Red Alert 3

[Skaag]

Looks pretty good and one of my fav. RTS series of all time. Loved original C&C and Red Alert 1. The models and such don't grab me like the classics. But maybe fun to play for the story and cut scenes. Especially if you enjoy Harry Turtledove novels of alternate histories.

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Scroll down and watch the 2nd Video. Even if not a big fan of the series, you will enjoy seeing the cast of actors/actresses they have assembled for this.

Trailer (2nd Video Down)
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Cast Video & List
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Funny info about the Collectors Addition. First, it comes with wallpaper art and behind the scenes with the women of Red Alert. Second...

"An exclusive in-game item for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning - Korssar’s Helm Description: This magical Kislevite helm is imbued with the spirit of the wild North and will magically transform the wearer into a ferocious bear."

[Diggles]

I've always seen the C&C games as 'spam 1 unit to win' games and havent played since the original Red Alert.

Wigs and I were bummed that Age of Mythology didnt last longer or get as popular as the other 'Age of' games.

[Slamz]

C&C Generals was alright. Lotta rock-paper-scissors. The thing I've never really liked with the C&C games is pretty much what I didn't like about Starcraft: the matches just start to run together and it's too much about build order and set maneuvers rather than diverse tactics and strategies.

I liked AoM too, though I can't recall what in particular made me quit. Quite possibly some other game came out and I just never got back to it. I dearly loved Anubite raids.


Best RTS of all time, in my opinion: Battle for Middle Earth 2. Seriously. If you do regular RTS gaming with friends, I highly recommend picking up a copy of that game. It had a fantastic resource model and rewarded fighting on multiple fronts, flanking, etc, largely by making it so that it didn't pay as much to micromanage individual fights. At one point like 3 of the top 10 people on the EA/Gamespy ladder were me.

I heard the expansion was no good, though. I eventually stopped playing because the EA/Gamespy ladder was unstable.


This is not to be confused with the first Battle for Middle Earth, which was pretty meh.



Total Annihilation was good in its day. Shame about Supreme Commander. That game was a big hunk of crap.

Company of Heroes was pretty interesting, but again, way too much about build order.

[Ulfen]

I loaded up BFME2 to play again the other day and was slightly annoyed that it doesn't natively support widescreen resolutions. You can manually adjust the resolution through the shortcut but it cuts off some of the screen.

[Vanraw]

BFME2 was fun, but I didnt really see a major difference in it then the starcraft / CC / RA games. Most of which I all liked alot.

Ive been playing a cc expansion on xbox360 for Kanes revenge or something like that. I wanted to play a RTS on xbox cause I thought the controls would be ok compared to playing a FPS on xbox. But the reality is that the PC keyboard mouse also over shadows the controller concepts.

I dont understand why console guys haven't packaged lab based wireless keyboard and mice with their consoles.

Anyway, if you like C&C / red alert and want a fun little RTS to fart around with on your xbox, I like it.

[Vanraw]

Also on this forefront, Halo War for 360 is being made, which might be alot of fun if it lives up to its hype.

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[Slamz]

BFME2 was fun, but I didnt really see a major difference in it then the starcraft / CC / RA games. Most of which I all liked alot.

The biggest difference was resource collection. In BFME2, it's literally about how much territory you control, whereas in most other RTS games, you only need to control certain resource spots as well as your home base and then the rest of the map is largely empty/irrelevant.

In BFME2 you would obtain resources by plopping down a building anywhere on the map. The building had a radius of influence and the more it overlapped with some other structure's radius of influence, the less money it brought in. So the ideal income came from spreading these resource buildings evenly across the map (or as much as terrain would allow, anyway) with little overlap. There were also diminishing returns, though, so that someone who controlled 75% of the map was not making three times as much as someone who controlled 25% (though he still made substantially more, which meant that "turtling" just was not a viable strategy).

It also did most of the commanding by the brigade. So you'd have 100 orcs but they were already in groups of 20, so effectively you were only controlling 5 "units". The significance of this was that there was no way to micromanage targeting. I could tell my 5 brigades to focus fire on one of your brigades but I couldn't tell my 100 orcs to focus fire on your elves, 1 elf at a time. This eliminated what was, to me, the most aggravating aspect of C&C and Starcraft: micromanaged targeting. It still helped but not nearly to the extent of other RTS games.

Without micromanaged targeting, you were able to focus on a multi-front war, or on higher level maneuvers like flanking. You got a flanking bonus if an enemy brigade was firing in one direction (e.g., East) and you attacked them from another direction (e.g., South).

It's really the most strategic of any RTS game I've played. I usually argue that most "RTS" games should be called "RTT" - real time tactical - since you have to spend the majority of your time telling individual units how to fight rather than overseeing a wider scope war.

I dont understand why console guys haven't packaged lab based wireless keyboard and mice with their consoles.

TV + couch. If my Xbox 360 supported a mouse I don't know where I'd put it. I'd have to play from a TV dinner tray or something.

A big part of RTS evolution was due to the available controller (mouse). IMO, consoles shouldn't even bother trying to replicate such controller-specific game types. They just need to think, "this is OUR controller, what kind of strategy games can WE make?"

You could do some good stuff with the Wii controller, but then you have to deal with the Wii's graphics capabilities and resolutions...