s the fun of that? It’s very frustrating. Also, you can only walk forward, so if you want to retreat in a combat situation, you have to expose your back. WTF?!?! It also has this weird feature where you can basically teleport back to your base, and then return to your starting position. This is nice because it allows you to change your party make up as you please, and also heal completely. However, when you return to your starting position, all the creatures you killed are reincarnated (actually this happens whenever you leave the area and then re-enter — it doesn’t remember which beasts you’ve defeated — which makes you wonder why the Xbox has a hard drive). The teleport feature also allows you to bypass any security checkpoints in the way — you have to sneak past the first time, but after that, you just magically whoosh by them.

So in summary, the role-playing part is very cool, but the combat is kinda sucky. And the graphics could be better. Oh well. I’m not a Jedi yet, so I’m sure everything will be much cooler then.

Official Website
GameSpot Review