So as you all know I've been playing the hell out of the starcraft 2 beta recently. The game has many layers and many strategies far beyond the first one. There are now hard counter units designed specifically to take out other units. If you send 20 marines to kill 10 roaches youll get destroyed in 5 seconds, but if your marines have 2 or 3 marauders in with them then the roaches wont stand a chance. Its things like this that make mass unit rushes obsolete (expect for tier 3 air, obviously). Now on top of that we still have the problem of gathering resources faster than your opponent, expanding your tech tree, and sending harass squads to slow down your opponent while you are assembling your main army. then theres also the choice of whether to build defense or risk going on an early offensive. however, thats not all. you also need to micromanage your units while youre doing all that. you need to make sure your ghost uses EMP on the protoss before the templars psi-storm your MMM ball into oblivion, you need to make sure to kite zealots so they dont take out your marines, and youll need to make sure you have your SCV wall off your base before the enemy probe can sneak in and construct a proxy gate.
Basically, theres alot of shit going on that you need to be aware of at the same time, otherwise you end up sucking fumes at the bottom of the copper league ladder.
but even when youre aware of all this its still hard to pull off, you need to assign hotkeys and squadgroups and swap back and forth between everything at once. something i used to be able to do, but now realize i am horribly rusty at. i try to ask myself how this couldve happened, ive still kept playing just as many games as i did back in the days of brood war, kazaa, and 56k dial up. but a glance at my steam games list shows what the problem is. almost all the games ive been working on are shitty FPS clones of each other. comparing a leveled game like starcraft to MW2 is like comparing a garfield comic strip to a hemingway novel. i suck at this game because i have fallen into the rut of playing point and click shooting games, which no matter how challenging you think they are, are just for pussies in the end.
i beat MW2 on veteran mode in under 6 hours. counter strike source is as much about skill as is making the right call on a coin flip. bioshock 2 was basically holding down "W" and drill spam, while making raspberry noises with your lips. and fallout 3, while fun and very enjoyable, is basically a sandbox game that requires only patience to win. now i know there are people who say FPS games require skill, but you need to realize that theyre idiots. and you might say there are worse things than an FPS such as MMO's like WoW, but WoW isnt even a game so much as a 3D chatroom.
so i leave this message to all of you. exercise your brain and stop playing shitty FPS games before its too late, or you will also be doomed to suffer the glory of the mass speedling/baneling mob as it steamrolls into your base while a nydus worm unloads roaches at your mineral line.
I pretty much told you how I felt about this through chat so this is really more towards the community.
I read an article today that the RTS genre is dying.
The majority of gamers today are FUCKING stupid. They just want to run and gun. Trigger happy horny teenagers. People don't want to put thought into anything.
They just want a Michael bay movie in video game format.
It's really about graphics, story (if some of them are even half decent any more) and graphics. With no regards to game play. As long as they can sell to a HUGE audience (MW2) (WOW becoming more noob friendly) why not?
Well said, you have just earned a star in my book. I love strategy games, especially RTS (Starcraft being my favorite) because there is just SO MUCH you can do to win. Thats why I enjoy older games, more thinking and more challenging. Although I love BattleField Bad Company 2 and such, I also love games like RTS. My all time favorite Strategy Game (not real time) would have to be X-Com Enemy Unknown! Its such a brilliant game and requires so much skill and knowledge of the game to play its ridiculous. Not to mention controlling your economy and destroying the Aliens.
I quite like games which have puzzles in them and you actually have to think to get past certain parts, but they're sooooo hard to come by nowadays, and any of the puzzles are usually really shitty if they are in newer games.
company of heroes....thomas you said you stay away from online RTS's well if u ever played CoH online i was the one tht killed you i had a 27 and 7 win loss ratio on there.
I remember when Counter Strike, first got really huge, I had this awesome game... HomeWorld <-- AMAZING! Nobody I knew wanted to play.. it was bullshit!
