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I know they've somewhat fallen out of favor, but old RTS games are some of my favorite(s). It's sad because after some point (I'm not entirely sure when/why) these really fell out of popularity. I think some of the reason is that they demand a pretty intense amount of attention and muscle memory, and I would venture a guess that Starcraft 2's hypercompetitive scene may have made the more leisurely RTS games fall out of favor. I don't know. I miss the old RTS games of yore! Some notable older RTS games that are probably maybe worth your attention:  Warcraft, Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness, and Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. I mean honestly what needs to be said here? These games launched the spectacularly popular World of Wacraft and helped make Blizzard what it is today. Strangely, though, if you've never played them before you might discover that 1 and 2 are really thematically different from what WoW ended up turning into. They are darker and much more difficult than modern day WoW would lead you to believe. I'd recommend checking them out if you haven't. They're wonderful and there's a reason that they ended up being turned into the most popular game of all time. They're also available on GOG easily so it's not difficult to experience them pretty much as they were when they were released. WHERE TO GET IT: Warcraft 1 and 2 on GOG Warcraft 3 is in a worse position. It was re-released as Warcraft 3: Reforged but that, uh, has been a bit of a mess (to put it lightly). The game is, as far as I can tell, not easily purchasable in its original form. Your best bet is eBay or Amazon or something of that sort. Sorry.  Command and Conquer, Command and Conquer: Red Alert, Command and Conquer 2: Tiberan Sun, etc etc etc. There are a LOT of C&C games - some are excellent, and some are pretty dire. Thankfully, in my opinion, the first several are really good and a lot of fun typical RTS games. Plus, they all feature profoundly weird acting from some big-name stars so that's always a gem. C&C and C&C: Red Alert were recently spectacularly remastered (one of the best remasters I've ever seen), so that makes them a really easy and worthwhile pickup if you have any interest whatsoever. I also strongly suspect they will proceed to remaster #2 at some point, but that hasn't been announced yet. WHERE TO GET IT: C&C and C&C Red Alert Remastered on Steam C&C The Ultimate Collection on EA Origin  Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth 2: Soulblighter were games made by Bungie (yes, of Destiny and Halo) back when they were primarily Mac (and a little PC) developers. They're the reason I made this thread and I'm particularly unhappy that no similar followup games of any sort really exist. They're unusual RTS insofar as they have absolutely no base building mechanics or unit training - you get a few characters per map and just have to make it through the level with those guys. I particularly love these games for the great writing combined with the absolutely wonderful blood splatter mechanics. Get a few dwarven bomber guys in a line and you can make a complete mess of the enemy team and terrain. If you haven't played Myth (or haven't played it in a while) I'd definitely recommend checking it out. Apparently Myth 3 is alright (it was made by a different team) but I honestly can't speak to that at all. WHERE TO GET IT: It also has a modernized engine maintained by the community (which is / is not opensource, I can't quite tell) which works quite well and even enables multiplayer though I can't imagine that many people play it anymore. You can find it here: Myth and Myth 2 on Project Magma  Homeworld, Homeworld 2 and the forthcoming Homeworld 3 were games made by Relic Software and are the only RTS games that I'm aware of which operate in an entirely 3D space. They're more typical RTS games (building units, collecting resources, etc) but the storyline in Homeworld 1 is universally recognized as being one of the best of the genre and the music is just spectacular. Seriously, give this a listen and tell me this isn't some of the best videogame music that's ever existed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyyL_TICbrU Unfortunately things take a bit of a downward turn in Homeworld 2, but it's still worth a playthrough. Apparently #3 is being made now, 17 years later, but we'll see how that turns out. There have also been a few spin off projects such as Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak which I really enjoyed but it's a much more traditional sort of RTS, and Homeworld: Cataclysm which is wonderful and absolutely worth a play if you never got a chance when it came out. These games are all really, really good looking even by modern standards, so adjusting to them isn't much of a challenge. WHERE TO GET IT: Gearbox remastered the games and re-released them. The graphics updates are really nice, but there are some issues with the unit behavior as the games were put into a unified engine and I guess that didn't exactly go swimmingly. Homeworld Remastered on Steam Homeworld Cataclysm (renamed Emergence) on GOG  Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, etc. I have a lot more experience with TA than SC, but these games work pretty hard to have the highest unit counts for any contemporary RTS out there. Supreme Commander (and #2) particularly emphasize