Roshambo said:
I have to point out that what passes for innovation around EA is sorely lacking as of late.
"Challenge everything" should be changed into "We are challenged".
Innovation is allowing infantry to enter in any building? I'm sorry, but that's MOD-worthy work. That isn't worth the amount of money for crap "innovation" that is little more than a few new units and maps that show jack shit for creativity.
Not to mention that others have done it before. I think the 1996 Close Combat was the first RTS where you could enter buildings, I'm not totally sure, though.
Take a look at the units in C&C "expansions". Unimaginative to an extreme. I was playing with Tesla Hounds, Firebreathing Hounds, Tesla Tanks, and Tesla Troops long before those units ever were "innovated" into an "expansion", in Red Alert. The maps? Hell, I've seen better, and as Ratty has pointed out, other games have managed to improve over RTS standards from ten years ago more than five years ago, while what is left of Westwood hasn't even bothered to try keeping up while calling frozen rivers innovation. Other companies also give a lot more support for their games, but I can understand why they wouldn't want to release an editor to change a couple of properties of a unit when they could just as easily have the developers do the same, add a few craptacularly uninspiring maps, charge money for it, and don't even bother to give any more depth to the new unit other than "Hey, this is REALLY kewl! Check this new unit out at the vocal request of the obviously budget 'actors' we hire."
This just shows hipocrisy and laziness of Westwood/EA. Cavedog redefined the whole concept of expansions when they started releasing new maps and units
every week. Starcraft did a similar thing by featuring a fully functional map editor. And people, this was back in 1997! Neither Tiberian Sun nor Red Alert 2, which were released MUCH later, featured anything remotely similar to that - in fact, they continued the tradition of mediocre expansions featuring a few overpowered units and some pathetic excuse for a story. Though I suppose nothing should have surprised me anymore after C&C: Sole Survivor, which featured a "revolutionary" concept of playing but one unit in a multiplayer game - sure, why play Quake or Duke 3D when you get to control one pixelated mammoth in Sole Survivor?
Now, to be fair, both Bliz and Cavedog had a few fuck-ups, too. Blizzard had Brood Wars, which could have fit into a 2 MB patch, and Cavedog had that uninspired Battletactics. But take TA: Core Contingency, which featured 150 new units, a huge set of new maps and two completely new terrains - in EA that alone would be enough material to constitute five different
games, let alone expansions. Dune 2000 and Red Alert were nothing but redrawn C&C anyway.
"Why is my retarded harvester driver going through the enemy base when there's another nearby patch?" was another happy-happy fun-fun aspect of Red Alert 2 and a trademark bumblefuck of the series.
There's a good reason why my friends and me often turned off the ability to destroy harvesters when playing LAN. Though sometimes I wanted to turn off the entire game, especially when losing a hundred NOD artillery units in a "destructive" tiberium field, which the AI is too dumb to avoid. The fact that I was even using an army consisting of hundred mobile artilleries speaks of another wonderful aspect of C&C, namely the complete unnecessity to ever devise complex tactics or apply strategic thinking, when you can accomplish all your goals by simply sending out an endless horde overpowered tanks.
That they are using a new engine isn't that reassuring, as I avoided the obvious mess of Generals and don't care to waste any more money until a developer specifically states that finally after all of these years, they can finally afford someone to work in design.
EA problems go way deeper than an outdated engine. Whoever had any experience with Emperor: Battle for Dune can confirm this. The biggest problem with Westwood (or, should I say, the faceless division of EA that now develops games with C&C license) is their design philosophy, or rather complete absence of thereof. Even after switching to a 3D engine, the game mechanics remains the same, based on a ten-year-old concept every self-respecting developer abandoned. EA is acting like Total Annihilation, Starcraft, Close Combat and Homeworld never happened, and if sudden silence following release of Generals (Will you believe me if I tell you I don't know a single person who played that game?) is any indication, gamers are getting tired of it. Games like Blitzkrieg and Ground Control are the thing now, and C&C has absolutely no hope of keeping up with such titles. Battle for Middle-Earth has some good solutions, so I might check it out when I have time, and I'm still holding my breath about Armies of Exigo, awaiting some objective reviews. Though judging from my previous experiences, both games might turn out to be RTS equivalents of lobotomy, EA-style.
Simply put, there hasn't been anything remotely innovative around C&C since the first one, Dune 2. In fact, it's more like antiquidated, and it is because it teaches the players "strategies" and limitations due to C&C's continued poor design that they often end up with their asses handed to them by players of other RTS games. Nothing says "fucked" more than someone who has been trained to consistently believe that no matter how many barracks you have, you can only set a building queue for them to pop out of the one you set primary. This antiquidated building scheme was excusable, but there is something called "multiple fronts/bases" that C&C games notoriously suck at supporting any strategies involving such. It was amusing explaining to the occasional RA fan who tried TA that yes, you don't need to juggle your building units like mad in order to have *gasp* more than one base producing units. It also becomes amusing when they try to play any other race in Starcraft than the Zerg.
This is the main reason why Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 players, despite some improvements in game mechanics and interface, usually resort to playing tank rush. Why bother learning the new stuff, when those very same "features", and many more, exist in almost every other game, only in an infinitely more sophisticated form?
C&C isn't the only RTS series that has stagnated. Cavedog screwed the pooch with TA:K, and there are many others who have run into similar. Dark Reign was another, and I think the same goes for Battlezone, though I have only played the second of the latter.
Almost every old-school RTS series went down the road of C&C mediocrity, except maybe Warcraft. Some games that held great promise, like Gene Wars or Z, mysteriously disappeared into the ground. Actually it wasn't all that mysterious, as Gene Wars was a Bullfrog work, and we all know how that story ended. Battlezone 2 was nothing but prettier Battlezone sans the awesome Cold War sci-fi setting. I only played the demo and was happy when I noticed it supported the SSE instructions of my brand new PIII.
There was also Uprising 2, which sucked, moreso than the predecessor, and some RTS series like Close Combat and Earth are still being dragged through the dirt, or so I hear. The RTS scene belongs to new players now. I recommend CDV games to anyone who hasn't tried any of them yet. If you are into more complex gameplay, there's the Total War series (though the latest game is somewhat of a let-down from historical aspect, and it also has some morale-related bugs and unit silliness). I also have Warhammer 40k sitting on my hard-drive, waiting to be played when I have some free time in my schedule (hopefully it will happen in time for Winter-een-mas
). War in the Pacific seems oddly appealing, but one has to be truly insane to play something like that.
I played the original War in the Pacific by SPI and had a good time, so i was going to check it out. As Grigsby gets the details i like in games, nice and beefy stats.
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