Rychiey
Explains: RTS
Introduction
“Eh you
got play that RTS or not?” Questions like these make the average person wonder:
what does RTS stand for? RTS is an acronym for Real-Time Strategy, it is a sub-genre
of the Strategy genre and many different interpretations of games with this
sub-genre have generated many different reactions, both good and bad.
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| An RTS game: Company of Heroes 2 |
General
things of RTS
What are
the elements in an RTS you may be asking yet again, well, it contains elements
found in traditional strategy games such as chess (ya I am srs chess). However,
instead of the game moving in a static way such as a 1-by-1 turn basis like in
chess, the game moves in real-time, meaning at any one time during an RTS game
there can be multiple things happening at once, simulating an economy within a
game and this aspect can be taken advantage of by adding game resources such as
gold. Lastly, an RTS usually have a main goal for the player to accomplish, such
as wiping out the enemy team, or destroying a building of much interest and
high worth.
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| yes, really. |
Games
before the 21st century
The most popular game that
is considered to be the first true and successful RTS game ever made was
Populous (1989) and subsequently, it’s sequel, Populous: The Beginning (1997),
a god game focused on unit control, unit management and the goal of the game is
to annihilate your enemy from the world by killing all their units. A good mix
of units and a wide variety of spells your shaman can wield, the game offered
endless replayability back in the day, something many RTS’ these days have
loads of as well.
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| Populous: The Beginning |
A game that soon follows in
the footsteps was also released in the same year as the sequel of Populous, and
this game was none other than Age of Empires (1997), a game that focuses on
telling a story through historic figures who have fought battles to claim
territory or as a form of invasion or rebellion and putting the player in
control of these figures. With the game being segmented into different parts
each containing unique historic figures of the past and telling their own
story, the game had big amounts of variety in terms of units and provided hours
upon hours of fun, so much so it has two sequels, all of which were met with
positive reviews.
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| The most recent installment, AoE 3 Online. |
The last game from the
twilight years of the 20th century that I have personally played and
feel that it is a superb game of its time is Total Annihilation (1997, trend
spotted), a base-building game that allows players to build up their strengths
to take on opposing factions, using different buildings and units to do so. The
idea of the game may be similar to Populous in that the goal of the game is to
eliminate all enemy factions.
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| Total Annihilation |
However, the theme of TA is
extremely unique at the time in that it has a sci-fi theme, with all the units
being robots and mechanical in nature, with a commander robot serving to be the
overlord of your robot faction. The sheer variety of these very same units is
also what makes the game very unique, with each unit serving a different
purpose and all have their specific downsides and drawbacks in combat.
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| Community created units for TA |
A major difference between
this game and Populous is how this game manages to implement a complex resource
system (at the time). Energy and metal were the two resources within the game
and both increased and decreased at certain rates depending on certain things
within the game (unit count, which decreases the energy rate as it increases.
Solar power plants, which increase energy rate as more are built.)
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| original size image btw |
This type of complex
resource system was hardly found in many older games and was first implemented
in this game in a successful manner. It definitely helped to the game to
differentiate itself from other games out in the market at the time. A
spiritual successor to this game, Planetary Annihilation, takes its roots and
game’s resource system into its gameplay, giving nostalgia chills for the
people like me who have played TA after its release.
Games
during the 21st century
Fast-forward to the year
2014, what RTS games are there that have set the baseline standard of this
generation of gaming and possibly the future of RTS’. Well, I have a few games
to list so… here we go!
Sid Meier’s Civilization
comes to mind, with its most recent title being the fifth installment of the
Civilization series, cleverly named Civilization V, I’ll be abbreviating it as
C5 from now on (kool like kat). C5 is famously known as a 4X strategy game. What
does 4X mean? It is when a player controls an empire and is tasked to eXplore,
eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate (why not 4E right) in a game. 4X games are
usually noted for their level of detail and complex gameplay, with large
emphasis on economical and technological advancements within the game, such as
C5, that give gameplay advantages to the player, with other ways of achieving
victory other than overwhelming number of military troops. The game rides off
its success by pulling off the 4X formula well, and sets the baseline for 4X
RTS games of the future.
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| Civ 5 |
In this day and age, when
you hear someone mention Blizzard, many gamers would probably know who they are
and what they are famous for. But for those who don’t know, Blizzard is a very well-known
company, famous for the quality and standard they put into their games that they
release, with games like Warcraft providing the ultimate in terms of RPG games,
breaking the scale in terms of depth and variety. Another game series Blizzard
has created, however, is more in line with the RTS genre, and that game series is
none other than the Starcraft series.
Starcraft
II was praised for its engaging gameplay and its improved storytelling. A
variety of units and factions are present in this game, at this point I probably
sound like a broken record saying the previous sentence but it is something that
is common among all RTS games.
With units ranging from
ground, air, and vehicular movement, combining that with units of different
roles such as assault, support (“MEDIC!!!”), sniper and the heavy, there are
tons of different combinations of units all within the game, and the player
with the more versatile playstyle and 1000 action per minute (APM) will come up
on top no doubt in my mind for 5000 years.
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| I can feel the APM |
AND LASTLY, DOTA 2 OF
COURSE. ALL REASONS LISTED IN THE LINK BELOW (SELLOUT OF MY OWN BLOG! WOO!)
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| TI4 soon.. |
Rychiey’s
Note
Thank you all for reading.
This blog post was made kind of on the fly, and thus may lack some forms of
quality. It has been a busy weekend, and so I hope I would be forgiven for such
a dreadful blog post write-up such as this. Have a nice day! J
Dat ending doe. Keep it up!
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