I'm always searching for something rare and unique and RTS keep giving me something new to look at. Be it something like Homeworld with its 3D universe or something classic like Z Steel Soldiers which introduced us to a very basic version of what we see in the DOW and COH series of games featuring capture the area game play.
The Guild 2 in which plays sort of like a cross between the sims and mafia with a birds eye camera. Start out as a peasant, rob people, build a trade, buy a position in the political scene. Marry and kids to gain more people to control and the list of things goes on as you back stab and have people fight battles for you which you have some control over. Hard to figure out but interesting. I think it's made for Co-op.
Assault Squad is everything company of heroes is not. This takes the best parts of a war simulator, mixes it with an RTT, and has a direct control feature that makes you feel like you're playing a mix between a third person shooter at times or a MOBA hero but it's not quite a hero since it's a tank or an infantry man. The simulator part is in penitration and angles. Your armor is either penetrated or not. Then based upon that the damage is given to you in different ways, killing crew men, disabling a part of the tank, disabling the tank itself, or destroying the tank. It's interface is a good challenge too. There are a lot of tricks to be learned to get a great edge over other players. Got it on steam. Look for a sale. Try it online 1v1 - 5v5. Co-op too.
Kingdom Underfire is a game that mixed button mashing brawling game with smart but simple RTS game play. Very interesting for something on a console. Koreans make some interesting games. Also the heavy metal sound track fits well with all the brutality. Loved this game and the fun with siege and archer units a few years ago. I recall it having online features. Not sure about co-op.
*Gameplay @ 2:20
Battle_Realms - I want to say that it is like a WC ripoff with an Asian theme. I like this games resource system of having water and rice. Reseed is something missing from the genre currently and its a part of what made those cnc titles interesting up until they started becoming poor SC clones. Standard MP features IIRC.
Anyone have anything cool to share? Questions? Comments? Share VIDS!
Kingdom Under Fire is an amazing game. Stronghold Crusader is one of my all-time favourites. Its a pretty resource based game, collecting wood, stone, iron, assorted foodstuffs. Then deciding whether you'll train Arabs or Whites. Best part is training >9000 arab slaves and running them into the apple farms of the enemy. Good times.
The only newer one i played was Stronghold 2, which imo was pretty terrible compared to Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader, but I guess its a matter of preference. I couldn't take it when they added a unit that ran around with portable boats on their backs.
This is as rare and unique as it gets for RTS and it was made in 1998.
Probably still my favorite game (although I can't play it anymore), its weakpoint was its tiny community. It would have definitely proved to be a great e-sport if the exact same game came out today, super advanced for its time (Direct X 5 yo).
A cross between an FPS and RTS, the UI was extremely intuitive and fluid too it was simple to manage your RTS mechanics and FPS at the same time while still having a lot of depth and a huge skill ceiling. You think vulture patrol micro was hard, how about actually aiming, dodging, refilling ammo, all while building your base and microing your forces.
The main crux was that there was no topdown view (or at least it was never the most efficient way of doing things), everything was first person, so you could choose to stay back and manage your base better, or attack with your army (much stronger offense as you can micro yourself and your army) and macro blind. This would also open doors to all kinds specialists depending if they had better multitasking or vehicle control.
A lot of the inherent problems with an RTS/FPS hybrid were solved very creatively. An armory could rocket-launch ammo-packs and weapons to where ever you wanted, so even if you in the midst of battle, you didn't have to go back to your base to do certain things. Buildings could all lift up as well, so often you would find yourself nomadically moving bases to find new resources or set up a contain. Maps were also unique, they were true 3D Planets, in that you could fly in a straight line and end up back where you started.
There was still economics harvesting and whatnot, you could customize each vehicle with different weapons as well, as well as eject and continue to march on foot. Many starcraft-ish elements, NSDF played a lot like Terran in BW.
Don't play the second one (Battlezone II) that was shit. The races/units/mechanics had no depth, and it basically turned it into a top-down RTS (they made the game easier by introducing top-down management view and all that whizz) so there was no point going into first person mode (you just macroed and a-moved your units). They also completely destroyed the theme by introducing an alien protoss-like race, so the Russians and Americans banded together to fight them which completely ruined the feel of the game. I really liked having humans pitted against other humans fighting over moon resources, introducing the alien invasion and 50 other planets completely turned the themes upside down.
