I came into Halo Wars with high hopes and dreams of a masterly crafted RTS, and I expected it to be a bit dumbed down because hey it’s a console real time strategy game. There was a lot of stigma attached to Halo Wars for that reason, and for the reason that a lot of people expected it to fail because they believed the Halo audience didn’t have the patience for Halo Wars. Halo Wars didn’t make it out as well as Halo 3 did, of course anyone could predict that. However the question remains.. is it good?

Some people will dismiss it without playing it and those people suck, if you’re going to bash a game, at least try it first. That being said, Halo Wars, believe it or not, is a good game. The missions are interesting, and even challenging, and everything just seems right. Let’s run through some of the strong points.
(continue reading…)

The real time strategy (RTS) genre has been popular on the PC for ages now, hell, it’s even a sport. When Halo Wars was first announced you got the general consensus from people that it’s going to fail horribly because it’s an RTS without the use of a keyboard and mouse. However, is that the case? Can it be possible for a genre almost extremely exclusive on the PC to be done well on a console? I went to find out when I downloaded the demo for Halo Wars.

Most people remember the monstrosity of StarCraft 64, I remember renting it for my Nintendo 64, and I remember loving the game for being StarCraft but hating how it was done. If you have never paid StarCraft 64 let me tell you this: Don’t. The consoles are a huge deal in RTS games. StarCraft 64 takes good controls and decides add a nice layer of shit upon it. This isn’t about SC 64 though, so let’s get to Halo.
(continue reading…)

I’ve played a good deal of competitive games, both casually and competitive. However, I’m always the one that goes to forums, reading up about everything possible, and learning the very foundations of the game.

Sadly, that doesn’t mean I’m immediately good at the game. Very often I’ll know a whole lot about the competitive state, every detail, all possible moves, but I never get a lot of personal experience. I’m hesitant to play with others, simply because I’m scared that I’ll suck. Add to that the fact that I’m easily bored, and I end up knowing a lot of things about a lot of games, but still sucking at them.

One thing that competitive games always have trouble with is Game balance. I thought I’d write some blogs (or articles) on this for multiple reasons. First of all, it’s to help me put my thoughts on paper. I have a lot of opinions on the topic but I never write them down. Furthermore, it’s to help people get insight into the matter. Often people talk about game balancing while not knowing the fine details of it. And last of all, I hope that maybe some new developers (or people that mod existing games) read this, so that it can improve their games
(continue reading…)

I’ve been playing quite a lot of the Beta of Dawn of War II, but there are a lot of people struggling with the bare basics of the game. This game is not Dawn of War. It’s just an entirely new game. To help everybody out, here are some tips to be more successful in DoW2.

Tip 1: Keep your units alive

Running away would be a good idea

The most vital part of DoW2 is to keep your units alive. All squads are small and cost a lot, so you better make sure they’re worth it. If your squad even survives with only one member alive, it’s still cheaper to reinforce it back to full health than to buy a new one. Luckily, Dawn of War 2 has a way to keep your dying squads alive, and use it well! If you press the ‘Fall back’ command (default on X), your squad will automatically run back to base (or the nearest resupply point). While falling back, you cannot control your units but they take less damage, cannot be suppressed by enemy fire and run faster. Very useful!
(continue reading…)

As most of the people who follow the RTS-genre know, and maybe some who don’t, Blizzard’s long-awaited Starcraft 2 has appeared on several events. For example, at the annual blizzcon, Starcraft 2 was playable for the general public, and even some games were played on stage. Furthermore, the developers of the game have elaborated on changed game concepts. But will these changes affect the game in a positive way?

The original StarCraft was released 10 years ago, and its expansion, Brood War, soon followed. Compared to a game like Age of Empires II, which was released a year later, StarCraft was quite basic. While Age of Empires II used 4 different kinds of resources, StarCraft only used 2: Minerals and Vespene gas. And while Age of Empires II had over 10, players could only choose one of three races or factions in StarCraft.

