Halo Wars Addict got an interview with Graham Somers, Ensemble Studios' community manager. Naturally, this outreach is in his job description, and a blog titled "Halo Wars Addict" will probably deliver a positive piece. But it's still worth a look if you're interested in the real-time strategy version of the Halo universe, due out sometime this year, hopefully, or early next year.

Somers speaks at length about the pitfalls of RTS design, the responsibility the dev team feels in working with Bungie's existing Halo universe, and other things that make up a great RTS game experience. But he doesn't drop much in the way of confirmable news tidbits, just:

• Halo Wars and Ensemble Studios will have a presence at E3 this year. (We'll keep our eyes peeled).
• The game will ship "when it's ready," so, nothing specific on the date.
• No promises, but developers are aware of Machinima enthusiasm and may ship Halo Wars with tools to assist in its creation.

Halo Wars Addict Exclusive Interview: Ensemble Studios

Impressions: Lock's Quest Mixes Old-School With Innovative Ideas

THQ was here in New York City this week to preview its Fall 2008 and holiday season titles, and to me, one of the most promising titles was Lock's Quest, a DS genre mashup that's a little bit real-time strategy, and a little bit action, due for release sometime this fall.

The first thing that caught my eye when it was shown to me was its old-school vibe: traditional-looking 2D sprites and animation plus anime aesthetic, a little bit of a surprise from a publisher who seems to have hitched its star on family-friendly titles with broader appeal.

So what's cool about Lock's Quest? Hit the jump for impressions and screenshots.

Battleforge's Drawn-Out Battles In Action

The Stalin vs. Martians Interview

We've mentioned the Russian RTS Stalin vs. Martians, which is set in Siberia circa 1942 and features the Red Army versus ... martians. Kieron Gillen has posted a funny interview with Alexander Shcherbakov, the lead creator, over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which features tantalizing hints at future projects (A game featuring Lenin? A winter add-on pack for Stalin vs. Martians?), as well as some generally gaming related chatter:

Still I open up the reviews section in the gaming magazine, check the latest releases and most of the time feel that I just don't understand who's buying all this crap. Make me say "Wow!" or go to hell. Perhaps I'm just tired of gaming. Strange enough, but most of my favorite titles are not katamaris and patapons. It's more like, Civilizations, Street Fighters, one or two odd Game Gear titles like Defenders of Oasis, Tetris (I had to say that for patriotic reasons) and Shenmue. Actually, Shenmue is my weak spot, I speak about "original concepts", but deep inside my heart I want to make a couple of Shenmue clones. And I will. The story will be unique though. You know, I'll run a random word generator and get something like: Lenin, vampires, steam robots. Sounds good enough.

Worth a read through — Shenmue meets Lenin, I can't wait.

RPS Vs. Russians: The Stalin Vs. Martians Interview [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Silverlode Interactive's SAGA is a PC MMO RTS that allows you to develop and maintain your own city and build your army using an innovative booster pack system, similar to that found in collectible card games. There's a free version available at the SAGA website, but in order to participate in trading, guilds, or PVP combat you have to buy the retail version for $19.95...unless you head over to FileFront between now and May 11th to sign up for one of 50,000 retail keys, which gives you access to the full game for free. It really is an interesting game, and with the whole shebang being free to play, relying on booster pack sales for revenue, you've got nothing to lose but some hard drive space.

SAGA Installer At FileFront [FileFront]

BattleForge: EA's Answer To Magic: The Gathering

"BattleForge is the next step in compelling RTS gameplay by taking the battles completely online," stated Executive Producer & Vice President Richard Leinfellner. "With co-op play, challenging tournaments, Guilds, chat rooms and a robust marketplace for trading and buying your cards; BattleForge is the first RTS to add integral social and community components to an exciting fantasy RTS."

World in Conflict, the PC based Cold War conflict RTS is grinding its gears to make its first big debut on consoles. The developers are billing this tale of the Soviets invading Germany not as an expansion but more of an "enhancement" to the original. The game is essentially the same as the PC version with some key differences such as this time rather than being from the Soviets perspective, we get the US perspective. That makes up the majority of the story changes and other changes have been implemented in the controls and menu system.

