Originally posted by: mwmorph
Originally posted by: 9mak9
Originally posted by: mwmorph
Originally posted by: Elcs
Author dropped the ball when they included C&C instead of Dune 2.
Without Dune 2, I fear we may not have had an RTS market or at least one as well developed as we do currently.
I'm aafraid the RTS market is dying down.
2006 was a great year. Company of Heroes, Defcon, Rise of Nations Rise of Legends, all in all lots of great games with great ideas.
2007 Was alright. World in Conflict is the most fun I've had in a long time. SupCom at least provided some new ideas, but beyond those 2, I dont think we can call any of the other games really signifigant or amazing.
2008 was just depressing. 2 Command and Conquer sequels, 1 of which is verifiably old school (C&C 3) and one of which is pretty much just meh (Red Alert 3). The only real standout is Sins of a Solar Empire.
Now look at 2009. We've got Dawn of War 2 and WIC: Soviet Assault. I'm sure they'll be solid games but nothing earth shattering or groundbreaking.
I think RTses are a slowly dying breed. Sure there are still solid games to look forward to, but genre progression seems to be slowing and halting in some places. I mean when one of the biggest releases is going to be an Xbox360 only title (Halo Wars) without really all that much in the way of innovation as well as many publishers going away from the PC to work on the more lucrative console side, I cant see the RTS gaming being a strong, premier genre much longer.
edit: I don't consider the Total War series to be RTS, it's more of a Turb Based game with some RTS elements.
I think there are still plenty out there. You forgot about Starcraft for '09 (maybe), CoH: Tales of Valor and C&C: Uprising. Also I think Sins has a new expansion for '09
It hurts that Warcraft is about done with RTS, and C&C has been a disappointment but the Total War series (with EmpireTW coming out I think you have to include it in RTS) has been very good to the genre.
There has been some very nice innovation in the market, just not as much quantity as before. Company of Heroes, World in Conflict and Total War are very different and unique RTS games. I love all 3 of them.
I completely agree, Stracraft 2(if it comes out this year), COH, etc are great games but I mean in the way of innovation and new ideas.
I've unfortunately lost faith in the C&C series. My first RTS was Red Alert. I remember having so much fun with that game, but the way the franchise has gone... Red Alert 3 was a major disappointment for me and C&C3 did nothing another RTS game didn't do better.
Thats what made WIC/CoH/WH40K DoW so great in the first place, the fact that they were different, introducing unconventional gameplay elements to keep the genre fresh.
I have no doubt DoW II, WIC Soviet Assault, Sins and CoH Tales of Valor, C&C uprising and Starcraft II will be fun, but lest face it, they're either "expansions", sequels or old school RTSes. They're not going to attract new people to he genre, those games are made to satisfy those that are already fans of the previous installments.
To thrive as a genre, they'ge got to keep pulling in new people. Polishing the same gameplay to perfection to make the fans happy without attracting new fans with new ideas killed Flight Sims, Adventure games and Wargames. It''s a great short term strategy, but over the long run, a stagnant genre, even if full of quality games is a dead genre.
P.S. Don't even get me started about the total War series. I have every Total War game from Medieval onwards and I'll probably pick up Empires, but lets face it, the game is pretty much identical time and time again. The same gameplay, same turn based map system, I mean sure the mechanics are absolute gold, but even I'm getting tired of playing the same game over and over again.
The differences between Medieval TW and Rome TW were graphical and settings based at most. The difference between Medieval TW and Medieval II TW were even less. Sure there were more units onscreen and there were minor gameplay tweaks to the campaign map but all 3 games and expansions sort of flow into the same thing for me.