Sinners In The Hands of an Angry Empire
It's late, so this'll have to be quick, and I'm dead sick to boot, but I just finished a single session of what I believe, granting that I'm half delirious, to be the most enthralling PC strategy game I've played in [insert something appropriately overkill here]. I'm talking about Ironclad and Stardock's Sins of a Solar Empire, the 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) real-time strategy game you've probably never heard of, but need to run, sprint, leap, fly (if you can) etc. to grab a copy of. El pronto.
You wicked, wicked 4X real-time strategy game I can't stop playing to save myself (from exacerbating flu-based vertigo)
I'd say "it's just that good," but "good" is a crappy, pitiful adjective, and all the others like "mind-blowing," "killer," "wicked," and "superlative" are on permanent fanboy loan. Picture me giggling, flailing, and desperately trying to get your attention, and that about sums up how I feel about it at the moment.
Is it complex? Yes. Is it also astonishingly elegant in terms of the way it wrestles that complexity into one of the smartest run-everything-from-a-drop-menu-PIP interfaces I've ever seen? I'm going with "unquestionably."
I've only played as the human Trader Emergency Coalition (TEC) faction so far (you can play as two others) but a single two-player game against the computer on normal difficulty with one star surrounded by roughly 16 planets came out to about 12 hours of uninterrupted play. Manic help-me-I'm-crazed play, as in I couldn't stop even at the point I was feeling like grabbing a bucket (nothing to do with the game, of course). And I gather 12 hours is on the itty-bitty side of what you can do with this thing when you spec extra stars and really open up.
How it plays: You have planets parked in free space, connected by warp space lines and surrounded by translucent 2D gravity wells (like Tinker Toy saucers) which in turn serve as your location for infrastructure improvements and orbital defenses. I wimped out and went with "auto-placement" to focus on other stuff, so the computer guessed where best to drop guns and structures in the gravity well, which worked okay most of the game. But I can see how I'll need to get placement down pat before going up against someone really good online. The gravity well dictates ship speed (toward the planet = faster, away from it = slower) so placement in theory is going to be the difference between predictability and "whoops-crap!" hauling a-double-s.
You can build either logistical or tactical structures to pad your turf with metal and crystal extractors or military and civics labs (for research), trade ports (vulnerable little frigates can maneuver between planets to increase your money pull), and loosey-goosey stuff like "broadcast centers" that spread your culture around so you can eventually colonize hostile planets.
The research tree is monstrous. Double-sided poster stitched with flowcharts monstrous. The tech pacing for TEC feels on first pass very well-balanced. I usually see one thing or another in a game tech tree that stands out as hideously overpowered, but the upgrades in Sins are gradual enough that you really need to invest in a long path and get well down it before you're spotting tangible tactical benefits.
Of course the crux of the game involves flinging whole fleets of interstellar armed-to-the-teeth spacecraft at the other guy, fleets with a gazillion different types of gadgets and stats and special abilities. To which effect Sins serves up dozens of different types of upgradeable cruisers and frigates, as well as five intelligently discrete classes of capital ships. As in capital-A for you-know-what-kicking. Plus: They get their own complements of fighters and bombers, which launch from starboard or port and swarm enemies like gnats with contrails.
The trick of it boils down to capturing all the planets, or at least eliminating any planets owned by your opponent(s), at which point the game lets you quit or sadistically stamp out every last one.
Pirates threaten to zip in periodically in escalating strength and numbers, though if your coffers are deep enough, you can stave off attacks by putting a bounty on your opponent's head. That's right, a bounty. If yours is higher, and you have the cash in hand...well what self-respecting pirate won't go with the high bidder? Now imagine bidding and backstabbing with up to seven others online.
The intelligence gathering and fog of war elements are simple but smart. Peek on the periphery of an unexplored planet's gravity well and if you have to turn tail, follow-up mousing over the planet yields a "Last intel xxx seconds ago" report with a manifest of whatever was there at the time, which if I can just say is so much smarter than "now you see it, now you don't." You saw it. You know what you knew. It's like having a bunch of time-based tactical bookmarks.
But the thing I can't capture with words that sets this game apart from anything else I've played is the absolutely majestic pacing. It's the coolest, grandest game of tug of war you've ever played, and except for a little late game slog where you're trying to box in the bad guy (who's pinging from system to system to escape your mighty Cyclotaurite and Novalith wrath) I'm really reaching to come up with any serious functional flaws.
Anyway, I've successfully told you about all of 10% of the game, so shoot me for rambling, then scoot off to wherever you can find PC games for sale and get this. I honestly didn't think Ironclad would be able to pull it off when I saw the game a year ago (looked cool, but sounded incredibly busy). Somehow they have, pretty much with bells and whistles on. Oh yeah it's also the best looking game you're just now hearing about.
Bravo Ironclad. And shame on the gaming press for not having reviews ready day-of release, i.e. today, in lieu of more mindless screen-scraped press releases.
(Okay, okay, you want more to go on -- I'll be back to oblige after sleep laced with sick-guy drugs, but you can always scan my preview for 1UP here.)
Replay
Agree? Disagree? Have your say below in comments, visit Wake the Happy Words for expanded dialogue, or pelt me with emails here.
PC World's Marketplace
PC World's Free Whitepapers
tech news tech blogs community & forums laptop prices software reviews downloads
wOOt, im going to research it and possibly make a purchase!
If you do make a purchase, purchase it online at stardock's website and download their client program, Stardock Central. Install it and create an account, and the install key you get will let you download the game however many times you want whenever you want from within Stardock Central (linked to your account, of course). Updates are managed through SDC as well, but unlike Steam, you're not compelled to install the updates when you run SDC (if you already have the game installed).
Best to rob the retail stores of the money they'd rob Ironclad and Stardock of and just purchase it directly from Stardock. Probably cheaper too.
Incidentally, one of the nice things about this game is that despite the awesome-looking graphics, you don't absolutely need to have a top-of-the-line machine to run it. Looks better with one, yes, but it runs fluidly on machines of several years ago.