Sword of the Stars: Swordier, Starrier Than Ever
It's quite the time for deep-space strategising. Between Sins of a Solar Empire and Gal Civ II, there's a whole lot of universe to conquer. Hooray for conquering universes!
Less renowned is Sword of the Stars and its expansion, which was doing vaguely Sinsy stuff back in 2006. Folks on the dev team have previously worked on Homeworld games, amongst others, so there's an interesting space-RTS pedigree. Now it's back to make a second play for our hearts and hard drives.
It's certainly got its fans, and I've heard generally positive things about it, though never reaching the frenzy surrounding Sins. Happily, a patched'n'expanded Collector's Edition was released a few weeks back, complete with novelisations and soundtracks and all that sort of stuff for people who like that sort of stuff.
A demo's just been released off the back of it, which should be grand for compare and contrast exercises. Interestingly, there's also an enormous tutorial video to accompany it, which rather suggests the demo itself is a far cry from the usual starting level'n'that's yer lot misfire.
The demo's 340Mb and the tutorial video 220Mb, which has been enough to make my ISP inflict its ridiculous cap (if I have the temerity to download more than 300Mb between 4pm and 9pm, my connection slows to 256k. THIS IS NOT THE WORLD OF TOMORROW), so I'll have to actually play the thing a bit later. As long as I'm not busy playing more Rock Band whoops did I just say that er I mean some really really hardcore hex-based World War II strategy game or something yes yes honest.