Blog FeedConvention Center
Real time strategy games have been around for a while now and most people are familiar with the conventions of them. The player gathers resources, constructs a base and then recruits an army. They’ve certainly seen their fair share of evolution; for instance a single unit rush isn’t an unstoppable tactic. Gone are the days of Red Alert where a Soviet player could just keep pumping out 100 heavy tanks and expect to win in a quick first round K.O. Despite that, most of the genres conventions have stuck around even in games where they have no business being there. These conventions work, there isn’t any doubt about it, and they make sense in some games. Especially in the case of a game set in far off foreign worlds. When you’re off on the frontier, living in a semi-medieval or actual medieval world it’s entirely reasonable that a commander might have to actually develop the infrastructure to support his army. However I recently picked up the demo for Company of Heroes, and in this game these conventions are just strange.
Admittedly I’m going to have to see the full game before I know if it has been seriously hurt by using traditional conventions, but they really should have been scrapped entirely. Commanders being tasked with recruiting soldiers out of the aether and building up small towns for deploying your force, just doesn’t fit WWII. Recruitment isn’t the role of an officer in the military. They’re given their orders on what they need to be doing and they give orders to their men on how best to accomplish this. They’re not given any selection over what kinds of forces they’re going to have at their disposal they have what they have and they’ve got to make it work.
Now, I know what you’re saying; you’re saying “Vermouth it’s a game. Lighten up it’s just supposed to be fun”. Well if that’s what you actually are saying Mr. Reader, then I agree with you, but regardless the point still stands. It is supposed to be fun, and commanding soldiers to accomplish heroic feats and coming away with their lives is fun. Years ago there was a fantastic series of war games that played out in real time called Close Combat that really had authenticity as their focus. Relic had a great opportunity to make something in the same vein, with great brand support and the amazing graphics they have where you could still check your grognard card at the door. Ubisoft and Gearbox have had some measure of success with this kind of approach in the FPS market with it’s Brothers in Arms franchise; it’s kind of a shame that THQ & Relic chose to be so by-the-numbers here. World War II is such a familiar setting that all these conventions stick out like a sore thumb.
11th September | Reply
I haven’t played the demo, but that’s a disappointing preview Vermouth.
You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense for field officers to be building bases in World War II. It’d be interesting to find out how many field bases were actually built in Europe vs. the number of operations performed. It’s academic of course, but it would illustrate the point of how absurd it is to be doing these kinds of things in-game.
Actually, it’s be pretty cool if you built one or two field bases that supported the other missions in the game. It would add a strategic element to the game that would be a better fit for the time period.
The one thing I want to know is: what’s the resource you collect?
14th September | Reply
You’re defnitely right that it just doesn’t fit at all. I think what it comes down to is that the developers just weren’t really willing to move away from the tried and true formula for their RTS game. Either they don’t trust their own skills enough to do it successfully, or they’re lazy.
Playing FreeSpace 2, (not a strategy game I know) I’ve begun to really appreciate how integrating the storyline into each mission really makes things more interesting. You don’t just start out each mission the same, and how well you do in a previous mission may dictate how the next one goes. You can’t always choose what weapons or ships you can use - you use what is available. It tends to be that the more crucial moments in the game are ones where you just have to go in with what you’ve got left.
That’s something I’d like to see in strategy games. No turtling.
15th September | Reply
In Reply to #2:
I found games where the results of previous battles have an impact on the next one to sometimes make a total mess of things. Having been a big Warhammer fan back in the day I bought “Shadow of the Horned Rat” when it was released and found that the developers were trying to recreate a Warhammer campaign whereby your troops that remain at the end of the battle are carried over to the next (plus some reinforcements) and gain experience. A nice idea in some respects since it makes you care for your troops more and forces you to think carefully about when you will use your elite troops since when they are gone, they’re gone. In reality I discovered that if you have a bad battle then you are basically screwed for the remainder of the game since you don’t have enough troops to survive the coming battles. The problem was that you often didn’t know exactly what a “bad battle” actually was and only discover that you don’t have enough troops until much later and then have to replay substantial portions of the game again. I gave up pretty quickly, mostly because I really suck at strategy games.
Personally, I like turtling. I’m a patient player and enjoy slowly building up my army and hate to be rushed. My most hated strategy game scenarios are those that place a time limit on you and I’m presently stumpted on such a scenario in Dawn of War.