ironphoenix

freespeech

Ra is on That 70s Show

Xmaster

PsycheDiver

Soldrak

Tei

I've been meaning to play more it but haven't had the time to get it all together.

Atheist Jew

Guizzy

Hegemonia was a great game with lots of substance but no style. The story that was told through the game's single player campaign was largely insubstantial, without any real characters for the player to give a damn about, and the gameplay was pretty much repetition from the beginning of the second chapter onward. A great game but yeah, they definitely could have done more with it.

I've actually never played Starshatter. I should!

I will.

Atheist Jew

mizeriq

I love hearing your Nexus stories. It's true, there's nothing really quite like it. That indie game [www.starshatter.com] was pretty close to filling a nice niche, too.

pylon_trooper

Atheist Jew

[jp]

+ Watch video

pylon_trooper

As for the cruise missiles, which I loved, I wish they were faster, like missiles, and not slow as shit, like...I dunno, heavy corvettes. The Somtaww energy cannon was also really sweet for the single player campaign but in multiplay it was pretty much a "finger of god" weapon, as if you were able to get your ship within firing range of the enemy they were very assuredly smote from existence. Also, Bentusi fighters = pimp.

@mizeriq: Try to keep your rants contained to just one comment. You want to keep arguing with me, fine. But Kotaku is not the place to do it. My email is in my profile if you're that eager to go over the finer points of which one of us is more of an ass. I'm betting it's me!

Atheist Jew

Kudos to you!

pylon_trooper

mizeriq

Their MMO sounds like Chromehounds. It was fun. Wars lasted about 1-3 days and you'd get acheivements based upon winning and other things.

Chromehounds war points were a bit unbalanced and could have used tweaking, but the general concept worked fine.

JackB99

Homeworld Cataclysm was pretty great multiplayer, I thought. Cruise missiles, the beast disease oozing through fleets, the heavy cannon on the mothership....good fun.

And I never played Homeworld 2 multiplayer, but I reckon it would have been really hardcore. I loved the single player.

pylon_trooper

mizeriq

The single player campaign, I mean.

Homeworld's multiplay basically came down to who could build Heavy Cruisers/Destroyers the fastest. After that, the winner was almost always assured. Unless the other player could build something like 100+ bombers and max out their weapons/drives to make them effective against a fleet of destroyers and Heavy Cruisers, but by the time 100 or more bombers were built, usually the enemy fleet would have jumped in behind the friendly mothership and ended it. That pretty much comprised 99% of every multiplayer match of Homeworld I ever played.

Unfortunately I could never find anyone to play Homeworld 2 with, so I can't remark on that.

Atheist Jew

And I'm saddened that, while glancing over the comments, not a soul mentioned Homeworld as a hallmark of the RTS genre. Homeworld was a tactician's wet dream, with all the hyperspacing carriers and deploying fleets, salvaging enemy vessels etc., not to mention the very obvious 3D environment you battled in.

The best RTS in my books. Might be a book read by few, but it's forever the king of RTS for me.

pylon_trooper

@Scazza: Right! Absolutely. I agree for the most part, but I still don't get bored when playing this genre. If I did, how else could I enjoy sitting there playing SupCom or Sins of a Solar Empire for 8+ hours in one stretch? That takes patience. Most people...they don't have patience. See below for an excellent example.

@mizeriq: "If you just like massing armies and attack-moving play TA and SupCom"

Hmmm, someone obviously doesn't have the patience to learn how to play TA or SupCom effectively. You're just pathetically oversimplifying the games because you obviously don't like the TA/SupCom type of RTS.

See, you've got it backwards. TA/SupCom = Strategy. Starcraft/C&C3 = Tactics. There's nothing wrong with either style of RTS, but as you've just proven, each isn't everyone's cup of tea. Try to be less of an asshole StarCraft fanboy and more of an objective gamer. The numbers of people that play Starcraft vs those those play anything else don't matter in the least, and I really don't understand how your logic can be so fucked up that you think it applies in some way to my initial comment.

Atheist Jew

Honestly, the more and more I hear about this game, the more and more I can't see it being anywhere near good. World in Conflict did "simplicity" in an RTS properly; this game is just butchering the entire genre.

