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| Age of... | Historical | WW2 | Modern | Near Future | Sci-Fi | Spaceships | Fantasy | City Builders | God Games | |||||||||||
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The
Modern RTS List |
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| Act of War (2005) The near future is suffering the worst energy crisis ever, and terrorism is rearing its ugly head. And... (all together now) ...the only power on the planet that can save us all is the United States military. Hooray! Anyway, Act of War is a light airport read in gaming form, and there's a close relationship between "Dale Brown, 14 times NY Times best-selling author and expert on US military, global conflict and future military technology" (quoting Atari's Flash site) and French developer Eugen Systems. Its a bit like Ghost Recon in theme, with a touch of Command & Conquer. The startlingly detailed backgrounds are nice and crisp, and other little touches such as occupying buildings, roofs, or towers and calling in air strikes make it all work. You have to administer medical aid to the fallen (including your foes) and your options also include arresting enemies as well as the usual summary executions. Well, silly game plots usually make for plenty of fun - I mean if his
mate only had an inflatable dinghy it'd just be another FPS.
Act of War does have some genuinely interesting
features for once, and while the demo was suspiciously devoid of a lot
of them and its plot and triggers ran on rails, it was still an okay play
for an afternoon and offered some interesting tactics. There's no economy
as such, although you have a budget, and the demo only had a scattering
of techs to research, nothing but a barracks or two and only two types
of infantry and two types of aircraft to build. The air strike system
seems to work well, and fighting your infantry across the map building
by building was a nice touch. Act of War as a
game looks like the missing link between the Modern
Day Battlefield simulator and all those sci-fi Dystopic
Near Future Ruled by Heartless Mega-Corporations you've probably
encountered over the years. There are two expansions: Act
of War: High Treason (2005) and Act
of War: Direct Action (2006). |
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Developed by BreakAway Games, developers of Emporer: Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the expansions to Tropico and Civ III, A Force More Powerful is a radical depature from the usual violence prone real time strategy game. It ostensibily covers modern strategy, politics, resistance and liberty, but with nary a terrorist in sight. Its a game about non-violent resistance to established corruption, tyranny or occupation. And there's not a military adviser, weapon, terrorist cell or award winning experts on military technology and global conflict in sight. Basically, the game models fictional conflicts based on actual events, and offer you, the player, a selection of tried and tested non-violent strategies to overcome what most games would consider impossible. For example: an "easy" level is one dealing with old fashioned
corruption; where an established and cosy status-quo runs the country
(into the ground) while the locals are determined to bring the city fathers
to justice. A "hard" level is trying to get a military dictatorship
propped up by a foreign power with unlimited resources and an interest
in your country's internal affairs to simply respect an election. Between
these two are a variety of scenarios involving repressive traditions,
segregation, womens' rights and dealing with awkward situations where
your cause is unpopular, the supreme ruler is extremely popular and good
at winning elections, and there are violent splinter groups letting the
side down and generating sympathy for the . |
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Or C&C for short. This is the original Westwood series that pretty much established (or at the very least popularised) the real time strategy genre in its modern form. Alas, Westwood is lost from us now, well and truly absorbed by EA Games. The original Command & Conquer (1995) featured a conflict between the good guys at the Global Defence Initiative and a despicable international terrorist organisation called NOD. (A bit like Action Man and his arch villain, Doctor X.) The series also dabbled in a little Cold War politicking against the Russians in the Red Alert titles. Compared to many modern RTS games, the Westwood games are very simple, quite camp, and immensely popular. Its an immense franchise, with a mixed bag of titles. All these old titles have been bundled together in a big compendium called Command & Conquer: The First Decade, which includes all expansions and sequels. Red Alert (1996) considered by the C&C fans I've spoken to as a series highlight, Red Alert 2 (2000), and its expansion Yuri's Revenge (2001), C&C Tiberium Sun (1999) C&C Generals (2003), probably one of the better entries in the series. There's even a first person shooter set in the same universe: C&C Renegade. EAGames has released a new
title in the series: Command & Conquer
3: Tiberium Wars (2007). Like many games series in the last year,
Tiberium Wars has returned to its "roots" I suspect they'll do with C&C
what they've done with all their lazy sports titles:
churn
out the same old game formula to the same dimwits who will shell out for
it year in and year out, and milk the series long after
its
death. Pardon my cynicism. |
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Command & Conquer: Generals (2003) The last in Westwood's classic
RTS series made before Westwood
ceased to exist. Of all the Command & Conquer games
up to this point, this is probably the best and most strategically deep.
