Comments on: Games For 2008: Sins of a Solar Empire

By: mike lombardo

mike lombardo — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:33:37 +0000

[...] (will not be published) (required) Website. My New Album! Twitter. You can still listen to …Games For 2008: Sins of a Solar Empire | Rock, Paper, ShotgunAs always, we are two nations divided by a common language. Despite being online and PC gaming for a [...]

By: Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Wit Truncated By Bloglines » Blog Archive » Sins of a Solar Empire Interview

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:33:36 +0000

[...] the first big strategy game of the year slid out of its space-dock. Sins of a Solar Empire, which we’ve previously talked about our experiences in the fourth-Beta (In short: Space Woo!) and will be reviewing shortly. But we need more! Born Journalistic Pirates, [...]

By: Lightbulb

Lightbulb — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:46:59 +0000

“If I can’t design my own ships, I’m not interested. Bah!”

Because what every online game needs is massive balance issues…

By: GrandMasterJ

GrandMasterJ — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:40:48 +0000

Alphaxion: Cheers to a fellow Stars! player. Still pick that one up and play for a month every so often.

The design team seems really intent on getting this right and listening to what players want. I’m excited about this game and hope it has great success!

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:55:38 +0000

I’m on the beta for this now too. It’s exactly the kind of level of complicated I want. Just big enough to feel like there’s a lot of master, just small enough that your brain doesn’t bubble out of your ears when it kicks off. Really, really excellent. This should be one of the big games of 2008.

By: alphaxion

alphaxion — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:24:49 +0000

Whenever 4x gets mentioned I always think of the awesome Stars! that I used to play back when I first got myself onto the net.

Such a shame that the sequel turned into a miscarriage and never made it out of beta. :(

This sounds like a promising evolution of that game and definitely something to keep an eye on :)

By: Michael K. Campbell

Michael K. Campbell — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 07:47:51 +0000

Yeah, this game is actually insanely promising. I bumped into it a few months ago and was initially drawn into it as I thought it was a cross between Homeworld and a 4x game.

But that kind of comparison really doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. This game is really an RTS – but in most cases when people talk about RTS, they really should say real time TACTICAL – as RTSs are usually about twitch skills and massing ogres and such (which, i’ll be honest: i love). But this is much more strategic. And vast. Insanely vast. Yet surprisingly manageable.

The best way I can really think to describe it would be to take the killer graphics and ‘spacey-ness’ of homeworld, and mix it in with a killer game of war3 that is on a MASSIVE map where the game can just keep going and going. Yet, amazingly, the game is still challenging all throughout, and you slowly watch your focus shift from micro-management to strategic management.

And no, I’m not a paid shill or anything. I ponied up $50 to get my hands on the beta, and i’ve just been blown away at the potential this game shows even in beta. (The game is MUCH more stable than most other games I play – even in beta), and as a programmer I can say that this game just has a VERY clean feel to it in terms of the engine, flow, and execution. For example, I’ve got a saved game running with 5 stars, probably close to 100 ‘planets’, oodles and oodles and oodles of ships and stations and so on, and the saved game loads in 30 seconds or so (which is really ‘slow’ for this game). But once everything loads, the system is INSANELY responsive.

In fact, I’d say that even if the game weren’t well done from a playabililty standpoint (it’s got this killer approach to resource utilization and unit caps/etc that constantly keep you feeling like you’re stretching to stay ahead of the competition), that it would be well worth the price of the game JUST to see a) how clean/nice the engine is, b) what they’ve done in terms of usability (i.e. there’s no mini-map but i can drill into a single ship with 3-4 clicks – no matter WHERE i’m at), and c) what they’ve done with letting you flawlessly zoom from macro-to-micro without skipping a beat.

By: mike Lombardo

mike Lombardo — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:38:13 +0000

I have played the beta of this game for months. The developers have gone to great lengths to listen to us in incorporating features and playability into this game. The visuals are stunning, and I have not had a bug in my system causing any problems for over 90 days. (THAT’S A BUG FREE BETA NOT GAMMA).
Even as a beta this game has been more fun than many other finished games. So much so that it has drawn me into playing it online, something that I have never bothered to do with other games.
With the finished AI expected in the retail release I fully anticipate this game causing a decrease in the United States rate of productivity as many people ignore and neglect their work to play SoaSE.

This game is more exciting than was SimCity back in it’s day and even more fun then Civ IV.

By: Craig (Ironclad)

Craig (Ironclad) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:21:18 +0000

Hey guys, Just came across the site. Thanks for the review Kieron! I’d be happy to answer any questions you guys have about the game directly – here or in the official forum.

By: Garth

Garth — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:50:21 +0000

“By “unique”, I hope you mean “brilliant” or something like that, because that’s what it is. :)”
My ex-girlfriend did work on that – she’s actually one of the voices.

I should probably get it at some point…

By: DigitalSignalX

DigitalSignalX — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:00:08 +0000

@Hypocee, thanks for the info, I will definitely keep the flame burning for it. and will try and find a copy of SotS to try out. The only other title I’ve played from Lighthouse was “Avencast” which was very enjoyable in a sort of a Harry Potter kicks some ass sort of way.

@Geoff “if someone was to publish a slightly shinier version of Master of Orion 2 every year, I’d buy it every time.”

- lol exactly my same sentiments :)

By: Geoff

Geoff — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:08:18 +0000

Fantastic. High hopes here.
But I do hope I can make my peace with the macro over micro bit. I tried to like Master of Orion 3, I really did. I was intrigued by the notion of really macro-managing one of these 4X types. But what I discovered was: if the details are there, I WANT to manage them, I care about the details that I know are down there.
If Dawn of War gave me the option to spend 10 minutes customizing every single troop or building I constructed, I’d feel bad not doing it. Even if the default loadout was pretty good, I would know that I could be making it better.
But there’s also no way for me to avoid this game. Complains about innovation and originality don’t change the fact that if someone was to publish a slightly shinier version of Master of Orion 2 every year, I’d buy it every time.