Sad thing is it'll still sell because of the B.S. Clancy name on the box.

TemplaerDude

mizeriq

Honchy

Grey_Fox

mizeriq

I'd say pretty fast, as the reptilian brain only has a few things to process: eating, breathing, and Halo Multiplayer. ;)

Juminatriascala

Yes, RTSs have gotten more complex. Just watching a friend of mine play Company of Heroes makes me shake my head and say "... and that's *fun* for you?"

Also, try playing blitz chess with a clock. It's pretty close to real-time, as both players are thinking frantically during the game, and can (often do) lose on time. I think that is the analogy the developers were going for.

Anyway, kudos to the developers for taking a chance... RTSs always *look* more fun to me than they are to play. And RTS on a console... just kill me now. I'm really looking forward to seeing if they figured out how to do it right.

Juminatriascala

If EndWar just cuts out all srategic elements (economy, base building) and sits you with a preset army and you have at it, the game will be boring. But, if the units act like intelligent soldiers, the customization is deep (300 for 7 units types? That sounds hopeful), and there are more micro-manage oriented game mechanics, I think this will bring people back in to war games.

I'd have to hear something pretty crushing in order for me to not buy this.

Garro

I: Say it !!!
I: Say it grandma !!!
Grandma: G...
I: Say it !!!
Grandma: GeeeeGeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee !!!!

pillo

nzapster

Scazza

Evil Tortie's Mom

P.S. how fast would you think "speed of tought" is on Xbox Live? :D

Ragarnok

So...what I gather is that they're tuning the game to a level where I can place my units and not have to micromanage each reload or shot, but when they get attacked, know how to react and defend themselves. It feels like, from what I've read, they're trying to find that sweet spot where we can be the generals and change the course of battle, but not have to worry about the nitty gritty stuff.

After reading an IGN article yesterday it seems like they might put out a beta which seems like it'd be one of the few that have an actual reason for existing. That way they could tune the voice commands and difficulty or autonomous level of our troops.

jihadjoe343

But this article increased my interest rate of this game by 10 melons. I just hope they release a demo before it ships or i'll just wait for reviews

ArmyofJuan

deathtastic

The simpler the rules, the more creative strategy can be for a game.

Guizzy

that automatically = must buy for me.

Total war is my favorite franchise, like you said, i hate 5 minute zerg rushes, total war is not like that, instead, again like you said, its a realistic version of chess, it is a perfect description.

if you actually play the campaign for total war it takes months to beat with at least 6 hours of playing time a day. and when i say beat is when you know you have won the campaign, after that its just cleaning up the barbarians.

i hope this game is just like that, instead of following a linear storyline(R6V, COD4, they are shooters but just keep reading)where they give you a specific path over a series of areas, they instead just tell you whats going on, brief you on extras, and stick you out there and let you do your stuff(like in R6 Raven Shield, SOCOM, and total war).

mentalboy11

Soldrak

Candlejack

Taco Bell™

slikz21

jihadjoe343

Kyle81

Candlejack

Yes, there are exceptions, and when you get two 'thinker' type players together that abandon the build-lists and try new things the games can be extremely fun. But then those players get matched with the automated number-crunching stat junkies and get their ass handed to them because they didn't play their side in the same pre-programmed way.

This game sounds interesting because it seems to be taking micro-management out of the equasion for the most part. To me this can be a good and bad thing, but deffinitely a direction I'd like to see these games go. I don't want to have to babysit a unit to make it effective, but at the same time I would like the control to tell it exactly where to sit or take cover. I don't want a game that plays itself, but I also don't want to have to manually tell every tank how to back out of combat and every soldier which enemy to focus fire on.

Bael

I can't wait until the day that this sort of game can get layed on top of a FPS ... where when a round begins, the objectives are set by the "general," and teams of players actually then compete to complete the goals. If it were seamless, it could be really fun. I know it was attempted in the Battlefield series to some extent, but ...

jayntampa

This one is developed specifically for RTS-noob-infested consoles. You start with all of your pieces for the map, nothing is built. So it's just that conquering part of the above formula. And you do it with an entirely new and intuitive interface. I think it'll breathe new life into the genre.

