Real Time Starks - The Wrap Up

Opinion from Starks - Tuesday, 08 September 2009 @ 12:38pm

Months ago I got the opportunity to write some reviews on a whole bunch of Real Time strategy games. I had three of them sent to me almost within days of each other, and then the AG curse struck again and the final title was delayed as the swimmer sending it over from Uzbekistan got caught in a big-ish rip whilst making his way through the Indian Ocean and ended up at South America. Once there, he went hiking through the Incan trail before road tripping up to Canada to have a ski at Whistler. I heard it was about then that he remembered he needed to deliver the game to me, so he called up my man Og and asked for directions.

Suffice to say Og gave him the wrong directions, the game ended up at Yug’s and the big daddy himself wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. So it got used as a coaster for a few weeks before I called him up and asked him to send it down. Which he did via Slow Post; the cheaper alternative to Australia Post.

Anyway, so here is my belated wrap up. My aim with this is to try to give the reader an understanding of what the game achieved for the Real Time Strategy genre of games. My criteria is as follows:

• Innovation – Did they try something new and add an element to the genre never before seen?

• Polish – Was the game well made?

• Enjoyment – Did I enjoy the game?

In keeping with AG’s style of not giving marks for this I’m simply going to describe the changes and try to frame my answer as a statement, and then get Og to respond as the little green gherkin has played them as well. It will hopefully provide some good reading. If anyone actually reads this.

Halo Wars

A game that was traditional in its game play yet ground breaking for the system it was designed for; Ensemble Studio’s final project was one designed for the Xbox 360. In keeping with their ‘Age of Empires’ formula, Ensemble managed to design a game based in the Halo-verse and in a manner that would suit the console medium. The major hurdle for Ensemble was designing controls to make the console gamer comfortable and easy to manage. They achieved this and made what could have been a frustrating experience into the enjoyment of playing a quality title.

Innovation – Halo Wars did and didn’t innovate; They utilised an older style RTS scheme that was drawn from Age of Empires, and transposed it successfully to consoles.

Polish – The game was most definitely well made and held no major bugs. The cut scenes were a joy to watch.

Enjoyment – A whole lot of fun, but it did begin to get repetitive after a while. ‘Build, destroy, build, destroy, build, destroy… and then repeat.’

Og – Og like game. But think controller dumb. Poor economy. Nice explosions. Funny aliens.

Total War – Empire

Creative Assembly, a local Australian producer for SEGA, are really on to a winner here. Their Total War franchise is not only successful here and overseas, it is a wonderful endorsement of Australian game production. Their Empire title is also bloody addictive! I’m still playing it. I don’t think I’ll stop playing it for a while. In any case, Creative Assembly are continuing to release patches to remove small glitches and my enjoyment keeps growing.

Innovation – In actuality, they didn’t do anything vastly new. They added the naval combat system, which is pretty darn cool. But they stuck to a tried and true formula, and really gave it a major refresher. Which is good, but just not as innovative as you might think.

Polish – Although I did mention that they are releasing patches to clean up small bugs, these are only slight adjustments to a very, very shiny product. Stunning visually and really clean to play.

Enjoyment – I have to say, of all four of the titles, this is the one I love the most. It is a real enjoyable game that keeps getting better as you play it.

Og – Empire good. Has lots of shiny-ness. Wicked economy, make Og feel like tyrant. Og scared of water, not so keen on boat battles.

Dawn of War II

As an ex Warhammer geek, I did have some preconceived notions on this game. It would be remiss of me to state that it was exactly what I thought it would be. I thought that, although they did a really good job, Relic could have done better in several areas, such as including more than one race. Still, I guess they had a plan and they went ahead with it. I did like the way they framed the game; Small, squad like skirmishes that had a lot of emphasis on tactical nous with a driving storyline to keep you interested.

Innovation – Frankly, and I didn’t realise this until after I played the game, Dawn of War II reminded me a lot of Chaos Gate; An older Warhammer 40k title. Yes, both are from differing genres, but there’s a lot of common ground. They also seemed to utilise idea’s used originally in Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds

Polish – Clean, precise and with only a few release bugs. I haven’t played much of this lately (Which is surprising, but my interest dropped off rapidly a few months after I got it) but I would suggest they’d have patched a few things by now.

Enjoyment – It was fun, but repetitive. Realistically, the multiplayer held my interest until it began to get more difficult to find games.

Og – No Orks = Phail.

World in Conflict – Soviet Assault

The sequel to a game I really, really enjoyed, this was a game I was looking forward to. It didn’t let me down, and I played through the campaign without distraction from any other title. I did feel that, by the end of it, the storyline of the game itself limited the ability to ‘expand’ on the original. In this manner, I was happy to have Soviet Assault, and also surprised they went there as the original played like a ‘one off’.

Innovation – As a pure expansion, it offered nothing new than a different storyline.

Polish – The game was as clean as you get. All the patches completed on the original were taken into account for the expansion and I did not have a single issue with bugs.

Enjoyment – I liked the game as much as the previous; It held my attention a little less, but it was great.

Og – Soviet tanks more fun than American. Think accent is better too.

As a wrap up, I found that the only game that really offered anything new was Total War – Empire with the expansions they offered and Halo Wars with their bridging of a genre to a different medium traditionally not for RTS’s.

The reality is, though, that none of the four games offered me anything ‘new’, although they all offered me 4 different flavours to the RTS genre itself. It made me reflect on the probability that there would have to be something truly groundbreaking in order actually innovate in a manner not previously played by gamers.

Given games such as Imperium Galactica, Sins of a Solar Empire and Total War have included in their games the ability to macro and micro manage, titles such as Halo Wars, World in Conflct and Dawn of War II are more at the tactical, intimate level where gamers are taken to a place of ‘Squad Leader’.

Such a wealthy spread of diversity in one genre does indeed make innovation a difficult element to add into a game. However, I hold hope that developers our there are looking to expand on an already wide horizon and challenge gamers with new and different ways to play a Real Time Strategy.