I've found a new SIN, and of course this one is highly-addictive and will eat up all your time.  Fortunately it's a computer game, which may make it easier on those attempting to perform an intervention...

Sins of a Solar Empire (or just “SINS” to it’s legions of fans) is a title I first saw on the shelves about a year ago and it looked intriguing, but more like one of those highly-involved "Expand and Conquer" games - and I was looking for a "space-shooter", for lack of a better term.  I had liked games like Descent and some of the Star Wars titles where you actually fly the spaceships around in first-person (and preferably of the heavily-armed, hot-rod variety.)  I finally decided to give it a try though, and I was right - it is one of those involved expand-your-empire games ... but it also just happens to be really, really GREAT! 

The makers of this game have developed what they call "RT4X" - which is a combination of Real Time and "4X" gameplay.  (4X stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate.)  This one is space-bound - which is to say everything takes place in space and there's no "ground action", but there's plenty of Hollywood-style epic space battles that will play out in thrilling graphics on a good system.  It's fun just to sit back with some popcorn and watch it all happen!

And the graphics are really beautiful if you can crank them all the way up, but I'm also spoiled by my 22" widescreen monitor and 1680x1050 display because there's plenty of real-estate for all the panels that surround the main action-window of the game.  I imagine some of these might make smaller screens awfully crowded, but all the various info panels and displays can be turned off/on, and you can clear the whole screen of them to see cinema-like action with a quick hot-key combination.

I would say the game also has aspects of a Systems Simulation (like SimCity), where the object is to grasp the functioning of the system well enough to manipulate it to your own ends.  When you start to juggle all the different angles of the game, you'll see how I can make this comparison… 

You start out with just one planet and limited resources, and from there you must pursue the Four-eXes: Explore the surrounding planets and systems; Expand your empire by colonizing other planets; Exploit the resources you find in your expansions; and finally you have to Exterminate any other races who are doing the same thing.  You must do research in civilian and military fields; train and recruit new troops; develop your planet’s infrastructures; build laboratories, refineries, ship-building facilities, trade ports, communication hubs, defenses, and more.  You'll also be building up your fleets of ships and using the benefits of your research to get bigger, better ships and weapons – all while plotting the next move in your expansion.  But watch your back (and all of your phase-lanes, for that matter) … at least one other race is on the move – probably doing the same thing you are - and will soon challenge you for your turf!

There’s also diplomacy and the chance of allegiances between races; collecting bounties placed on one race by another; a black market for buying and selling resources; and Pirates often come raiding just to mix things up!  Finally there’s the mysterious “Artifacts” that can be found if you take the time to explore all these planets you’re conquering.  These oddities are often very beneficial, but I understand a few of them are things you’d rather NOT find.

For the single player there’s lots of variation.  You can choose from Small, Medium or Large randomly-generated maps; and each of the small-medium-large sections have many other scenarios to play with specific setups and objectives laid out.  The Medium and especially the Large maps are really too much for a single player, with some of them involving multiple star-systems (connected by wormholes) and hundreds of planets!  If you have a mind to you can always use the game’s built-in map editor to create your own scenario.  These homemade scenarios can also be shared with other players, and the system accepts MODs and plug-ins created by users and other third parties.

Add to this the fact that you can play any of the three biological “races” in the game, and each has its own technology.  This means that everything is different for each race – from its biggest ships and its most audacious weapons to the research that develops these things.  You could say that each race has a completely different set of toys to play with, which leads to each race having individual strengths and weaknesses.  That only adds to the game’s re-playability since you’ll be faced with learning at least three systems of technology if you want to be able to play each race, and that could take some time in itself!  But “re-playability” isn’t much of an issue in a game like this … you may as well ask how re-playable Chess is.

While the game sounds too involved to keep track of with any grace, the interface allows you to access and control just about everything with minimal clicking-around and changing views.  And the pace of the game is balanced just right – the time spent on all the various tasks is rewarded by the time spent actually doing something in the game … like wrenching control of a planet from your foes and colonizing it for yourself!  Once again these action/battle sequences can be spectacular with all the boom and flash you’d expect, and there’s even “camera shake” when something big blows up if you want to turn that effect on.

It’s definitely a Space Opera, and you get to be George Lucas with this one and call all the shots yourself – and that includes literally calling the shots, as in controlling the “camera” that brings you views which zoom smoothly from system-wide angles showing the entire solar system – to close-in levels that allow you to see the dirt and detail of the individual ships.  (I can’t image what the actual ratio is … 50,000:1 wouldn’t surprise me!)  You also control all the rotations of the camera through what I believe are no less than seven-degrees of movement once you also count Zoom and the lateral rotation they call “twist” – so you can follow the action from any angle or distance and smoothly change from subject-to-subject (which is like switching cameras).  Cameras can also follow any selected object (a ship for instance) maintaining it’s view as it does, and this in combination with the awesome graphics and effects makes for really stunning battle sequences.  They can even be recorded as movies and played back or shared with others.

You also call the shots in that you can direct any of the action you’d like to take control of – but all the ships know what to do and will choose the best, most logical course of action called for.  That means if there are enemies present, they attack without waiting for a cue from you.  It’s fun to be aware of a group of enemy ships at the planet next door – then come “barging in” with your fleet…  The minute the two factions are in the same “gravity well” of a planet, they’ll begin to go at each other like Piranha and you can grab that bowl of popcorn and enjoy the fun shoot-em-up-in-space show!  Or direct individual ships to attack individual targets of your choice if you want … you’re the director!  (But you might want to let the ships just do their own thing, if you also want to be the victor!)

You probably couldn’t sell a game these days that you couldn’t play online, and SoaSE will let you play through online servers or across LAN and other networks – but this brings us up to what may be the game’s only fault … it can take HOURS to play even the shortest of games, and there’s just no such thing as playing a few rounds of SINS on your lunch break!  Once I had the game figured out enough to play it well, it has taken me between five and six hours to complete the “small random” game and win it, which I’ve done several times now.  (Of course you can always get your ass kicked and surrender in less time.)  You can save the games and return to them later, but I imagine this could be a real logistical problem if you’re playing with a large group of people over a network – and returning to a single-player game at a later date runs the risk of you “forgetting where you where at” and what exactly your strategy was.  This is a game for a rainy day or night when you can make a pot of coffee, turn off the TV and other distractions, and just loose yourself in the fascinating and intricate balance of gameplay that the developers of this prize-winner have achieved.

The original game is still listed at WallyWorld-dot-com for almost $40, but I believe the in-store price is closer to $30 or even $20.  (You’ll want to go online and get an update for it if that hasn’t made it into the packaged version yet.)  An expansion for the game called “Entrenchment” is out that adds new ships, weapons, defenses, fields of research, and more to the game and is selling for only $10 where you can find it.  According to the company they will release one more of these $10 expansions, then offer the game and both expansions as a boxed set for the holidays this year (2009 … hopefully). 

The official website is http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/ (though it seems to be messed up at the moment), and a Wikipedia page about it is here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire

Here’s a screenshot of how it looks on my setup …

… and you can see more in full 1680x1050 desktop-size in a gallery of screenshots I have here : http://markcorder.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=6301

So if you're a Boomer, think: Risk meets Stratego meets Monopoly meets Command and Conquer meets Battlestar Galactica ... and then some.

If you dig intricate games of expansion and conquest, would like to try it on a HUGE scale with a sci-fi space-fantasy theme, and have enough time to waste or No-Doz to take …

… HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!