Think about it. Like shift-queuing up buildings was in TA, voice commands could be the next required feature in future RTS games if they do this right.

el_gordo

And FWIW, in Starcraft at least, once they increased the cost of the Spawning Pool, it made the 4 pool rush defendable for every race. You do however have to prepare for it in your build order. I think if you're looking for a more chess-like experience, turn-based 4x strategy games are a better bet.

darthmole12

It does sound awesome though... I hope it is!

Jekht

jihadjoe343

I personally loved a game called Ground Control that took out all of the resource elements -- I guess World in Conflict is made by the same developer, right? I should try that out ...

I'm actually excited that this takes away the twitch aspect of those types. I'm definitely very interested in this now.

jayntampa

Mr Fortitude

Personally, I've always loved the persistent campaigns and the gaining and losing of territory. Not sure what it is that makes them so compelling, maybe just the feeling that you're making a difference, however small it may be. Hopefully Ubisoft is going to constantly tweak and adjust the map so that wars don't last a day or two but take a few weeks and require actual strategy on the part of the players.

This is the perfect type of RTS for me, though, and it also seems to be the perfect type of RTS for consoles as well. Constantly rushing or turtling gets tiresome in a game, so looking at EndWar where it looks like it's more squad based and has an emphasis on tactics is a breath of fresh air. Hopefully we'll get a demo or beta sometime over the summer so that we can get a taste of this or help iron out the last little kinks.

jihadjoe343

What I meant to say is that speed is a critical factor in any real-time game, not that the zerg rush was unbeatable, and like you say, it totally isn't, but all else being equal, the player who gets what he wants up and running faster is the player who wins.

gsilverfish

JackTretton

GodzillaVsJapan

And you write for Kotaku?

JamesR87

stevesan

Narynan

Pombar

Samos42

There's nothing wrong with the genre. Not even a little bit. The only people that are being "left behind" are those with too little patience (or just time) to sit down and enjoy an RTS experience. Shouting commands into a microphone might be adding something new to the genre but it's not going to change the fact that many people simply don't have the patience for RTS games.

Atheist Jew

scottyboy218

Watch a decent game of Starcraft and the guy that rushes tends to lose quickly. There are far more dangerous rushes than that of the zerg variety.

Black-Dog-Howls

Black-Dog-Howls

I don't think any RTS could ever be compared to games like Chess, at least not in the sense that it would be turn-based and calmly giving everyone time to do what they want, because the very essence of it is that it happens in real-time; you MUST hurry. Even if there is no quick-to-develop zergling, the match is going to the person who makes use of effective strategies faster, not slower.

Anyway, I'm not convinced.

gsilverfish

JN64Lover

Black-Dog-Howls

My father is also a huge fan of RTSs and plays (usually) the original Command and Conquer often. I recently introduced him to StarCraft while he was back home on a Rest and Recuperation from Iraq, and I'm hoping he enjoys the campaigns as the 3 SC factions as well.

Hopefully EndWar is released on the PC platform so that he would be able to try this type of strategy on his laptop.

-----------

I do think there is a problem developing in the RTS genre, and SC2 seems as though it will contribute to it. The idea of an RTS as an series of (intelligent) intelligence decisions, more specifically recreating the sense of playing chess, is being diminished by the amount of "micro-management" in so many of the troops.

Arttemis

I have almost zero interest in this...poor.

Malvolio the Magician

ghnvt

phantomlink

-- Steve

Anton P. Nym

squidboy007

excel_excel

TheFinalMario

Any word on what Ubisoft is doing for the PSP and DS versions that they mentioned previously?

Also, I think you meant "A big issue" and not "I big issue."

Lstormy10

The MMO component intrigues me as well. Chromehounds did something similar, but they made the mistake that beating an AI was faster and counted for just as many points as beating a human, so everybody just went one-on-one matches against AIs to earn "points" for the territory because that was the most efficient way to do it. Hopefully Ubisoft know this and plan to counter it.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about this game as it's developed. Wiki says it's due out in the fall?

baberg

Simv2.0