RTSs are traditionally menu deep affairs much more suited to the many keys of a PC rather than the limited buttons of a game controller. From what I could see, the developers (Massive and Swordfish Manchester) seem to have done an admirable job in making the switch from PC to consoles and have completely reworked the control and menu system to suit console specific controllers. FPS like camera controls allow you to navigate quickly and easily and a tracking reticle makes it easy to pinpoint that specific enemy. A new, simpler menu interface adds to the ease by making it unnecessary to dig through layers of menus to find the one you want. You can also take to your Global War Room to compare your victories and battles with fellow players from around the world.

Whether or not World in Conflict will successfully make the jump from PC to consoles (where many others have failed) remains to be seen and I will let RTS aficionados be the ones to make the final judgment. My personal experience with such games is admittedly rather limited, but I do wonder how the depth of a PC menu system can be truly duplicated in a console version. It seems a herculean task but if they can pull it off it could mean more successful console RTSs in the future. Look for World in Conflict to made available for your PS3 and 360 later this year.

Stalin takes the anti-ET military operation under his personal control. The operation is top secret and practically nobody knows about the fact of extraterrestial intervention. You take control of the Red Army troops and start kicking the alien butts under the wise Stalin's guidance.

Buy Soulstorm, Get Dawn Of War II Beta Access

First Dawn Of War 2 Details

Details On World In Conflict Console Version

360 Supreme Commander Pushed Back

I got a chance to sneak over to Ubisoft's San Francisco office during the Game Developers Conference and sit down with Michael de Plater, creative director Tom Clancy's EndWar, to talk about the upcoming voice-command strategy game. Better still, I also got a chance to actually play it—and what I saw impressed me.

De Plater said that part of the impetus for the game was the fact that, as real-time strategies have evolved, the genre has left a lot of people behind. People like my dad, even people, in some cases, like me. People, basically, who aren't interested in dealing with a Zerg rush five minutes into the game and instead want to play something a bit closer to, say, a detailed and realistic game of chess.

"One of the things we hear a lot of us is 'I used to love real time strategies, but it's gotten too complex'," he said. "So we decided to make a tactical game, slow the pace down. We call this game strategy at the speed of thought."

EndWar Gameplay

Console RTSs Are Good For The Genre

Petroglyph's Creative Director Adam Isgreen is an RTS veteran, having worked on loads of Command & Conquers and, more recently, Universe at War. But he isn't worried that RTS titles making their way to consoles will in some way dilute the experience. In fact, he believes just the opposite:

...you could look at the transition of RTS from PC to console as "dumbing down" of the genre, but really that's completely inaccurate. The evolution of RTS from PC to console is all about re-discovering the core fun of the genre while stripping away the redundancy, over-complication, and bloat that has been attaching itself to RTS games over the years.

EA Officially Alerts Us To Red Alert 3

The Future of Real-Time Strategy Games

Gamasutra has an interesting little essay up on the potential future of RTS games - one focused less on total annihilation of the enemy and more on the subtle complexities that are the mark of war in the real world. Unlike a lot of pie-in-the-sky game design articles, this one simply mentions a few aspects that could be tweaked and modified in years to come, with the hopes of providing a more satisfying gaming experience:

No RTS game will ever be able to represent politics in lifelike detail. These games are, after all, simplifications of reality. Still, RTS game developers could add a tremendous amount of strategic depth by building politics into their games. Players could be released from micro-managing society and the battlefield, they could be exposed to enemies both within and outside their societies, and they could be given more strategic options than attrition.

It's an interesting little essay if you're into the RTS genre - a little innovation is never a bad thing, since even the most beloved of genres will get a little stale after years and years of more of the same - though I have to wonder how many players would be truly interested in big changes.

The Future Of The Real-Time Strategy Game [Gamasutra]

Well speak of the devil! X-Play's 2008 Best Strategy Game award-winner Supreme Commander is heading to the 360 early next year, perhaps gunning for the top spot among the 360's library of strategy titles, which mainly consists of PC RTS games it has already beaten. How were they beaten? Giant killer robots. 9 out of 10 dentists recommend giant killer robots along with regular brushing to help prevent tooth decay, according to the national bureau of stuff Fahey just made up. It's true!*
*- It's a lie.