You’ve all, I’m sure, heard of a little game called Elite. But how many of you have actually played it? Ah, a fair few of you. Well, you’ll have some idea then of just what a pain it is to do just about anything. Even the relatively mundane task of docking with a space station is terrifyingly difficult.
Empire is a space-based trader/shooter game along the same lines. It even has vector graphics. But it’s also all (well, almost all) viewed from overhead, and has a much more arcadey focus on the shooting. It’s altogether a simpler, more accessible game. Losing that extra dimension hasn’t really taken anything away from things; in fact it’s made things more playable. Take, for example, the simple case of planets. They’re pretty big things, and can fill up your whole view when you get close enough. You’re certainly never in any doubt as to just how close you are to them. Unless, of course, you’re playing a game that uses vector graphics. When a planet consists entirely of a white circle, you don’t have to get all that close before the edges are beyond the scope of your screen. Unless, of course, you’re viewing things from above. In that case, you can count the pixels before you’ll need a new spaceship.
Flying dangerously close to a planet in Empire. Scary when you’re at full speed and only see the planet at the last second.
There’s a planet right there. Honest.
While most space ‘simulators’ just drop you in space and let you get on with things, travelling around and trading crap, Empire gives you something more. Every so often you’ll be offered a mission, such as clearing a solar system of alien pirates. (Generally it’s best to try and clean up any new system you travel to anyway, if only to make it easier to travel around.) These missions offer you real rewards, like ship upgrades, and only the first mission is essential (without it, you won’t get a trading pass, and won’t be allowed to do anything at any space stations – and it’s very unlikely that the next mission offered will be in the same solar system).
Until you get a hyperspace upgrade, you have to actually fly between systems.
There’s no real trading in Empire, as such. Instead, you need to take materials to a friendly space station – once they’ve got the resources they can make equipment for you. There are only three types of resource, too – ore, people and minerals. They’re collected from the various planets. You fly down to the surface (at which point the view switches to a first person one) and pick up pods full of one resource type, then you have to tow them to the space station a few at a type. It’s a bit more involved than the Asda-runs of other trading games.
All-in-all, Empire is a great, simple little game. The clean graphics style still holds up today, and it’s a crying shame that this game isn’t more widely-known and remembered. If you like in-depth games that aren’t bogged-down in minutiae, you should give this one a try right now.
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