My experience with the Real Time Strategy genre began not amongst the spice-filled hills of Dune II. Nor did it begin at the side of Kane, crushing my enemies under the Iron hand of NOD. No – it all began amidst the star-spangled banners of the allies, charging the front lines even as the colossal front of Soviet Mammoth Tanks pushed forward against all that stood before it – be it tanks, helicopters or infantry. Such is the affection towards the game that if my heart were considered an Italian mafia restaurant, the best table would always be reserved for the boss of the place and his son, Red Alert 2. No other game – regardless of how powerful or good - would dare to eat at that table, lest find themselves at the bottom of the creek with their feet in cement blocks.

And yet today I find myself in a dilemma of sorts. When I was given the opportunity to partake in the Red Alert 3 beta thanks to the bossman, I was nothing short of elated and excited. To finally see the continuation of the series and the third installment – to relive part of that experience along with something more – it was and still is an exciting opportunity. However… I seemed to have fallen into a trap.

There is something I try to keep reminding myself everyday: to stop falling prey to hype, flashy banners and pimped-out sites. Unfortunately, those constant reminders failed with Red Alert 3 (RA3) as I got into my sub and dived into the beta, completely ignoring the warning signs along the way. By the time I emerged back from the murky depths, my impressions of the game had changed significantly – both for better and for worse.

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Having a wallet so empty that tiny bats had taken up residence inside, I was faced with a difficult choice of purchases today. Having to choose between Battlefield: Bad Company, GRID or finally, Civilization Revolution for the Xbox 360 was a gut-wrenching decision – one that was nearly impossible to make.

Finally, against much beating over the head by my brother (and partially to spite him) who wanted to play Battlefield, I decided to pick up Civilization Revolution. After a day of playing with it and then the Battlefield demo, all I can say that it was the right decision.

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If there’s one publisher/developer out there that I love and respect almost as much as Valve or Westwood (R.I.P.), it’s gotta be Stardock. The folks there are a right decent bunch, having published a fair few decent games (Galactic Civilizations, mostly though) without going into all the copyrighting bullshit that’s bogged many a game company down. Thus when it was time for Sins of a Solar Empire to be released, I made it a point to pick up the game - out of principle, if nothing else.
Sins is probably the only game out in the market (other than Total Annihilation) that for all intents and purposes has beaten Supreme Commander at its own game. However, it’s not faultless. While Sins promises much, it fails to deliver on a whole.

Hit the jump below to find out more.

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If you haven’t guessed already, this week’s feature deals with the Best Real-Time Strategy Games of all time. Clearly it’s something incredibly hard to decide, especially considering just how many awesome Strategy games that are out there right now, not counting eternal classics that have withstood the test of time to this day. No, I’m not talking about ancient pieces of history like Dune II or Civilization. Indeed, for a long time the only seeming piece of strategy a computer was considered to exhibit was a simple (yet incredibly complex) game of Chess.Chess was where it all began; simple white vs black, a set piece of units and a board to play on. Many early Strategy games were surprisingly, simply digital versions of Chess. Back then, whole computers were dedicated to making veritable opponents for human players and for a while it was truly the first ‘Strategy’ game for what was considered ‘digital media’ way back in the 1960s and ’70s. This, of course, has been ever changing up to the more recent (and more famous) Deep Blue and its prodigious cousins. Granted, the entire thing would be considered more of a console Strategy Game if you want to be a technical bitch – but they are Strategy Games nonetheless.

Of course we aren’t here to discuss centuries old games that have withstood the test of time. No, we’re here to discuss the very best of RTS games – the ones that have excelled in game play, story and/or just sheer awesomeness that allows them to stand out amongst the crowd of copy-cats that inhabit most genres these days. Without further ado, on with the show!

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Red Alert 3 is coming.

You heard that right. Command & Conquer Red Alert Three will be probably revealed in a PC Gamer Exclusive in there special April issue. While RA3’s existence isn’t completely new (there were several unofficial announcements way back in 2004 and 2005), a sneak peak in an English magazine (the other rumor floating about was in a Belgium magazine) to find out just what EA is doing is definitely worth a look. Now all I gotta find is an issue of PCGamer waaay out here in the middle of nowhere and I’ll be all set. Until then though, I’ll probably just have to satisfy myself by taking a look through the scant few screenshots available that can be found here.

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After having finished the fight last September, rabid fans of the Halo franchise had to be content with sticking their friends with grenades online and waiting for the next game set in the Haloverse, the first RTS in the series - Halo Wars. Though the continuation of the story (or rather, the prequel) was expected long before Halo 3 wrapped up (or not) the Master Chief saga, few expected it to take the form of a real time strategy game that Bungie, in collaboration with Age of Empires legend Ensemble Studios are expected to spring on us later this year. RTS games on the Xbox 360, like Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars before it, have always been iffy, what with the level of control and freedom that a conventional keyboard-mouse combination offers, but Ensemble Studios, like every other console RTS dev before them, have claimed to have worked out the nuances of controlling the game using a standard Xbox 360 controller without frustration levels peaking into the red-zone.

While we wait for the official demo of the game to check out the control scheme for ourselves and speculate on the possibility of wreaking havoc with the Covenant war machine, one of our friends over at Microsoft, like many of us from time to time, developed a case of verbal diarrhoea and slipped us some really interesting information. Now, while we are never in the habit of starting rumors, this one comes from someone on the inside who swears on its authenticity on pain of death, and we’ve been sitting on this one for almost a couple of weeks now, trying to verify it before we say anything about it.

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Back in 2007, Penny Arcade released their “We’re Right” Awards, stating the best writing, soundtrack and new game mechanic awards. Predictably, the winner for all of them was Portal – something that we and many other gamers agreed on back then.

However despite this, it is in my opinion that at the very least, I have made a grave error. Portal’s story, despite being an amazing adventure with a compelling story and some of the best characters around (not to mention being responsible for spawning quite a few internet memes) was NOT the best story of 2007. It was NOT the best writing of the year, surprisingly.

So you may ask, what pray tell was the best story of 2007? What game could be better than GLaDOS or those incredibly cute turrets that let out the innocent “Whyyyyy?” whenever you toppled them over? Was it Bioshock? Andrew Ryan and Rapture were awesome after all. Was it maybe C&C 3? If those were your guesses, then I’m afraid your dead wrong. Hit the jump to find out just which game managed to trump GLaDOS and was an even bigger lie than the cake.

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