Achron maybe. The time traveling mechanic is something that no other strategy game has explored. If you can get past the learning curve, lack of players, bad pathing, and bad graphics, it's actually a fun and complex game.
Perimeter is pretty unique. I played it a long time ago so my memory might be fuzzy... but basically it plays like your average RTS, except the units you build can be combined into other units. You can build some basic units and combine them into different "real" units. This next part is where my memory fails me, I can't seem to remember how the resource system works, but each player has a territory and you can terraform the terrain to capture more. IIRC you gather resources by terraforming but I might be wrong.
EDIT: Earth 2160 isn't that unique, but it features a playable faction that is. In a normal game playing with the aliens you start with two units. Almost all of the alien units can collect resources and if you "fill up" one of the units, you can split it (splitting yields another copy of the unit) or upgrade it, upon which it will have empty resources again and you have to do the process again. The fun part is how it will snowball if your opponent lets you get away with it. The other races are your standard basebuilding type factions.
Warlords Battlecry 3 is another one that is fairly unknown. It isn't very unique or original though, but the way they've designed the game makes the actual gameplay pretty different from normal RTS games. It plays out very similar to Warcraft 3 on paper. You get a hero, you gather resources and build stuff to murder your opponent. There are some creative stuff in the resource system, but nothing groundbreaking. The cool part about this game is the content. This game features SIXTEEN factions to play! In addition to this, your hero is separate from the factions so to speak, so you can play any hero while playing any faction. The hero you create can be of any faction and you get to choose a class from a list even bigger than the race list.
How does this make the gameplay different you ask? It is pretty obvious that this game isn't and never will be balanced. There is just too much content which makes any attempt at balancing futile. This is exactly what makes the gameplay different. There are so many combinations of stuff you can pull, you simply never get tired of it, there is always something new to try.
In one way the imbalance actually makes it more balanced than it should be. One imbalance cancels out another. I could probably make a list of 50 strategies that will win you the game without fail, unless pitted against said strategies. When we played competitively we had to set up some rules to at least not make the games end with whoever pushes the doomsday button first. With so much content there were too many rules, we simply played with (and I'm not joking), common sense. If you play for awhile you will notice what is totally broken. Most of us who played during the golden days could recognize these things pretty fast, so you just had to have some common sense. (Most of the broken stuff is related to making a hero with hardcore focusing in one spell or ability, because they are all broken at higher levels)
I played this game hardcore for a long time. There weren't many players to play with competitively (maybe twenty players or so at the most) and unfortunately there is basically no community at all for it nowadays. You have to arrange games using your favorite IM program and connect through hamachi or direct IP to play, which made it difficult to set up games.
Woops, got a bit carried away there but whatever. I urge anyone who might be interested to try this game!
Ground Control is a 2000 real-time tactics video game developed by Massive Entertainment. It features 3D graphics and a free-floating camera which allows one to zoom in and out and view the action from any angle, from a bird's-eye view to the perspective of one's own assault units at ground level. As a real-time tactics game, Ground Control completely does away with resource and economic management. One must therefore focus all attention on controlling a limited set of units to achieve victory.
Units in the game include various types of tanks, hovercraft, aircraft, and infantry, and are delivered to the battlefield by orbital dropships. However, once in battle, the player is not able to summon reinforcements, so proper troop selection between levels is a key to success. Each unit type has special weapons, abilities, and armor. Players can choose to customize each unit or let the game auto-select the load-out for each mission. The units of the two factions in the game differ in several areas: the Crayven Corporation has hardier units that rely on traditional ballistics and movement. The Order of the New Dawn's units trade heavy armor for a hover propulsion system that grants them increased speed and mobility, and use energy weaponry that give them more damage potential.
I guess it's already got somewhat of a presence on this site, but I'll go ahead and mention Netstorm.
It's different from other RTS-games in that all your units except your Priest and resource gatherers are stationary. Once you've placed a unit it will act automatically without you being able to interfere. The game takes place in the skies and you start on a small island with your Priest. The map consists of a starting island for each player, a random number of neutral islands and a number of Storm Geysers, which provide the only resource. The latter two are usually scattered around the middle of the map so controlling them is key to victory. In order to move around the map the player must place bridges to connect islands, Storm Geysers and units. The game is won if a player captures an enemy Priest and sacrifices him on an Altar. It features 4 different tech paths of which all are accessible to the player as long as he builds the correct tech structures. There's a lot more to it than just this, however.
