Last year, when we discovered the Star Wars Empire at War Remake mod, Fraser Brown requested to be frozen in carbonite until it was done. I guess we can thaw him out because I just checked the mod page and hot damn. Not only does this mod update the game to cutting-edge visual standards with new models and effects, it adds new units and deepens the game mechanics. The most recent release, the 3.0 update, brought a whole host of new stuff and graphical improvements to the mod. Empire at War is a strategy game released in 2006, and we still consider it to be one of the best space games on PC.

I’m a particular fan of this mod because of its philosophy: It doesn’t really muck with the core game experience or add too much new material, but it does rework what it needs to and adds (optional) much-needed difficulty. Empire at War Remake has also been given the Mod of the Year award by the ModDB community, surprising literally no-one. It won the same in 2018 as well. Here’s a bunch of pretty pictures of the mod in action:

You can get Star Wars Empire at War and its expansion, which you’ll need for the mod, pretty cheaply on Steam or GOG, just $6.99 for the winter sale. You can check out Empire at War Remake: Galactic Civil War on ModDB, or go straight to the 3.0 update. The mod community also has a Discord server.

Oh, I was going to thaw Fraser out. Maybe I will after a few hours of Empire at War...

Star Wars: Empire at War, one of the best space games on PC, has never looked this good before. The Empire at War Remake mod has been around for years but the latest incarnation is especially swish, as you can see from the fancy Star Destroyer battle above. 

“This mod catapults Empire at War into 2018,” reads its ModDB summary. “It maintains the game's design philosophy, while adding new units, better graphics and deeper gameplay.”

It’s been updated a lot this year. The mod’s creator, Jeroenimo, has big plans. They want to turn the galaxy into a “varied and alive ecosystem”. The three main factions—Rebellion, Empire and Underworld—have been reworked, while new factions like the Mandalorians and Clone War Separatists have been thrown into the mix. The Vong are in the works, too. 

A ‘Lite’ version of the mod is available at the moment. From now on, though, instead of incremental updates, Jeroenimo plans on waiting until the mod is fully functional and feature complete. 

This is also a good excuse to remember the time that Andy pitted Star Wars against Star Trek in Star Wars: Empire at War. A proper battle of the franchises.

We described the 2006 Petroglyph RTS Star Wars: Empire at War as "a deep and beautifully-rendered take on Star Wars strategy" in our 2015 history of Star Wars on PC. More contemporaneously, we also said that it's "probably as close as we'll ever get to the grand RTS that the films deserve." So in short it's a really good game. There's only one problem: When Gamespy was shuttered in 2014, it spelled an effective end to Empire at War multiplayer, and thus a big reason to actually buy and play it.

That all changed today, however, as Petroglyph and Disney released an update that re-enables multiplayer support through Steam, in both the core game and the Forces of Corruption expansion. The patch also adds mod support via Steamworks and fixes a number of graphical and stability issues, "so you won’t get interrupted by errors and glitches as you fight for control of the galaxy." 

"We have continued to watch the EAW community closely over the years and  appreciate all the excellent support you have given us and the game," Petroglyph said. "Our thanks to all of you for the great feedback, awesome mod packs, and  overwhelmingly positive reviews and Disney for facilitating the release  of this work.  We hope you enjoy this special update."

Coincidence or not (and I expect it isn't), the Star Wars: Empire at War Gold Pack on Steam is also on sale over the weekend for half price, cutting it to $10/£7.50/€10. The full patch notes are below. 

• Gamespy completely removed as multiplayer solution in lieu of Steam multiplayer back-end in both FOC and EAW
• Enabled windowed mode support
• 2 internal crashes found / fixed – no specific repro steps available
• Fix for broken object shadows in Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
• Fix for start game button not highlighting on mouse over
• Fix for multiplayer campaign save/load not picking the right save game on the client
• Support for more than 3 AI players in applicable games
• Fix for galactic save/load not loading a save game unless it's in slot 0
• Disable General Network Options button – This was only applicable to old modem/GameSpy players
• Hooked up community/web buttons to appropriate Steam overlay pages/websites as applicable (The old Gamespy buttons simply don’t work anymore so we repurposed them)
• Enabled selection/list of player mods on hard drive
• Crash fix for attempting to load an FOC mod in original EAW game
• Bug fix for creating units that are non-selectable in very long duration galactic mode games (makes save games unplayable past a certain point)