RTS Games

Post by **Grimmie** » November 25th, 2005, 17:01

So, Generals and Warcraft seem to be the very escence of our RTS gaming at the moment - but I'd like to spice things up a little. Add some hot peppers to our stir-fry of strategy, so to speak. I'll nominate a few games and give you links to their websites and review pages, and you tell me which ones you like the look of, or which ones you think look poo?

1)
Age of Mythology
I've personally played this one quite a lot. It's fun, the teams are pretty balanced, and there are some very interesting myth units and god-powers to play around with, which can truely end up turning a heated battle around. Namely Skadi's frost power, Hephaestus' plenty-vault and Thoth's Meteor power. Granted it can be a bit samey at times, it could be a laugh?

Singleplayer lets you follow the life and adventures of Arkantos, a greek hero, who is fighting against a greater menace than he was ever prepared for, the expansion allows you to play through his son's life.

The titans expansion pack adds three new major gods of the atlanteans, a few new improvements, and an entire new civilisation to play as.

Gamespy AoM review.
Gamespy Titans review.

2)
Rise of Nations
This is more a strategy-based title, and more serious than the above game, concentrating on age progression through from nomadic times all the way up into the information age. The resource gathering system means you spend more time expanding, building and researching, instead of dealing with what you want to gather, and how much. It's a clever little game with a lot of great ideas - (Think real-time-moving borders, wonders that actually make a difference to how you play, land sea and air units, nazi flamethrowers..)

However, it can get very samey, with battles based on "Who researches the fastest" and thus gets the more powerful units. When you've reached the top of the age ladder games can result in a stalemate that lasts for hours, where victory is decided on how many units you send in, rather than your skill. Though the thought of a couple of entrenched minigunners coming up against a line of archers is.. Wonderful!

Single player consists of skirmrishes, or a "Risk!" type conquer the world campaign, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

The Thrones & Patriots expansion chucks in some nice gameplay and GUI modifications, a few more civilisations, nice units, new maps and a government system.

Gamespy RoN review
Gamespy T&P review

3)
Act of War
This is C&C Generals on drugs, simply put. It's Generals goes to hollywood, gets laid, gets featured in a tabloid, get's drunk, throws up in the gutter and makes a profit!!

But fucking hell. It looks very pretty.
Three sides are the Americans, who have pretty tanks and infantry, your very basic side. Then there's the GLA'esque "Consortium", who are compiles of a lot of middle east, and soviet russia type peoples. They're a mish-mash of terrorists. Lastly is the frankly annoying Task-horse Talon, a bunch of goody-two-shoes american special ops "WE'RE HERE TO SAVE THE DAY!!!11" Types. But they're fun to play with.

All the units feel very nice, realistic, chunky. But unfortunately the entire game feels like this. The buildings are huge, but to scale with the rest of the things around them - (Which is nice, everything feels the right size.) The main problem I had was the massive GUI which takes up almost a third of the screen, and makes looking at your horses a bit difficult.

Still, it's a nice, pretty game, what will eat up your video cards for breakfast and shit them out into a bowl for lunch. Oh, and it's 6GB hueg, so go and get the DVD version, if any.

Gamespy AoW review.

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Prepare for more when I get around to writing them.
I will definitely be singing BFME's praises, and also help Deject on his quest for finding AOE II players!

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » November 25th, 2005, 17:13

Out of the above, I've only played Rise of Nations. I found that I enjoyed it quite a lot, but that the development through the ages was, as you said, very much a race to see who can get to the top the fastest. Never played any multiplayer other than skirmishes against the computer tho. Would be willing to try if theres interest...

Sticky Label · Post by **Sticky Label** » December 21st, 2005, 15:50

I have Act of War. Completed the campaign, but the mp maps seem a bit small, I think. I'd still give it a go, however.

Post by **deject** » December 21st, 2005, 16:04

I want to say Rise of Nations, because I've played the demo and it was really good, but it may be too drawn out for a casual game or two.

Sticky Label · Post by **Sticky Label** » December 21st, 2005, 16:08

Talking of extra games, would it be possible to run a com port emulator over hamachi? If it is, we should be able to play both Red Alert and original C&C. This would rawk.

Post by **deject** » December 21st, 2005, 16:22

Sticky Label wrote:Talking of extra games, would it be possible to run a com port emulator over hamachi? If it is, we should be able to play both Red Alert and original C&C. This would rawk.

the problem with getting the original C&C and red alert is that to get them to run I've had to use DOSBox, and it runs a little funky. The RA windows installer won't run on Windows XP at all, even in compatiblity mode.

Sticky Label · Post by **Sticky Label** » December 21st, 2005, 17:31

Er, I wouldn't know about that. I've managed to get them both running fine on XP, many times. And I have no idea how to use the dos box, I haven't used DOS since I was about 8. There are instructions for it somewhere, I'll have a look for you.

edit/ this works for RA and C&C
http://www.cncnz.com/features/tech/raxpfix.shtml
You just need a little initative.