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Blogs > Catch]22
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Catch]22
Profile Blog Joined July 2009
Sweden2683 Posts
March 11 2010 15:47 GMT
#1
Note, while this is in first-person, it is intended to help anyone struggling with similar problems about what to play nowadays.


It saddens me to say it, but like many before me, SC1 is hard to play after watching and playing so much SC2, I don't have the beta, but I'hve played it at friends, and what plagues me is two things.

The game itself is inacessible, since I cant play it when I want to, it gets hard to really get into SC2. Also, it lacks the soul of SC1, BUT this is probably because we're not used to it, what I like about SC1 is the whole metagame aspect with different strategies, builds etc, and SC2 isn't stabilized in that sense yet.

However, I can't go back to SC1, I keep getting conflicting hotkeys, I now routinely press 'E' for Probes, 'A' for Marines etc, and I'm having a hard time getting my eyes readjusted to the low resolutions and choppy unit movements.

So recently I started looking at other RTS games to tie me over, I used to play ALOT of Company of Heroes, ending up in the top 30 ranking of players using the British faction. Now I can't go back to playing CoH because I get so frustrated that I lack my former ability in it, and I have lost so much meta-game evolution.

Dawn of War 2 is to Company of Heroes what Wc3 is to SC, its the same game, with pretty effects and heroes that make the gameplay more about a blob of units rather than a map-wide strategy.

I have heard about Red Alert 3 being played alot online, and the same might be about to happend with C&C4, these games have a somewhat similar feel to them to Starcraft, in that its about building units, getting strategic control, getting more resources and then finally defeating your opponent.

I have virtually no experience regarding the Total Annihilation (Or was it Supreme Commander) series, so if anyone could tell me more about them that would be nice.

Does anyone have any other games that are still being played with good communities (obviously nothing close to Starcraft, but still fairly good)? What is so special about that game?

Tl;DR: SC2 made me tired of SC1, Recommend new RTS games to play.

*
Sadistx
Profile Blog Joined February 2009
Zimbabwe5568 Posts
March 11 2010 16:11 GMT
#2
SupCom 2 sucks ass. SupCom 1 is basically 100% macro spam with little squares and 20 factories. Supcom 1 had a decent high level player community, but I think it's mostly dead at this point.

C&C3 Kane's Wrath is kinda decent in that it actually is pretty balanced, compared to say Dawn of War: Soulstorm.
s.a.y
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
Croatia3840 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-03-11 16:29:01
March 11 2010 16:27 GMT
#3
age of empires 2

EDIT: it has a lot of strats and unique tactics that you can do with different races. you can also improve your micro with a lot of units on the playfield and practice effective building orders and building placement.

Also, there's the great campaign you can finish and so on. Next best RTS series to Blizzard games
I am not good with quotes
alffla
Profile Blog Joined November 2005
Hong Kong20321 Posts
March 11 2010 16:34 GMT
#4
wow you sure ditched sc1 for sc2 real fast haha
Graphicssavior[gm] : What is a “yawn” rape ;; Masumune - It was the year of the pig for those fucking defilers. Chill - A clinic you say? okum: SC without Korean yelling is like porn without sex. konamix: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!
PH
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
United States6173 Posts
March 11 2010 16:54 GMT
#5
C&C4 is a stupid macro massing 1a-move game. There's barely any micro involved in that game as far as I could tell. To be fair, I never got too into it, but aside from being really pretty, it didn't really do that much for me. I played it just for nostalgia's sake, since I loved Red Alert and Red Alert 2 from way back in the day.

I haven't played RA3 or DoW2. I played the first DoW a bit, though, but I never got into it enough to really understand how the game works. RA3, though, had professional reviewers mentioning imbalances and whatnot from when the game shipped. That they picked up on such things so early on and even went so far as to mention them in a published video review turned me off immediately, even though I loved its prequel. DoW2 looked kind of fun, but in the end it sort of looked like simplified and cleaned up version of its predecessor. Also they took out the Tau who were my favorite race to play.

Supreme Commander is complete crap. I didn't even know a second one came out. Its spiritual predecessor, Total Annihilation, was novel and advanced for its time: it had cool newtonian weapon projectile trajectories, units could miss, shoot into terrain, etc. However, SupCom took everything TA was and just made it bigger, prettier, more epic and, in the end, boring. I guess if you get really good at it, it ends up becoming interesting and fast paced, but I don't know why you would bother.

I found myself just playing defensively and macro'ing off of 20 factories while waiting an hour for my super-duper artillery battery that can hit all the way across the map through fog to finish building, then just a-move all my units to the enemy base, then get frustrated at their dumbass pathing and movement behavior in large numbers. I dropped the game after a week.
Hello
spinesheath
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
Germany8679 Posts
March 11 2010 16:59 GMT
#6
ya AoE2 isn't so bad, at least that was my impression when I tried it again for a while about a year ago. The only multiplayer experience I have with it was from a small LAN long ago, and we didn't really do much there.

But when I took a second look at it I figured that it HAS to be balanced decently (all the fractions are almost the same anyways) and it left quite some room for micro and build orders. It has a HP/dmg distribution that is similar to SC.