just absolute masses of units with huuuuuge super units that make for some pretty spectacular battles. I think TA is my personal highlight of this series (and, again, wonderful music) but this series always struck me as a bit of a strange outlier in the RTS scene. Nothing else is really like them. WHERE TO GET IT: Total Annihilation is available on Steam TA Kingdoms is available on GOG Supreme Commander is on Steam  Age of Emprires 1, 2 and 3 are sort of a mix of Starcraft / Warcraft and Civilization. They're much faster paced than, say, Civilization but they still have the technology tree / advancement / cultural differences that Civilization brings. They're really, really fun and they've recently (all?) had really good remasters that has, apparently, caused a resurgence in competitive games and stuff. It's pretty easy to get caught up in Age of Empires games for hours and not really realize where the time has gone. WHERE TO GET IT: Age of Empires: Definitive Edition on Steam Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition on Steam Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition on Steam I'll add more to this OP as time progresses, but I figured this was a good starting point. Pathos fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Dec 23, 2020 |
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Dec 22, 2020 11:26
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OpenRA is a good way to play Red Alert/Tiberian Dawn/Dune 2000 and probably a few more games in modern resolutions with modern controls, both single and multiplayer https://www.openra.net/
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Dec 22, 2020 12:15
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Nice OP! Got to recommend the C&C Remastered Collection on Steam as the games are still really fun to play, and the remastered spritework looks fantastic. Also the soundtrack is just as good as you remember, even moreso due to the higher audio quality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w-FQoNrwHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mYBVSaRw5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1w73s4WvuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8jpckwZhHQ Convex fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Dec 22, 2020 |
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Dec 22, 2020 12:51
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Yeah, it really is worth noting that the C&C remasters are possibly the best remasters ever made. They’re exceptionally good - the music is resampled / remastered, the FMVs have a ton of processing to try to upres them, and 100% of the graphics have been redone in 3D but then rendered out to sprites to perfectly match the original game. You can, of course, also switch back to the original graphics at will, too. If you have ANY interest in C&C, grab the remasters. They’re really, really good.
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Dec 22, 2020 13:13
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I came here to mention my favorite RTS: Metal Fatigue! I will do a bit more of a write up on it later. But, I'm curious if anyone enjoys it as much as I do?
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Dec 22, 2020 14:37
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The Homeworld re-releases do not come with Homeworld Cataclysm, one of the best (possibly the best) Single Player expansions ever made.
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Dec 22, 2020 14:42
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Barudak posted:The Homeworld re-releases do not come with Homeworld Cataclysm, one of the best (possibly the best) Single Player expansions ever made. Sidenote that this was renamed to Homeworld Emergence due to Blizzard getting the trademark, and is also 89% off on GOG right now.
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Dec 22, 2020 14:48
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Kazvall posted:I came here to mention my favorite RTS: Metal Fatigue! I will do a bit more of a write up on it later. But, I'm curious if anyone enjoys it as much as I do? it was very cool and ahead of it's time. Reminds me of Warzone 2100 in that regard (which has been open source since 2004, found here: https://wz2100.net/).
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Dec 22, 2020 15:18
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Convex posted:Sidenote that this was renamed to Homeworld Emergence due to Blizzard getting the trademark, and is also 89% off on GOG right now. Oh hey 0.99 for a standalone, thanks!
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Dec 22, 2020 15:22
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You know what game was totally underrated? Z.
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Dec 22, 2020 16:01
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Tim Thomas posted:You know what game was totally underrated? Z. I remember PC Zone doing a front page review and giving it a great score, saying that the punishing difficulty was what really made it great. I think it later turned out the review copy was glitched and the actual release version was significantly easier 
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Dec 22, 2020 16:04
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Tim Thomas posted:You know what game was totally underrated? Z. Dark Omen also. What a game.
