Metareview - Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
by Alan Rose 
{ Oct 30th 2006 at 4:30PM }
This is turning out to be the season of strategy expansions, with AoE III: The War Chiefs and Dawn of War: Dark Crusade already available, and BFME2: Rise of the Witch-king shipping in four weeks. The just-released Forces of Corruption extends your Star Wars: Empire at War experience by adding a third playable faction, the Zann Coalition, to the galactic struggle. Much like the Hutts, it's all about profit for crime lord Tyber Zann, and he intends to plunder the considerable resources of the Empire and the Rebellion with the help of IG-88 and a new rancor-summoning Force witch. Yoda joins the ranks of the rebels, while the Empire now has Dark Troopers.
- Yahoo! Games (90/100) enjoyed blowing up Ewoks, but also appreciates the authentic environments: "Some maps, like the one set on Cloud City on Bespin, or the scene of Zann's infiltration of Coruscant, are genuinely creative, occasionally approaching a Diablo-like focus on one or two main units without a wider force to distract you."
- GameSpot (81/100) likes the new criminal element, but warns of performance issues: "There's a price to be paid for some of the huge battles and missions that you'll undertake. Even with most of the graphical detail settings set to low, the expansion had frame rate issues running on a midrange machine that ran Empire at War just fine with the details set to high."
- Game Informer (75/100) recommends this expansion for extended universe fans: "If you're one of those guys (or gals) that can quote every line from every movie, but you've never heard of Grand Admiral Thrawn, then Forces of Corruption isn't for you. Meanwhile, if you know the details of how Darth Maul was trained, or who exactly Aayla Secura is, then come on in to the pool. The water's fine!"
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
BklynKid @ Oct 30th 2006 5:28PM
Who's really gonna take a review from Yahoo seriously?
darko82 @ Oct 31st 2006 9:29AM
Yahoo! Games isn't bad, but they only tend to review the most popular games, not some of the more obscure titles.
If you can blow up Ewoks, this might be worth checking out.
Steve J @ Nov 28th 2006 12:41AM
I found the new Star Wars Empire at War Forces of Coruption expansion to be beset with multiple problems, mostly due to all the bugs in the game, but also in the game play itself, in that the Consortium is just too powerful. I tried the other factions and even on the easy level the Consortium AI smashes me over time. Playing the Consortium was fun however but I also wanted to play the other factions and here disappointment set in. The game needs more balance and all the bugs that are in it ought to be fixed. I won't list all the bugs here but they are many and often very annoying, check out other reviews. I hope LucasArts fixes these problems and fixes the balance problem too. Then the game will be worth playing, regardless of which faction one chooses. At the moment it is a mess.