Alexander Williams

Make a real-time strategy game too complex and you might as well ask a magician to juggle hankies in a hurricane. Sins of a Solar Empire, which calls itself an "RT4X" game—real-time "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate," the latter a mainstay of downtempo turn-based gaming—sounds even harder on paper. Explore and conquer planets in a massive, fully 3-D galaxy with planets, asteroids, comets and stars. Build elaborate fleets out of individually controllable ships with functionally unique and progressive attributes. Sail those fleets around massive planets wrapped in Saturn-like gravity rings that impact tactical velocity, prowling for hostile incursions from other factions or random pirates. Do that on half a dozen planets simultaneously, and in real time.