The RTS
I know I’m really no one to speak about RTS, cause I’ve barely even the essentials. I’ve done all AOE titles and Rise of Nations, and Warcraft III and some of Command and Conquer red alert, but that’s about it I guess, unless you want to count Sid Meier’s Civ IV.
However, despite that, I am the consumer, and therefore right, unbearably naïve and demanding may be, but always right, none the less. So then here is my bit about RTS.
First of all, why are all RTS games so damn similar? I mean the basic components never vary, collect resources, kill opponents, build buildings blah blah…. The dependence on a typical collection of resources is so irritating, because of how limiting it can be, and the uncertainty it entails. You never know how much resource you actually have… and how then is the best way to allocate it, and like all fossil resources, they come to an end, and then you don’t know what to do.
No matter how real (as in choppers, air planes etc) fantastic (huge bugs, zombies etc) or what ever they make the ‘units’ at the end of the day, there is a very real, and simple formula to cracking a game and winning it… in the end all game play is repetitive, and all you really have to do is find is the right combination of hot keys.
Why? I don’t understand why games cannot get beyond this rotten paradigm, people work on the look, etc of games, but no one it seems thinks of the concept… people speak of the ratios and the fairness of different kinds of players in the games, but no one sees the fact, that essentially they are all the same units, wars, games etc.
Why cant games, if they have to be this repetitive add new ideas… Rise of Nations took great strides in this direction, which we’ll discuss in another article perhaps, but other wise the games seem to pretty much stagnate. Something which is very true of the AOE series!
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