Bruguru's Full Review: Shadow Of Destiny for Windows
You’ve seen Star Wars 117 times and its still not enough. You’ve read all the books, listened to the soundtrack, stood in line for the premieres of all four sequels, and yet something is still missing. Fear not, faithful Star Wars fans, for Lucas Arts has your solution in the form of their latest Star Wars computer game, Galactic Battlegrounds. This strategy game allows you to play as your favorite Star Wars civilization from all four films: the Rebel Alliance, Wookies, Naboo, Gungans, or if you’re in a particularly foul mood, the evil Galactic Empire or Trade federation.
Galactic Battlegrounds is based on Microsoft’s immensely successful Age of Empires game format, and if you’ve played AOE, then you’ll be able to play Galactic Battlegrounds directly after installing it. The main goal of the game is to advance your society from the basic level to an advanced one and annihilate all of your competitors. This can be done in several ways, either in a battle to the death or by killing your enemy’s commander.
There are many game scenarios available. One can either play a single battle or a campaign with a series of objectives. A randomization element ensures that no two games will ever be the same. If you still get tired of the ready-made games, no problem, you can create your own with the custom scenario editor option. You can play against one or two computer opponents, or play head to head against a live player either serially or over the Internet.
Game play takes place on one of several familiar Star Wars planets, and you’ll have full command of armies of stormtroopers, Wookies, Battle droids, Imperial Walkers, rebel snow speeders, destroyer droids, Speeder Bikes, X-Wings, Tie Fighters and much, much more. You have the option to set the number of units you can build (a maximum of 200, and that’s plenty to be sure).
The campaigns are a lot of fun, and each offers a series of missions that build upon each other and feature dialogue from famous characters you’ll recognize from the films. You can lead Han Solo and Chewbacca in a series of battles to liberate the Wookie home world of Kashyyk following the destruction of the second Death Star, help Princess Leia gather information vital to the Rebel Alliance, battle the Trade Federation with Qui-Gon Jinn, fight a Gungan tribal war, or lead the Trade Federation’s droid army against in an invasion of Naboo.
If you’re feeling particularly nasty, you can play my personal favorite campaign: Darth Vader’s return to the Rebel base on Yavin 4 to avenge the destruction of the first Death Star. Vader is tough for the Rebels to beat, and he has some amusing lines as the campaign progresses.
The game’s system requirements are not demanding:
Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP all supported
233 MHZ or higher processor
32 MB Ram with 64 MB recommended
2 MB graphics card, 4 MB recommended
As you can see, you don’t have to have a super modern system to play Battlegrounds. It performed almost flawlessly on my Pentium II 600 laptop with 128 MB of RAM and an 8 MB graphics card. The only glitch seems to be a buzzing in the audio when a large battle is going on and a lot of noise is being generated.
I can’t praise this game enough. It’s well worth the purchase price, and for Star Wars fans is a must have. It’s everything Star Wars: Force Commander couldn’t quite be, though it lacks the splendid cut scenes that bound the missions together in that game. If you haven’t already bought a copy, Star Wars fans, head down to your local game retailer today, and start building your own empire.
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