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Dec 22, 2020 16:04
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Can't believe such a good op left out age of empires and rise of nations
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Dec 22, 2020 17:02
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empire earth kicks rear end and is usually forgotten, age of empires always felt too much like starcraft or warcraft to me (quick games focused on micro and tactical decicions), empire earth was a lot more like total annihilation or supreme commander with more strategic games that took several hours, especially if you played against the cheating AI players supreme commander is also great
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Dec 22, 2020 17:12
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq0Oh0otQ0A i really dont remember whether krush kill 'n destroy was any good, but i did play it for a while, it was like a clone of C&C but on larger maps
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Dec 22, 2020 17:13
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can I Stan for the best rts in history, battlezone, or is that too far afield
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Dec 22, 2020 17:57
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Creeper world is classic RTS, fight me
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Dec 22, 2020 17:58
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Shoutout to one of my favorite childhood games ever, Battle Bugs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGHlL5jySU
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Dec 22, 2020 18:21
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For anyone who likes Total Annihlation or streaming-economy large scale RTS in general, Zero-K is on Steam and free and maybe the best RTS currently around and still in active development. Also never forget the classic Earth 21XX trilogy. Starts strong, amazing middle game(s), terrible last entry. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Dec 22, 2020 |
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Dec 22, 2020 20:39
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site posted:Can't believe such a good op left out age of empires and rise of nations I can definitely add AoE and RoN. I never played a ton of AoE, but I do remember playing absolutely unreal amounts of RoN multiplayer. Good catch. If someone wants to write up an Empire Earth effort post that would be cool. I never played them and know literally nothing about them.
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Dec 22, 2020 22:01
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For sure add something for AoE, especially AoE2, and specifically for AoE2 Definitive Edition. The AoE2 competitive scene has been going through a bit of a zeitgeist of revival recently. This was sparked by the release of the Definitive Edition, which is an absolutely fantastic package of such a classic game, ready to go for modern systems. It was also catalyzed a bit by coming out relatively shortly before the pandemic started to change everything in the world. So, while tournaments were getting started for the revival, it managed to catch more traction than expected as everyone was starting to quarantine and looking for something fun to watch. Like, both Red Bull and Microsoft sponsor AoE2 tournaments that get tens of thousands of viewers and prize pools going up to half a hundred thousand dollars. And patches that involve balance changes, new content, and new game play keep coming for it, so. Probably the most successful "old RTS" today. E: I have a code for 3 months of free Xbox Game Pass for new sign ups, it includes all three of the AoE Definitive Editions, let me know if you wanna check them out and I can forward it along. Jehde fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Dec 24, 2020 |
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Dec 23, 2020 10:21
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Crosspostin'Mordja posted:Skylords Reborn, a fan-run resurrection of Battleforge just came out.
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Dec 23, 2020 16:32
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Oh yeah that's a very good one too. With the greatest main menu of any RTS ever. That Battleforges main menu didn't become the standard for any remotely competitive RTS brings shame on the entire genre.
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Dec 23, 2020 18:22
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DatonKallandor posted:Oh yeah that's a very good one too. With the greatest main menu of any RTS ever. That Battleforges main menu didn't become the standard for any remotely competitive RTS brings shame on the entire genre. To explain: Battleforge's "Main Menu" is basically an empty field where you can test all of your units and abilities and spawn in enemies to use them on.
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Dec 23, 2020 19:07
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As far as I know you can still get both MechCommander games free and they're pretty solid. MechCommander 1 has some weird issues with scrolling the screen edges though if you play in window mode and the view is zoomed in all the way, it scrolls slower and I've never found a fix.