One of the biggest difference between StarCraft and other Real Time Strategy games, is that the game engine hardly helps the player: There is very limited automatic resource gathering, the path finding is simply atrocious, there is no way to automatically form formations, it’s impossible to queue the building of structures for Terrans, and that is only the tip of the iceberg.

But StarCraft was blessed with one thing: Almost complete control over your units. While in other games the AI might work against you while you’re manually handling your units, StarCraft just lets you do as you please. So while there is no way to automatically form formations, you can do it manually. While the AI is terrible at targeting, you can do it manually. While the AI is terrible at path finding, you can do it manually.

And this also had big influences on the skill gap between new and skill players. While the new player has his hands full with ordering his army around, the skilled player will micro his units to perfect his control over his army. This way, unless the new player gains a huge advantage by controlling the game with his economy (or rushes the skilled player), the skilled player will always win. The bareness of the game is one of its defining factors.

But of course, no developer likes to have a game with terrible path finding or AI. So naturally, Blizzard has fixed this in StarCraft 2. However, this means adjustments have to be made. For example, workers gather minerals so fast with the increased path finding, Blizzard was forced to adjust their mineral capacity from 8 to 5. But the big question is: Will these improvements actually improve the game or not?

Of course, at this point, we can do nothing but speculate. And of course, we can expect changes in the game play (otherwise it couldn’t be called a new game). My guess is that it will have a negative effect on the game.

We can draw parallels with other games. For example, let us take the Super smash bros. games. Super Smash bros Melee (SSBM) was a popular game for tournament players. It was heavily based on so-called ‘advanced techniques’, that abused bugs in the game engine to give the user an edge. Then came Super smash bros Brawl (SSBB), its sequel on Nintendo Wii. While SSBB was certainly an improvement over SSBM, with a big roster upgrade and an improved game engine, there was something lacking. The depth these ‘advanced techniques’ created, lacked in SSBB. Therefore the game felt shallow.

The situation StarCraft is in is very similar. The importance of micro defines parts of the game, just like in SSBM. StarCraft is also played a lot in tournaments. And StarCraft 2 is, just like SSBB, very pretty compared to its predecessor. Can we accurately predict the future? No, we can’t. But we can hope for Blizzard to make sure the game does not lose its depth.

Companies like Relic, Stardock and Gas Powered Games are all massive contributors to making the RTS genre sexy again. The new generation of give-it-to-me-now gamers had all but left it to die. Of course, it remains a staple in tournament play, but for the genre to thrive, it needed a much deserved series of changes.

Supreme Commander is the balls to the wall spiritual sequel to Total Annihilation. Hundreds of units on screen combined with simplistically clever gameplay has deviated the least from the genre, while still managing to bring even the best of gaming PCs to their knees when the massive battles heat up. SupCom has brought the classic RTS formula into the future and with a sequel on the horizon, the future looks bright for the massive-scale RTS.

Company of Heroes is the sign of the times; Emergent tactical gameplay allows for slower, more skill based gameplay. Micromanagement is less of a chore and is a lot more rewarding when it works in your favour. Squads will seek cover, and tanks will often reverse rather than turn all the way around and expose their weak easily-penetrated rear armour. Small but clever additions like these are what truly makes Company of Heroes such an enthralling and replayable experience. Graphically, the individual attention to detail is immediately obvious. Lowering the camera to the ground allows you to truly see the effort that has been put into realizing the characters.  Online multiplayer is essentially flawless with games beginning in minutes, and the clever automatch system imported from the Dawn of War series, Company of Heroes has crafted a nice niche in the genre which will last until the sequel is released.

World in Conflict is is an action game trapped in the body of an RTS, creating consistent warfare and allowing tactics to be key in securing a victory. As a result, the story mode feels a lot more like story. Key characters are developed, and during loading the situation is well narrated by Alec Baldwin in a concise manner, preventing boredom but setting the scene. The multiplayer is a very different animal indeed from your typical RTS fare, mainly being that it’s server based, and players can drop in and out at any time. Each player has a role to play with a choice of Armour, Air, Infantry and Support. Co-operation is essential to victory and winning itself is extremely satisfying when pulled off well. Well, that and there’s nukes.