It’s sad to see something you’ve grown up with and loved slowly vanish into obscurity. It’s worse seeing it replaced with hideous glistening monstrosities, squatting immovably in its place like a giant plastic turd, grinning smugly at you.
I’m referring (of course) to the demise of Real Time Strategy games, or at least how they were in their old form. The glory days of watching your harvester dump 700 credits of Tiberium into your silos, just 100 away from your next Medium Tank; the days of sending units to mend your buildings which were burning forever because some blocky men had hit them repeatedly with a sword; strange, nonsensical research trees and dodgy path finding which would cause your entire attack force to get stuck in odd bends. Those were the days… right?
VGChatz's Taneli Palola: "There's no question that during these years the overall popularity of the genre took a significant hit, as most games within it specialized even further by adding new elements from other types of games into their gameplay loops and consequently became increasingly niche as the years wore on.
However, this doesn't in any way mean that the period was devoid of great games. Quite the contrary, in fact. Arguably some of the greatest RTS titles ever made came out around this time, and much of this was because many developers were increasingly familiar and comfortable with adding new twists and gameplay elements to the familiar formula. As such, even when the genre's popularity dwindled, many studios were still creating excellent and groundbreaking titles almost every year, just for a smaller audience than in years past."
those were fun years red alert star craft command and conquer well when westwood studio made good games before EA brought them like bioware...
Aside from C&C 4, the other C&C's from EA were all good/great. The genre nose dived once Moba's rose in popularity, even Petroglyph Games (ex-Westwood employees) haven't had a hit since Star Wars: Empire at War (2006), all there games got abandoned after launch.
DSOGaming writes: "Remember Supreme Commander 2? You know, the strategy game that came out in 2010 and featured A LOT of units on screen? Well, for those three people that still remember and play it, modder ‘purplelf’ released a new mod that allows gamers to play the single-player campaign in co-op mode."
"This week when I was scrolling through my Steam library for a game to play I was stumped, until I found a mod which brought fresh air to an old classic. The game was the legendary Dawn of War series by Relic. The Dawn of War expansions; Winter Assault, Dark Crusade and Soulstorm along with other stand-alone titles like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, give the universe the justice it rightly deserved."
This article has one major flaw, Dawn of War 2 is one of the most innovative RTS games to hit the market in recent years, it's as far from a C&C clone as you get.
I understand what he is getting at by them becoming more of the same, but it's a very old genre, look what's happened to FPSs...
There's still some innovation left in RTS, End of Nations will attempt the MMORTS, Natural Selection II will get FPS/RTS done right.
It's not down and out just yet.