{"id":611,"date":"2007-04-02T19:09:34","date_gmt":"2007-04-02T23:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2007\/04\/02\/how-can-i-miss-you-if-you-never-leave\/"},"modified":"2008-02-18T03:46:58","modified_gmt":"2008-02-18T07:46:58","slug":"how-can-i-miss-you-if-you-never-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2007\/04\/02\/how-can-i-miss-you-if-you-never-leave\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can I Miss You If You Never Leave?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So says the venerable Marc Saltzman over at CNN<\/a> in his review of Supreme Commander<\/em>. Apparently two old fashioned RTS games (SupCom and Command & Conquer 3<\/em>) 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?<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, a Sierra RTS with not a lot of buzz behind it but ignores the fact that last year’s Company of Heroes<\/em> was the number one or two PC game for almost everyone in 2006.<\/p>\n

He ignores that in the many years since Total Annhilation<\/em> and Command & Conquer<\/em> 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<\/em>) or the substantial talents at Big Huge Games, who decided not to do a Rise of Nations II<\/em> because they thought a fantastical world like the one in Rise of Legends<\/em> would be more interesting. The aforementioned Company of Heroes<\/em> was developed by Relic, the makers of Dawn of War<\/em> – 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-9R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}