Star Wars: Empire at War -- Forces of Corruption [PC]

Star Wars: Empire at War won considerable critical acclaim at its release back in February. The first Star Wars-themed strategy game to really nail the subtleties of the genre, it melded space and ground-based tactical combat with an innovatively implemented interstellar strategic game. Forces of Corruption is Empire at War's first expansion, and quite simply it's a corker. But what it does best isn't the way it adds a creative, original third side to the classic two, nor the decent added campaign or the extra units all round. No, Forces of Corruption's best feature is exploding Ewoks.

Seriously. They're one of the more fiendish units available to Corruption's new side, the Zann Coalition, and are launched by an otherwise unarmed dude who shuffles about dragging a mysteriously bulging sack behind him. Give him a target and he'll produce an Ewok from his bag, strap a bomb to the fluffy fella's chest, point him in the right direction and send him off. The ensuing combination of explosion and anguished, slightly surprised squeal is nothing short of poetry.

Of course, there's more to Forces of Corruption than suicidal teddy bears, hilarious though they are. The Zann Coalition isn't based on any existing Star Wars lore, so the designers have been able to indulge their creativity without restriction, and it shows. One of the big guns in the Zann space arsenal, for example, reminds us more of something from Freespace than Star Wars: it's a hulking capital ship that fires huge, awesomely powerful projectiles.

Best of all, the coalition leader Zann is a real bad guy. Not like the Empire, which is too bureaucratic and vast to really qualify. Zann's only interested in money and revenge, and has absolutely no moral compunctions about...well, about anything, really. Playing the bad guy is always fun, and Zann's charismatic machinations -- amid the incompetence of the Empire and their war with the well-meaning but irrelevant Rebellion - really entertain. The campaign soon introduces a couple of new characters, mercenary droid IG-88 and a force-sensitive rancor-summoning witch with a lightsaber whip, and all have strong voice acting. You'll be hooked in no time.

Some of the campaign missions do drag on a bit, requiring you to plod around largish maps fulfilling repetitive objectives with little in the way of payoff. Still, by now you've probably tired of the included missions and are ready for something new. Corruption is pretty good, as single-player RTS campaigns go, and serves as a handy tutorial on the new units and concepts along the way. 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.