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Dec 23, 2020 19:37
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Shibawanko posted:empire earth kicks rear end and is usually forgotten, age of empires always felt too much like starcraft or warcraft to me (quick games focused on micro and tactical decicions), empire earth was a lot more like total annihilation or supreme commander with more strategic games that took several hours, especially if you played against the cheating AI players I liked Empire Earth when it came out, but having revisited it a few years back that game is hot mess when it comes to unit relationships. The first 8 or so (of 15 ages oy vey) are all pretty straightforward, but as soon as gunpowder units become more common and especially once you start incorporating aircraft and cybers, it gets really hard to keep track of what is supposed to beat what. The game winds up suffering hard for its ambition, there's just way too many systems and features interacting at once that the game winds up feeling overwhelming and very difficult to get into. It's also one of the few games I have ever played where the expansion seems to make the game considerably less balanced than it was before, due to adding unique powers to to each civ. In some cases it's pretty straightforward and not that big of a deal, like how the Advanced Mining power allows you to have more than six villagers on a resource, but then you have stuff like Flaming Arrows, which allows archers to take on buildings, something the game absolutely doesn't seem to be prepared to handle. Like in that particular example, it's to the point that a single archer can cause a chain reaction that can wipe out an entire town, it's complete nonsense. But then other civilizations get totally screwed. For example the futuristic Russian faction is able to build expensive nuclear ICBM silos and strike almost anywhere they want. This might sound amazing, but to counteract this all the enemy has to do is make a designated anti-missile unit that is not terribly expensive and easy to mass and distribute, thus causing the power (which is only available in the last ages to begin with) to be nearly useless in practice. I also have to say I don't think I've ever played another RTS with such blatantly cheap AI. They seemingly don't have to worry about resources at all, even if you wipe out all of their supply lines they can just create units forever with no downsides. The cheating is probably due to the quality of the AI itself, which is profoundly dumb and would probably be very easy to defeat otherwise. I have a lot of nostalgia for the game but I don't think it ever had a chance against AOE2.
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Dec 23, 2020 19:59
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My hot take on Homeworld is that HW2 is actually a much better campaign than HW1, it just kind of dives into the space mycticism angle more than people like and doesn't have the strong, driving through-line that the first game does. But its mission design is far more interesting and I prefer its gameplay mechanics, even if it means most units are a lot flimsier than their HW1 counterparts. DOK is alsofantastic.
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Dec 23, 2020 20:23
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I never gave HW2 a fair chance. My mate was complaining of the outrageous fleet scaling going on, and when I fired it up I was greeted by an obnoxious blocky blizzard-esque UI, and every unit had clearly delineated firearms. "This Corvette's gun is good vs other corvettes" and "these weapons do bonus damage to subsystems" where a huge turnoff. After HW's strong storytelling and minimalism, I just couldn't be bothered.
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Dec 23, 2020 20:32
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dracula vladdy AF posted:I liked Empire Earth when it came out, but having revisited it a few years back that game is hot mess when it comes to unit relationships. The first 8 or so (of 15 ages oy vey) are all pretty straightforward, but as soon as gunpowder units become more common and especially once you start incorporating aircraft and cybers, it gets really hard to keep track of what is supposed to beat what. The game winds up suffering hard for its ambition, there's just way too many systems and features interacting at once that the game winds up feeling overwhelming and very difficult to get into. the game shone if you played against the AI, rather than against a human player. it really wasn't suitable for pvp matches but i didn't like to play rts against human players anyway and always found it stressful. instead my housemate and i at the time would play a game on LAN against 1 or 2 hard computers. the AI would cheat like crazy, just pumping units out of the ground, so you had to turtle up and slowly fight back from a stronghold while keeping up with the tech, it was more like a tower defense game. these games would last for 5 hours or something, like an entire evening where we'd pause the game to hold strategic meetings and decide which part of the AI's bullshit base to attack next one thing i also remember is that we set the ages cap at "modern", the future stuff isn't really much fun
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Dec 23, 2020 22:35
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Is Empire Earth worth playing nowadays if you’ve never played it before? If so, which one? I have, as I said, zero experience with the series so I don’t even know where to start with it.