The only FPS game that REALLY forced you to develop strategy and tactics, from the weapons you carried to your movements. Rainbow Six (not exactly a fan either) I remember hearing horror stories about taking over an hour, to plan each team members path, get everyone into position, pop a door open and blast a hostage, GAME OVER.. all that work for nothing.
XCom <-- FUCKING EPIC.  The second one was just as good, after that it got a little iffy.
Another old DOS favorite of mine... Fantasy General (and Panzer General) Both Turn based strategy.
RTS games are just like turn based games.. You just have to THINK faster.
I have a GO board sitting here with me. Waiting for my Yunzi stones to get here. Learn GO, play it for a year.. start playing SPEED GO games.. and THEN you will own RTS games.
While this post is cynical as heck, I'll have to agree with it. I'm a huge turn based game fan...there just hasn't been anything good out lately, really...aside from the Total War games and the King's Bounty (so fucking underrated!) ones.
Can't wait for Starcraft II. I'm not a big fan of the WW2 RTS, so I haven't played many RTS lately. Last one I played was World in Conflict. Decent game...people are retarded online though.
Only WW RTS (not really real time, but more of a classic strategy game) game I remember really enjoying was an OLD game my brother brought home a couple years ago...it was called Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far. Oh man we had fun with this thing...
What ever, I'll have to play you Div.
EDIT: @Qain; lol...I was talking game with my programming teacher like 2 weeks ago and he mentioned Zork...said he especially liked the jokes the dev had put in the game.
I remember XCom Goddamn, did I have some fun playing that game but I played it a lot later around the time I was 8/9? (born in '93)
Such epic times I had with my old beige compaq. Than when CS came out I got a nice Dell celeron and 128mb ram and I remember buying another stick of 128mb and I was from then on I was a geek. :D AHHH! Times have changed.
I remember when CS was released. I played it before in the 1.5 stage than 1.6 was final release sierra. I remember getting my ass kicked as a 10/11 year old. Wasn't it released in '03?
my dad used to play a C64 game called Computer Ambush, and moved on the panzer general series once it was released. infact he still plays panzer general 2 online and refuses to get any other games.
i know that a really good turn based strategy came out like 5 years ago. it was called Korsun Pocket and had minimalist graphics (looked like a board game) but was rated very highly by all the reviews i saw. infact, i think i still got the cd around here someplace...
once starcraft 2 hits i plan to start up a clan, maybe affiliate it with RTW, but who knows when its actually going to be released. even though im getting alot of practice in with the beta, they keep altering unit stats every week so its hard to make consistent strategies. hopefully when they give us the map editor next month we can start having some real fun.
BTW they seem to be giving out friend invite keys to help load test the new battle.net 2.0 technology. im sure ill get a couple more keys as soon as they decide to implement 3v3 and 4v4, so maybe ill have a raffle here or something if i get an extra.
I'm all about WW2 RTS, probably because most of the new releases are from that period. Also, one of my favorite things to learn about it WW2, it just fascinates me.
fuckin hate wwII rts... mostly because the units, maps, nations, and strategies are often the exact same... with good reason, its the same fucking war. Of course theres exeptions, i like R.U.S.E and company of heroes, but i want something else really, this WWII stuff is getting old.
Challenge me in C&C3's Dead Six, and you're all dead. I'm just sayin'.
Nerding Fallout 3 at the moment. Been waiting for the game to drop at Steam's Midweek Madness since it came out, and now I need to enjoy every little f***ing sandcorn in the Wasteland to get the full experience, and feeling of the game. The result? All my TF2 experience, tricks, and what-so-ever I've been working on since Orange Box, are looong gone. Damn!
Next will be Oblivion. Metro 2033. Crysis Warhead. Fallout: New Vegas... damn, can't remember it all.
But one thing is for sure, as a veteran StarCraft enthusiast; I'm getting StarCraft II: Wing Of Liberty the second it's available. Havn't seen any good strategy games out there since Red Alert 2. Gonna keep the eagle-eye out for more, lol.
