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Sins of a Solar Empire

Norman Chan — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:14:17 -0500

4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) strategy games rarely gain widespread popularity. They’re like the mathletes club in high school—a haven for only the most hardcore of geeks. Sins of a Solar Empire vitalizes the genre by automating most of the micromanagement and replacing monotonous turn-based drudgery with faster-paced real-time gameplay.

Aside from the opening cinematic, there’s no plot or story to drive the single-player mode. Solo play is limited to skirmish games in which you pick one of three factions to use in an epic battle to conquer the map. Depending on the map size (up to 10 players can occupy nine massive solar systems, each with dozens of planets), skirmish sessions can last anywhere from an hour to more than a day.

And that’s the beauty of Sins; it scales all the things we like about the RTS genre into interstellar campaigns of epic proportion. Space exploration, technology research, and unit management are all drawn out over the span of a game (i.e., it’s rarely possible to explore the entire map before a game’s end). The balanced pacing gives you adequate time to develop every facet of your empire, so unlike in most RTS games, which favor the speediest player, you never feel as though you’ve fallen too far behind the curve.

In combat, the game plays like a mixture of Risk and Homeworld. Carefully plotting assault routes between planets and asteroids to surprise an opponent requires strategic finesse, and the reward of razing an undefended territory is very satisfying. We really dig the option to keep the ship-to-ship combat relatively hands-off, as we loved zooming in to survey glorious capital ship battles while the AI competently handles the micromanagement of the fleet.

Devious players will also adore the robust selection of passive-aggressive options, such as the ability to bribe local pirates to raid enemies or forge alliances and cease fires to manipulate opponents. The fine mix of 4X-style depth and RTS-inspired design makes for an irresistible and addictive combination. Just be warned, once you’re sucked in, don’t be surprised to find yourself losing track of time and playing matches until 4 a.m.

World in Conflict

Norman Chan — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:10:27 -0600

Nothing flexes our imagination like alternate history scenarios, and World in Conflict delivers one that has us on the edge of our seat. It’s the late 1980s, and the Cold War is far from over. The commies have already made a push to invade Western Europe, and in a desperate move, have decided to mount a sneak attack on American shores. It’s your mission to contain the Soviet invasion and retake Seattle before the invaders paint the country red.

WiC isn’t just the prettiest strategy game we’ve ever played—the effects are stunning—it’s also one of the most tactical. In each mission, you’re charged with capturing a series of control points with a limited number of units. The game eschews base building and unit construction by giving you a set number of points to call in vehicle and infantry airdrops. Points are reclaimed after your troops perish, so the strategy becomes how you allocate the various types of tanks to capture and hold the front lines. This Battlefield-esque reinforcement scheme ensures there’s never a long break in the action, but also gave us enough time to plan our next assaults.

The suburbs of Washington state and the bleak wilderness of Eastern Europe are just a few of the amazingly detailed battlegrounds ready to be demolished in the game. In-game cut scenes help flesh out the narrative by giving glimpses into the lives of the soldiers fighting under your command. The war at home feels very real; its impact resonates even more when nukes are detonated on American soil.

Taking the fight online yields another fresh RTS experience. Players team up to take on armor, air, support, and infantry roles, each with special units that uniquely contribute to an overall match. We dug using helicopters to rain down guided missiles of justice, but found the support role not as useful as the other offensive classes. Online niggles aside, World in Conflict is one of the most accessible and action-packed strategy games we’ve ever played.

Real-Time Strategy is for Dummies?

Norman Chan — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:12:16 -0500

I really liked Command and Conquer 3. Honest. I think the game succeeded tremendously in what it set out to do – be the best Command and Conquer game ever. The brilliant combination of swanky graphics and nostalgic appeal made the game irresistible for long-time strategy fans, but in my mind, was also a step back for the genre.

While C&C 3 has challenging and fun single-player campaigned (the later missions are incredibly difficult), the real test of a RTS game’s design lies in its multiplayer modes. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been playing C&C 3 multiplayer regularly, and finding that I while the matches provide quick bursts of gratification, the strategist in me walks away feeling empty and unsatisfied.