I don't know how it would pan out at higher levels, and I find the controls awful, but it still is quite fun to play for a while.
If you have a good reason to disagree with the above, please tell me. Thank you.
Oystein
Profile Blog Joined December 2004
Norway1602 Posts
March 11 2010 16:59 GMT
#7
Dune 2, if people are complaining that BW was hard to play they should try this.
God Hates a Coward
NrG.NeverExpo
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
Canada2114 Posts
March 11 2010 16:59 GMT
#8
I don't think i will ever touch another RTS other than SC. I tried playing AoE back in the day but it just seemed so fuckin weird.
TwitteR: @NeverExpo follow me, i'll follow back :)
intrudor
Profile Blog Joined December 2009
Canada446 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-03-11 17:04:16
March 11 2010 17:02 GMT
#9
i got a clue? how about we all admit that the NON-Blizzard (or NON-Starcraft, to be more precise) RTS world is horribly uninteresting?


its funny how people try their hands at inferior games just for the sake of doing something different.
RTS = Starcraft. its not like the FPS genre where you have a bunch of good games.
SC2, we'll see how it turns out...but ...you know..
USER MIGHT BE WARNED FOR THIS COMMENT
freelander
Profile Blog Joined December 2004
Hungary4707 Posts
March 11 2010 17:02 GMT
#10
Armies of Exigo is like sc2 without macro mechanics. Made in 2004.
And all is illuminated.
ghostWriter
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
United States3302 Posts
March 11 2010 17:05 GMT
#11
My friend told me to get company of heroes. He raves about it, but I don't even have time for starcraft, never mind a whole new game.
Sullifam
TheYango
Profile Joined September 2008
United States47024 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-03-11 17:13:56
March 11 2010 17:13 GMT
#12
On March 12 2010 02:02 intrudor wrote:
i got a clue? how about we all admit that the NON-Blizzard (or NON-Starcraft, to be more precise) RTS world is horribly uninteresting?


its funny how people try their hands at inferior games just for the sake of doing something different.
RTS = Starcraft. its not like the FPS genre where you have a bunch of good games.
SC2, we'll see how it turns out...but ...you know..

You do?

Maybe for casual games (RTS has those too--I'd never play RA3 competitively, but it's fun at LANs), but as far as competitive shooters go, I can't think of any that would pass up Q3 or CS1.6, at least in their respective subgenres.
Moderator
lac29
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
United States1485 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-03-11 17:39:16
March 11 2010 17:38 GMT
#13
Dark Reign
TA Spring - http://springrts.com/

There was a somewhat recent RTS from some Russian company that had some interesting mechanics ... lots of beams and geometry stuff ... anyone remember the name?
JohannesH
Profile Joined September 2009
Finland1364 Posts
March 11 2010 17:41 GMT
#14
Total Annihilation >> Supreme Commander. Supreme Commander is supposed to be a "spiritual sequel" to TA, but it kinda fails since the way they went doing it screwed up micro, you just control big blobs of units and right-click them around.

I recommend either trying TA or an open source TA remake on a new engine, TA Spring. The remake is quite similar to TA, change of similar scope of SCBW -> SC2 maybe. Theres many different balance mods in Spring, but 1 is most popular by far (Balanced Annihilation).

Comparing the original TA and TA Spring, Spring has more players (~300 online on most days) and better UI (but you have to customise that UI at start a bit for best effect, you have to set building hotkeys yourself). Comparing the balance in them, original TA mostly has slower gameplay and nicer to micro air-units.

http://www.d-gun.com/ Total Annihilation info page (incl. full download)
http://springrts.com/ Main Spring site, its kinda messy though :/
http://springrts.com/wiki/GamesDownloads 1st link of those to install Spring
http://www.livestream.com/igrandy Randys channel runs his old TA Spring videos when hes not playing SC2

Im playing TA sping atm, I can give some pointers if you wanna try it out. Its fuckin complex game
If you have to ask, you don't know.
fishyjoes
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
Germany644 Posts
March 11 2010 17:42 GMT
#15
On March 12 2010 01:27 s.a.y wrote:
age of empires 2

EDIT: it has a lot of strats and unique tactics that you can do with different races. you can also improve your micro with a lot of units on the playfield and practice effective building orders and building placement.

Also, there's the great campaign you can finish and so on. Next best RTS series to Blizzard games


I second that. But I am not sure if thats what the OP was looking for. If you have a fews friends to play with over hamachi or LAN its awesome. But I am not sure if theres still an online community or even servers you can play on?
infinite fun: http://dagobah.biz/flash/loituma.swf
FragKrag
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
United States11552 Posts
March 11 2010 17:45 GMT
#16
I agree with all the other guys saying AoE2

You should also try Age of Mythology! Those were some great games as well.
*TL CJ Entusman #40* "like scissors does anything to paper except MAKE IT MORE NUMEROUS" -paper
JohannesH
Profile Joined September 2009
Finland1364 Posts
March 11 2010 17:50 GMT
#17
Im also kinda interested that is there any community for AoE2? It was the first RTS I ever played, though next to no multiplayer cause internet was expensive back then.
If you have to ask, you don't know.
stenole
Profile Blog Joined April 2004
Norway868 Posts
March 11 2010 17:58 GMT
#18
I think Armies of Exigo deserves a mention. There were a handful good competitive player at european hours when I quit playing it a while ago. You could usually count on about 10 of them being online at any one time. Unless SC2 has stolen players from there, I can only assume they are still playing. Though not a commercial success, it has a lot going for it with many similarities to BW.
stambe
Profile Joined May 2005
Bulgaria492 Posts
March 11 2010 18:36 GMT
#19
On March 12 2010 02:45 FragKrag wrote:
I agree with all the other guys saying AoE2

You should also try Age of Mythology! Those were some great games as well.


Yeah age of mythology was very fun game with lots of strategies and unique stile of play. I think the community is still alive if you search on aom.heavengames.com and the were another site with rankings in it but i forgot the name. Age of empires 2 is also a good classic.
Valks rulzz
Carnivorous Sheep
Profile Blog Joined November 2008
Baa?21242 Posts
March 11 2010 19:58 GMT
#20
RA3 is a fun game, it's just not a good game.
TranslatorBaa!
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