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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Ahoy thar me harties!

Aye, before you start readin’ this post, I’d recommend headin’ o’er t’ har and read up a bit on the most important day (okay, it isn’t but my mind likes t’ imagine it is) o’ the entire year: International ‘Speak like a pirate’ day, shiver me timbers! (not t’ be confused with the International ‘Speak Like the Goddamn Batman’ day or the far more local ‘Walk like I’’e been kicked in the balls by M$’ day which Enoon has been celebratin’ for the past few weeks). Due t’ the utter awesomeness o’ Pirates, I was goin’ t’ ask for a guest speaker t’ come in today, but it seems the Pirate-ninja feud sort o’ intensifies at this time o’ the year meanin’ their all out busy kickin’ ninja ass. So fer now its all me! YARRR!

*coughs as he’s kicked in the nads by several TAP members*

Okay, okay, fine! Onto more serious matters then. I’ve been rather quiet recently for several reasons. I finally got an Xbox 360 and my recent time has been divided between working, studying, writing and playing GoW, WiC, SoTS, PGR3 and a few other games.

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As the title says, ladies and Gentlemen! The World in Conflict Demo has been released. It features two multiplayer maps (new ones for those of us that played the beta), a single player mission and single player tutorial.

You can get it from any of the mirrors listed on the official site.

Those that may not like direct downloads can grab the Bittorrent link from the Ausgamers Download Page.

 

What the…. is there some kind of release-date frenzy bug going around developers’ offices these days? The latest addition to the “I am about to be released soon. Pre-order me now” pimpmobile is Sierra and Massive Entertainment’s “not so RTSey” RTS, World in Conflict, which will be available in stores across North America on September 18, 2007. With the standard edition and collector’s editions of the game going for $50 and $60 respectively, World in Conflict should provide a great RTS experience for fans who got hooked on to the micromanagement-less sub-genre with last year’s blockbuster from Relic, Company of Heroes. With the multiplayer beta having just ended a couple of days ago (impressions here) it looks like players who want to try the game before plonking down a couple of dollars for a pre-order can get to try their hands on a demo sometime around the end of this month, when the game is showcased at the Leipzig Games Convention, beginning August 22, 2007. Hit the jump for the official press release from Sierra Entertainment.

To those that haven’t read Krishnan’s blog post next (or below) this one yet: what the hell are you standing around here for? Go read that first! For those of you that did, you already heard of the WiC Beta closure. It may have been a fun time for some, a frustrating time for others, but to me it was but the realization of a hidden Nuklear ambition. Having finished at a decent position overall (and at my peak touching 359 on the ladder board) towards the end, I can’t help but think that this’ll be an utterly great game to play and get hooked on almost immediately - but only in single player.

The negative reaction to the multiplayer aspects stems too much from it’s similarity to Battlefield 2 and 2142. Finding a good game that lasts more than 5-10 minutes thanks to horrible balance in terms of both Rank and Numbers is somewhat rare. Grinding against the same problems repetitively on only two maps made it even worst of a hassle, and eventually, after a full day of 6-10 minute games where our team couldn’t get it’s act together in time for being swamped by the other, stacked team of high-ranking players I quit for a few days out of sheer frustration. However, don’t let this little tale ruin the experience for you - while it can be hassle to generally play online on your own, if you can find and convince a few good friends to play with you online and in the same clan (and on Clan matches no less) then the Multiplayer aspect is an utter, utter blast. After all, its always more fun to play together with friends than random strangers (not to mention a whole lot more co-ordinated). Plus consider that this case was probably isolated, and if you DO get a good team and fairly even skill levels on both sides, like BF2 it can be a blast

That said, its probably best to stop beating a dead horse. Hopefully, the developers will get something planned by the time the game ships.

Now, to move onto more…darker things. For long-time System Shock fans, there’s a somewhat long (yet interesting) article on what is the Gaming History’s most unique villains: SHODAN. You can find it here, and is aptly titled “The Girl Who Wanted to be God”. Even if your not a System Shock fan, its really recommended reading the article anyway, as it describes a breed - nay, a species of awesome villains that’ll probably never be seen again in the future of gaming.

To finish off this less-than-spectacular blog post is a bit of news regarding Firaxis’ new expansion pack to Civilization IV, titled “Beyond the Sword“. The recently released expansion pack gives a vast number of units, civilizations, leaders and other upgrades to the Civ IV games. More awesome than that though, is the way their getting publicity for it: through web comics. Firaxis apparently invited many major web comics to make fan strips for the release in a special event known as “Civilization Daydreams”. Artists from popular web comics such as Player vs Player Online, Ctrl Alt Delete, 8-Bit Theater and quite a few others have given strips for the release. These special strips can be found here: http://www.civilization.com/daydreams/

Enjoy reading them. Until next time something interesting happens (and someone else doesn’t beat me to posting it here *glares at some people*) - this is Singh, signing off.

After enjoying a tremendous run, the public beta for Massive Entertainment’s super-awesome RTS World in Conflict has come to an end. In an announcement sent to all beta players, Massive Entertainment has announced that the demo for the game would be released by the end of the movie, probably at the Games Convention at Leipzig at the end of the month:

August will be a busy month for World In Conflict! Our 1st singleplayer previews will hit online and in select gaming magazines. We then look forward to releasing our demo by the end of the month. In addition, we’ll be at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Games Convention in Leipzig, and i31 in the UK. Come see us if you are in the neighborhood!

Seeing how good this game was, from what little time we got to spend in the beta, World in Conflict should be one of the most enjoybale RTSes that 2007 has to offer, along with the other upcoming games and expansions such as Universe at War, Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance and of course, the grand daddy of ‘em all, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts.

If you have played the beta and don’t mind spending a little time to make the final product better, take a short survey here. Or, alternatively, if you haven’t played the beta, take the survey anyway to mess with their data. For more information, check the Massgate Forums, or visit the World in Conflict website for the latest news.

For those of you who may not know, the World in Conflict open beta was recently released to the public, and has been active for the past few days. I’ve played through the beta for the entire day today, and the following are my thoughts on it – ranging everywhere from simple audio, to graphics and even matters of units balance.

It’s primary a multiplayer beta, but after starting it up for the first time, I could see just from the menu; the music and the news bites playing in the background that it’s single-player must be incredibly well detailed. Simply sitting for a moment through those little snippets of news gives a sense of awe and fear just because of how real they sound. The music doesn’t reduce this feeling any, and just adds to the whole thing. Accessing the multiplayer demo is easy enough – I had no troubles with the Massgate registration, nor with the code. Starting up the game and joining in was as simple as logging in and hitting ‘play’.

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