Though it probably won’t move from very good to great until they finally get that 1.02 patch done, you can win a copy of Europa Universalis III courtesy of the developers and the people at Tacticular Cancer if you have a good idea for a game setting. Details over at TC.
(I’m not entering because I already have the game, and my ideas are too brilliant for Sweden to handle.)
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The once-trendy “real-time strategy” (RTS) genre — popularized in the late ’90s with games such as “Blizzard’s Starcraft” and Electronic Arts’ “Command and Conquer” — is poised for its long-overdue comeback.
So says the venerable Marc Saltzman over at CNN in his review of Supreme Commander. Apparently two old fashioned RTS games (SupCom and Command & Conquer 3) are going to restore the genre to the trendy side of the street. This may not be the silliest thing ever written about RTSes, but it’s pretty close. Comeback? Where have they been?
From the opening paragraph, I gather that Saltzman doesn’t play many PC games anymore. If he did, he would notice that the RTS is by far the heaviest hitter in the strategy genre and probably the dominant genre that can’t be easily found on consoles. Somehow he works in a reference to World in Conflict, a Sierra RTS with not a lot of buzz behind it but ignores the fact that last year’s Company of Heroes was the number one or two PC game for almost everyone in 2006.
He ignores that in the many years since Total Annhilation and Command & Conquer ruled the roost, the RTS has spun out into a wide ranging subgenre with titles that emphasize micromanaging particular units, macro economic issues, story telling, role playing or just big explosions. There is no acknowledgement of the great work still done by Ensemble in its forte (peaking, in my opinion, with Age of Mythology) or the substantial talents at Big Huge Games, who decided not to do a Rise of Nations II because they thought a fantastical world like the one in Rise of Legends would be more interesting. The aforementioned Company of Heroes was developed by Relic, the makers of Dawn of War – another success story. Then you have the ten dozen Eastern European RTS makers who churn out variation after variation on the battlefields of World War 2, some good, some not.
Marc Saltzman is too smart a guy to not know some of this. The “comeback” of the RTS is a non-story. Even if a comeback was needed why would you put hope in a hardcore ballbusting game like Supreme Commander?
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Just returned from opening day at RFK where the Nationals began what is sure to be a disappointing season by losing 9-2 to Dontrelle Willis and the Marlins. Hanley Ramirez was 4 for 5 with two or three stolen bases. It was a scorchingly hot day for April, too.
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April showers a trickle of new strategy titles into the gutters of armchair generals and desktop gods.
April 4 – Frontline: Fields of Thunder (Paradox/Nival), The Sims 2: Celebration Stuff (EA/Maxis)
April 17 – UFO: Extraterrestrials (TriSynergy/Chaos Concept)
April 19 – Theatre of War (Battlefront/1C)
April 24 – Ancient Wars: Sparta (Eidos/Playlogic), Fairy Godmother Tycoon (EA/Pogo)
UFO and Ancient Wars: Sparta were delayed from earlier in the year; Sparta‘s been pushed a couple of times. They have to strike while the 300 fire is hot, and need to make some changes from the preview copy I was playing a month ago.
The big title for the month is Theatre of War, from the developers of super flight-sim Il-2 Sturmovik. I have a preview version somewhere on my desk. I loaded it up but it didn’t play well with my dual core (to be fair, I was warned that the preview copy wouldn’t). So I haven’t played much. It feels a lot like a prettier Combat Mission.
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Just to be clear: Not everyone is having problems playing on-line… the majority of people are able to get online, play games, and a have a great time.
That’s EA Executive Producer Mike Verdu on the continuing problems with Command and Conquer 3 multiplayer. It worked fine out of the box, but the patches have forced me to use Hamachi or similar virtual LAN setups.
Now maybe people are playing through the EA Online setup. I find it interesting that when I was in the casual lobby yesterday there were no games in the game list even though there were lots of people in the lobby including three or four EA customer relations people.
Nobody that I know can play through EA Online; I can’t even stay in the lobby long without getting a major crash because of an error in one of the .dat files.
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Medieval II: Total War
On to the fisking of the press release (which can be read in its entirety here.)
“Kingdoms will offer an unprecedented amount of new content that gives gamers over 75 hours of epic new gameplay.”
Unprecedented. Epic. I move that we ban these words from the gaming PR vocabulary. Still, 75 hours is helluva lot of time.
Turns out, this is a campaign pack, so the grand campaign will see minimal changes. In other words, like the other Total War expansions, only bigger.
First up, the Americas.
“[P]layers will be able to retrace the steps of Hernán Cortés in 1519, as he seeks to explore and conquer The New World. Players can earn the support of Spain and explore the mystery and riches of the New World, or take control of the Aztec or Native American factions and call on the Gods and the bravery of vast armies to see off this new threat.”
I would have liked to have seen this connected more tightly to the original campaign game. In Medieval 2, getting to the New World takes more time than it is worth, and for minimal benefits. The American territories don’t work well to put you over the top to victory since they are too far away to reinforce easily and by the time you can sail there you have easier pickings in the Old World. Still, it’s nice that the Aztecs become a faction you can play.
“Players can experience a bloody clash between pagans and Christians in the Northern European Teutonic Wars”
Neat idea in an undergamed part of this era. In fact, religion is one of the big themes of the expansion.
“Kingdoms will also include a new expanded Crusades campaign, where players renew their fight for control of the Holy Lands, with new factions, devastating new units (such as the terrifying Greek Flame Thrower), legendary heroes and powerful holy relics.”
See?
But holy relics introduce the threat of something that this series really doesn’t need – magic. Maybe they will add morale bonuses or something, which sort of makes sense. Kind of like that mobile Cross thing. But if King Richard pulls out a Holy Hand Grenade, counts to three and obliterates my camels I will be ever so pissed.
And it’s “Greek Fire”, by the way.
“[T]ake control of one of 5 factions in the Britannia campaign when England faces war on 4 fronts as once conquered lands rise up against them.”
Norman England versus Wales, Scotland, Ireland and the Saxons? Just a hunch. This will be the least popular campaign, I’ll wager.
On the surface, this expansion offers more than Barbarian Invasion
Sega is promising the usual explosion in units and factions, mostly limited to the “magnifying glass” campaigns.
The most interesting part of the announcement, though, isn’t in the PR blurb at Shacknews. From the official Sega site:
“All-new 1v1 hotseat multiplayer campaign mode”
It’s really a shame that I have nobody in my house who will play this with me. And I suspect I’m not alone. Still, this is a sign that Creative Assembly thinks that the Total War campaigns can be done in MP. It can’t be that much of a conceptual leap from hotseat to IP connection. Fingers crossed for the future.
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