Its a power struggle
between three very topical sides: an expensive, high tech USA blowin'
up shit (in a Shrub Jnr. fantasy world where the UN Security Council,
spoilsport Europeans and world public opinion simply don't exist) the
Chinese, despite IT upgrades and switch to a streamlined capitalist economy,
still come across as a monolithic, nuke-happy Communist power of old;
and, of course, there's the convenient lumping together of the Palestinians,
Al Qaeda and your old pal Saddam all in the one boat called the GLA -
the Global Liberation Army. Odd seeing three disparate groups lumped
together, but Generals reproduces a tunnel visioned view of the world
especially prevalent in America, so its kind of expected. Now now. Let
me put that another way. The GLA would be a bit like an Arabic developer
making a game called Crusade & Colonialism: Jihad, and having a side
called the USA (United Subversive Army) that lumps the NAACP with
the KKK and the Bush
Administration, smugly tarring them all with the one brush... There's a sequel: Command & Conquer
Generals: Zero Hour. |
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| Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars (2007) A pure EA Games release. There seems to be a trend recently for long, overly milked games to "return to their roots" (like Street Fighter IV, There's a sequel: Command
& Conquer Generals: Zero Hour. |
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DefCon
(2006) The world's first Genocide-Em-Up presents you, foolish player, with Global Thermonuclear War. Shall-we-play-a-game? ![]() |
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| can't
be stuffed to stick a pic in here |
Real
War (2001) A fairly middling sort of RTS, based apparently on a real military training package for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. Real War is a little weird in that its actually a sort of under the table recruiting tool, the idea being that it will embed military concepts and values in an unsuspecting populace. ![]() |
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| Supreme Ruler 2010 (2005)
Since everything has come apart at the seams, you don't play with countries anymore but portions of countries called Regions. There's over 200 of them: you can, say, pit yourself against small European nations, or perhaps conduct a state sized squabble in the American Mid West. As you annex more territory, you start to create your own newly unified territory. While the military angle is important, you still have to lock horns with your economy, politics, diplomacy, social pressures and formidable AI's playing ambitious rival states. The developers themselves describe it as: Civilization meets Panzer General meets Sim City. It's a pretty apt description. They even claim their kids have had lots of fun play testing it. Perhaps, but Supreme Ruler is a serious contemporary Wargames, and first impressions are of a very complex and detailed simulation that'll spook most casual players. Unless you're a military aficionado, much of it is going to not make much sense because there's a bewildering phonebook of stats, numbers and management options for even your most basic units. Naturally, there's a steep learning curve trying to make learn it all.
It might look static, (and yes - those satellite game maps are full of old fashioned hexes) but this is a proper real time strategy game, complete with fog of war, malleable borders and a lot of small graphical touches. You can adjust play speed or pause it to make your moves - something you'll be doing frequently as you wade through menus and make sense of all your units. There's a passing resemblance to Civilization, but really, Supreme Ruler's ancestors are old turn based strategy war-games like Steel Panthers or the generic Empire Deluxe. Supreme Commander takes old world strategy gaming and drags it into the Twenty First Century with a huge upgrade along the way. There's a mind-bogglingly huge amount of detail and numbers in this one,
and with it a steep learning curve. If you're into something serious about
conquering the world, then its definitely worth a look. It'll demand a
fair bit of time and involvement (as all these types of strategy games
do), but you'll more than likely be rewarded with deep gameplay and considerable
depth. Besides, its a strategy game for (gasp!) adults. |
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| War on Terror (in development) Oh No Not Again. Three guesses as to what this one is about. Once again,
it looks like one of those contemporary conflicts in an undisclosed
Middle Eastern country although being developed by Hungary's Digital
Reality, its bound to have a few extra interesting details to it.
But if I see one more game that associated Terrorism with Middle East
again I'll scream. Maybe all those World War II clones weren't so bad
after all. |
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World in Conflict (2007) A modern war sim with all the gaming mod cons and many gigabytes of
graphic lushness that we're coming to expect in an age of Bioshocks and
Orange
Boxes. Developed by Massive
Entertainment (makers of the sci-fi Ground
Control RTS
series) and published by Sierra,
the basic premise here is hardly new, a typical what-if scenario that
sees
the
Cold War
becoming
very
hot with
the Eastern
Bloc
rolling
through West Germany in 1989 instead of collapsing economically. As premises
go, this was grist for the mill in the ol' 8 bit days in
the
80's (back
when
any
strategy
games
always assumed the next conflict would either be a colossal
Soviet tank invasion into Europe or a big punch up at some indeterminate,
Middle
Eastern desert). The demo clocks in at 1.2Gb. Actually, as games go,
this is looking pretty good. More to come soon. |
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| Age of... | Historical | WW2 | Modern | Near Future | Sci-Fi | Spaceships | Fantasy | City Builders | God Games | |||||||||||
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The Games List |
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| The
RTSC Rest Home |
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Last modified Sun, Jan 6 2008 by Lindsay Fleay