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Dec 24, 2020 00:11
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Pathos posted:Is Empire Earth worth playing nowadays if you’ve never played it before? If so, which one? I have, as I said, zero experience with the series so I don’t even know where to start with it. First game probably isn't a bad place to start. Truthfully I haven't played the other two, but what I've heard of EE2 is that it simplifies quite a lot, which doesn't sound like a bad thing, exactly, but EE1's big strength (and weakness) is that it's a massively cluttered and messy game, in a way that RTS games aren't really made anymore. EE3 is apparently a bad game outright and seemed to kill the series. That said, if you give it a try, consider giving the first campaign a go, I seem to recall it's pretty good and not bad at teaching some of the more esoteric EE game mechanics. Shibawanko posted:the game shone if you played against the AI, rather than against a human player. it really wasn't suitable for pvp matches but i didn't like to play rts against human players anyway and always found it stressful. instead my housemate and i at the time would play a game on LAN against 1 or 2 hard computers. the AI would cheat like crazy, just pumping units out of the ground, so you had to turtle up and slowly fight back from a stronghold while keeping up with the tech, it was more like a tower defense game. these games would last for 5 hours or something, like an entire evening where we'd pause the game to hold strategic meetings and decide which part of the AI's bullshit base to attack next I feel like you almost described a part of my life here. LAN versus the computer is really the way to go, I don't think there's any other RTS that really plays out like EE does for that. It's an extremely long haul, you pretty much can't have anything else you have to do for several hours. And you're 100% right about the Digital Age onward. On paper it sounds pretty cool, but in practice having to figure out how each cyber interacts with other units, plus the significant influx of casting units makes the whole thing far more complicated and much more micro intensive. It just doesn't really play super well. Funny story, the version of the game I had came with this extremely detailed game/strategy guide that included excerpts from professional Empire Earth players (lol) and the way they described the game at that level sounded extremely unfun compared to trying to find out ways to outfox the AI, particularly in the later ages. edit: I feel the need to explain the extra age added to the expansion for those who haven't played the game. It's called the Space Age, adding intergalactic combat to the game. Sort of. In order to use any of the space units (excluding the planetary fighter), you need to be playing on one of the map types that allows for space. What they did is make it that instead of there being water tiles on a space map, there are instead space tiles, which are pretty much just water in terms of function, but naval ships obviously cannot make use of the space and docks cannot be built there, instead space docks and space ships can be built there. It's incredibly janky but also kind of funny and I have to appreciate the attempt. dracula vladdy AF fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Dec 24, 2020 |
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Dec 24, 2020 04:16
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If I ever touch Homeworld Remastered again I'm using the player's patch and jacking the AI fleet scaling all the way to the bottom because gently caress that noise.
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Dec 24, 2020 21:43
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Zeether posted:If I ever touch Homeworld Remastered again I'm using the player's patch and jacking the AI fleet scaling all the way to the bottom because gently caress that noise. Lol I think that's exactly what I did.
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Dec 24, 2020 21:52
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Did remastered change anything about HW1's scaling? I know it existed, but it was so low key as to be unnoticeable in the original. edit: drat, they really did drop the ball in so many ways on that remaster. Serephina fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Dec 24, 2020 |
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Dec 24, 2020 21:56
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It's HW2's scaling I believe. Which is ridiculous and why the player's patch is a thing.
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Dec 24, 2020 23:15
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Modpost #1Mordja posted:Effortpost incoming, my first ever on these forums Something Awful.com. Please notice me sempai!
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Dec 26, 2020 17:04
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Mordja posted:Modpost #1 This is a great post and has a bunch of information in it that I didn’t know about. I’m curious to try some of these expansions! Thanks for effort posting.
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Dec 26, 2020 21:13
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I played Planetary Annihilation a while ago and was only lukewarm on it, but it did seem like a direct TA successor, from the eyes of someone who never touched those games. Was it any good, according to the experts? I kinda got bored of it. I also question the 'no apm' claim as in PA, for every spare second there was always something to do, a hallmark of good real-time games.
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Dec 26, 2020 22:38
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Serephina posted:I played Planetary Annihilation a while ago and was only lukewarm on it, but it did seem like a direct TA successor, from the eyes of someone who never touched those games. Was it any good, according to the experts? I kinda got bored of it. I also question the 'no apm' claim as in PA, for every spare second there was always something to do, a hallmark of good real-time games. the problem with that game is that you just lose oversight of what's going on, you fight on a bunch of generic planets that are hard to remember, you have to switch between them to manage these huge armies and it starts to feel more like youre a manager than a general, you're just outnumbering your enemy rather than outsmarting him
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Dec 26, 2020 23:01
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Does Starcraft transcend the "Old RTS" title or something?
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Dec 26, 2020 23:20
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