dougwolfe's Full Review: Shadow Of Destiny for Windows
I’ll start off with two things:
1) I am a big Star Wars fan. I’m not so much building lightsabers and dressing up as a Stormtrooper or anything, but Star Wars is my absolute favorite.
2) I have heard this game uses the Age of Empires engine, but having never played AoE, I’ll not be making any comments on that.
Options: Galactic Battlegrounds offers six different sides for you to play: The Rebel Alliance, the Empire, Wookies, the Trade Federation, the Gungans, and the Naboo. The basic units for all sides are similar in ability, though there are slight differences. Trade Federation Droids are weak, but you can make plenty of them, while Wookies are tough, but require more to make. There are further differences that become apparent in more advanced play.
Each side also has something special the others do not have. Finally, each one has its own strengths and weaknesses you’ll have to pay attention to. In all, with all of this together, they seem pretty balanced, though the map can definitely make one side much more capable. For example, the Gungans will have no problems on a map with more water, while a lack of food can cause problems for the Empire and Wookies.
Each side also has it’s own campaign to play through, or you can choose a free-form skirmish-type game or multiplayer (which I have not delved into to include in this review except to mention it’s there).
For the non-campaign games, several victory option are available, such as “Destroy all enemy command centers”, “Last man standing”, and “Kill the enemy commander”.
Gameplay: Gameplay should be pretty familiar to RTS fans. You gather various resources, build various buildings and units, and destroy the enemy (or fulfill specific objectives in the campaigns). Along with this is researching improvements for your units and buildings. To get the best units and buildings, you have to improve your tech level. There are 4, and to improve it, you have to meet specific requirements (a certain number of buildings and resources). Improving the tech level allows you to build new units and research more upgrades. Unfortunately, progressing to a new tech level makes it impossible to build “obsolete” units, but this is not a huge thing. You can queue up several units to be built in order, and even set gathering points for new units.
Some of the units’ weapons are questionable (like units mounted on living beasts using flame throwers – or something similar), but in general, they are all balanced and well thought out.
Workers do all of the resource gathering and building the buildings, and they need your attention. Unless their task involves something they can continue nearby (gathering more resources from a nearby source, for example), they just sit there waiting for instructions. The game does include a button that will flash when a worker is idle, and will take you to it when pressed, so this makes it a bit easier to manage them.
There is a slight annoyance I have to mention. Sometimes, selecting units can be tricky, sometimes you get the wrong one, sometimes you miss altogether. Double-clicking causes you to select all of that type of unit, and doing this at the wrong time can be trouble. These are normally just annoyances as you just try again, but in the heat of combat, it can be costly.
Selecting a group is the familiar “drag-a-box” method that works ok, and you can set groups for quick selection and locating.
Graphics: The graphics are pretty good. All of the units are immediately recognizable, and all of them are very much Star Wars. Even the units made for the game have a Star Wars feel to it. The map terrain is done quite well, and the variety of maps is nice.
Sound: Sound in the game is ok. The music is in the familiar Star Wars style, and the weapons sound effect and such are familiar Star Wars sounds. Each unit also has a specific sound effect (or sometimes several) it makes when you select it. This is more atmospheric than helpful for me.
One complaint I have about the sound is the voices of the recognizable heroes. They aren’t all done by the original actors (which is understandable, I guess), but they aren’t even close most of the time. They could at least have found some people to impersonate the voices better.
The Star Wars Factor: The game incorporates all of the familiar Star Wars units, plus new ones. Included are the famous AT-AT’s, X-Wings, TIE fighters, Wookies, Droids, etc. It’s all there. Best of all, there are the Jedi and Sith which become very powerful units (as they should be), able to take on hordes of enemies, and even convert them to your side. Balancing these are the Bounty Hunters, which can find the Jedi and take them on.)
The cast of familiar Star Wars heroes is also pretty impressive. Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan, Nute Gunray, Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, and Darth Vader are all there, plus some others not so recognizable, and others made up for the game.
Final Notes: Since Force Commander, we’ve waited for a good Star Wars RTS, and I think this one is pretty good. There’s nothing really new here for the RTS genre, but it is a welcome addition to the Star Wars collection.
Young FBI agent Nicole Bonnet receives a mysterious package. Inside she finds a complicated logical puzzle that appears to be a message from a serial ...More at J&R Music and Computer World
Classic 1993 Fantasy Roleplaying Game; First in the Realms of Arkania series, set in The Das Schwarze Auge game universe Fully Animated, Isometric 3D ...More at Amazon Marketplace
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.