If you want to give it a try there's still a small community for it at www.netstormhq.com
Rise of Legends. Ahead of its time IMHO. They tried to create a competitive community with tournaments but I don't know if the game still lives on. One of my all time favs.
The campaign is awesome. You select one of the three main houses (Atreides, Harkonnen, or Ordos), with each their own unique specifiltiy units, and vie for control of the planet Dune, and it's previous resource, Spice. Each of the three branches is different - they have different "special" missions that help spice up the game. For example, in Harkonnen, halfway through the campaign, the two sons of the previous Emperor begin infighting for control of the Harkonnen seat of power. You, as commander, will pick which side you will fight for.
Also, there are special "sub missions" throughout the game which give you special units to recruit into your army if you help the sub-house enough. For instance, to have the ability to build a Fremen Barracks, you have to protect refugee Fremen long enough to help them find a new home. Conversly, if you don't want to be with the Fremen, and instead help the Sardauker, just kill all the Fremen! Perfect logic. ;p
I love that game. Too bad I can't play it anymore. :[
Great old game, where you would choose where to build building, what to units to train, and what upgrades to get, but the units were largely autonomous. You could influence their actions by setting reward flags (fight or explore), using up your gold, but they could ignore them if they chose. Each unit that you trained was a hero unit, and would level up from a variety of actions. They would also loot monsters or enemy buildings after they killed them, and got the gold that you spent on any reward flags that they earned. With the gold, they could buy equipment from the blacksmith, get it enchanted at the wizard's tower or poisoned at a level 2 rogues guild, get heal pots and special items from the merchants etc.
What made the game really cool was that the heroes had different behavior depending on their class. Rogues would steal, and were the most likely to respond to rewards. Elves would play music at inns. Wizards would try to find artifacts or research spells. You became far more invested in your heroes than in your units in other RTS games - this chaos knight saved my ass before and had better equipment as a result than that one. I suspect that behavior varied even within classes, but I don't know if that's actually true. Death was also permanent unless you used a resurrection spell (again, a gold cost. Spells were one of the main ways to deal with a threat right away as you could choose how to use them.) pretty quickly.
It also had a pretty interesting tech tree, where you could only get one race (Gnome, Elf, or Dwarf) and one or two temples (which gave you access to spells and had the most interesting units) that you had to combine in different ways to solve different problems. The campaign involved different puzzles where some things were allowed and others weren't, along with changes in maps, events, and objectives.
Edit: Majesty 2 has a lot of the same ideas, but it's bad. If you're interested in the game, do yourself a favor and play the original. It stands up to time reasonably well, imo.
Haaha was about to post sacrifice too - love the 3rd person style RTS controls.
Startopia is really awesome, but is more of a sim with RTS aspects. You manage a space station, and it's in the style of Douglas Adams - the game is a tribute to him if I remember correctly.
I played a game called Impossible Creatures forever long ago, I remember very little about it. The gist was you have a bunch of animals/bugs, and you can make units by combining them, creating a hybrid with unique stats.
On December 16 2011 17:09 Dalguno wrote: I played a game called Impossible Creatures forever long ago, I remember very little about it. The gist was you have a bunch of animals/bugs, and you can make units by combining them, creating a hybrid with unique stats.
Anyone else play it?
I loved that game, played it online to the death and was pretty damned good!
EPT![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Battlezone_Coverart.png)
They also completely destroyed the theme by introducing an alien protoss-like race, so the Russians and Americans banded together to fight them which completely ruined the feel of the game. I really liked having humans pitted against other humans fighting over moon resources, introducing the alien invasion and 50 other planets completely turned the themes upside down.![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a8/Ground_Control_Coverart.png)
![[image loading]](http://localhostr.com/file/Bluzxz2/connection-islands.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://riseoflegends.com/NR/rdonlyres/F817A23C-456C-48FD-9FFA-F1D7EA1A50FC/0/screen9.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://riseoflegends.com/media/022006_Screenshot_07.htm)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tAtNY.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://pics.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/1051076134-00.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/14/Startopia.jpg)