The multiplayer rounds in C&C 3 really boil down to who can click and build the fastest. You really only have to train yourself to be one of two types of players – either a rusher or a turtler. If you decide to turtle, for example, it’s a race to build the strongest unit, like GDI Mammoth Tanks or Scrin Avatars to overrun your opponent’s base. After playing through the maps a couple of time, it’s relatively easy to establish a strategy that’ll work against most players every time.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still having a lot of fun playing C&C 3. Playing a brief fast-paced game is often what I need at the end of a long work day. I just hope the next effort will take more hardcore strategy players into account and offer balancing and features (ie. random maps, unit formations, more customizable match options) that’ll keep me playing online for more than just a couple weeks. Unfortunately, publishers may find more value in putting out games that give players a quicker bang for their buck.

Stay off my computer/console, you!

David Murphy — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 14:40:44 -0500

Having been a PC gamer since Doom Shareware, a console gamer since the Power Glove, and a computer enthusiast since the Commodore 64, I feel absolutely compelled to get up on my high horse and say what legions of gamers are (or should be) yelling at the top of their lungs: stop. porting. games.

Yes, that's right. In a Dave-centric world, there would be none of this Games for Windows crap. You would never see a game, regardless of its success, cross from the living room to the home office. Halo would stay on the Xbox, Command and Conquer would stay on the PC, and Sony would. Well. Do whatever it is Sony's doing right now. That weird blend of Xbox achievements and Miis that just reeks of idea theft.

But I digress. Surely anyone who's ever used a mouse and keyboard to waste hours upon hours in virtual ass-kickery will attest that certain games only work on certain platforms. That's it. Anything else is a heretical version of an awesome, original experience, and were it up to me, such extensions would be not only banished, but punished. I'm looking at you right now, EA. Were it up to me, the Witch-King would stay in Computer-dor, and never venture out into Middle Console.

Similarly, any adventure-themed games would immediately be relegated to consoles. Yes, they might play a little better with a mouse. But I simply cannot fight the temptation to alt-tab out to gamefaqs on my home rig whenever I'm in a trouble spot. At least having a console in the other room allows my laziness to force me into playing the game sans FAQ/walkthrough/whatnot.

So where, then, does that put the elephant in the room: first-person shooters? I'm a bit torn on this point, as my agility playing Goldeneye is akin to James Bond on elephant tranquilizers. I'm no Johnathan "THX1138-or-whatever" Wendel, but I can at least pull off quite a few headshots in Unreal Tournament. At least, until the console version comes out; then it's back to square one.

But to exclude all FPS games to the PC would be to deny the greatness that is a game like Gears of War, which partly thrives on the difficulty of an average gamer's ability to be able to pull off those uber-sweet shots with a console stick. Case in point: I've had many a shotgun-themed discussion with Will that's ended with us stupidly circle-strafing each other, firing like lunatics at a country wedding. Were we rocking the mouse-and-keyboard, though, odds are good that one of us would not make it past a second shell. The difficulties in precision targeting define the experience and -- I can't believe I'm saying this -- make the multiplayer matches a bit more exciting than trying to go up against someone who actually uses different mouse-weight things for different games.

I could go through all the game genres, but that's why The Good Lord invented lists. With that said, I present to you the ever-so-brief, "I don't want to play it if it's not on this device" selections:

THE PC

Real-Time Strategy -- Zerg rush? More like a Zerg trickle, because you simply cannot play with speed if you're using a d-pad. Impossible.

First-Person Shooters -- Two equally skilled players. Same game. A PC head-shotter will kick a console player's ass any day of the week, hands down. And if you disagree, I will fight you Ron Burgundy-style.

MMORPGs -- I don't care how fancy your keyboard add-on is for your Xbox controller. MMORPGs were made for the pc, not only for the sheer number of things you can map to a keyboard, but also because of the customizations that you can add into a PC game. Sorry, UI hackers; no console for you. Nor soup. Nor Pony.

THE CONSOLE

Sports Games -- There is no reason why you should be playing NCAA-anything on your keyboard. It worked for Techmo Super Bowl, it worked for Madden '94, it worked for Mutant League Everything -- controllers are a perfect input device. Blow the final whistle.

Party Games --Here's looking at you, Wii. And really, any game that encourages three or more people to get together, eat food, and mash greasy hands into buttons for hours on end. LAN parties are fun, but there's no way you're going to get anyone casual interested in joining your fun.

Flying/Racing/Whatever -- Simply put, if it requires some kind of joystick to operate in real life, there's no reason why you should be mashing W, S, A, or D to do so in virtual life.