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Last year saw war simulation games take a big step forward. Operation Flashpoint, whilst flawed, gave PC gamers a real insight into fighting a whole war. Ghost Recon improved upon Redstorm's Rainbow six series and took Special Forces games to a new level. All the time PC gamers were having fun taking each other down on Counterstrike over the internet.
Yes none of these have really, when you think about it, taken gamers much further than Command And Conquer and Quake. Let me explain why I think this;
Operation Flashpoint : The whole war for the islands in the game is going on about you but the events, such as overflying helicopters, are scripted into the game, they always happen, the same goes for he enemy forces and troops you will face. Once you learn by trial and error where they start from it is simple matter to line up your troops or yourself in the best firing position and slaughter them. Each mission only gives you a limited amount of troops, like Command And Conquer, and whilst each mission can expand across the whole island you are on, its not worth it because there is nothing happening outside of the immediate mission area. It is a ghost island. Command And Conquer with different visuals and less resource management.
Ghost Recon : A Special Forces game involving little to no mission planning, how realistic. The command interface for giving your troops orders is simple, but, ineffective. Watch in delight as troops are picked off whilst doing blatantly stupid commands. You ant your teams to charge the armoured vehicle they cant hope to destroy ? These guys will do it ! It is really not so far from Quake, except the graphics are better than before, and the setting has changed.
A truly great war game would place the gamer in command of a country's entire military, Airforce, Army, Navy, Marines, and have a global scope. Conlflicts and crisis' would break out anywhere anytime with different numbers of enemies, troop types e.t.c everytime. The player would then choose how to tackle these with his available forces. How the situations were handled would then give the player more funds/less funds to replace casualties thourhg faster training. Really the scope for this kind of game would be enormous.
Too enormous ? I don't think so, because Micropose did a similar kind of game in the 80's which ran on a humble 486, UFO Enemy Unknown. No game was ever the same twice !
Yes none of these have really, when you think about it, taken gamers much further than Command And Conquer and Quake. Let me explain why I think this;
Operation Flashpoint : The whole war for the islands in the game is going on about you but the events, such as overflying helicopters, are scripted into the game, they always happen, the same goes for he enemy forces and troops you will face. Once you learn by trial and error where they start from it is simple matter to line up your troops or yourself in the best firing position and slaughter them. Each mission only gives you a limited amount of troops, like Command And Conquer, and whilst each mission can expand across the whole island you are on, its not worth it because there is nothing happening outside of the immediate mission area. It is a ghost island. Command And Conquer with different visuals and less resource management.
Ghost Recon : A Special Forces game involving little to no mission planning, how realistic. The command interface for giving your troops orders is simple, but, ineffective. Watch in delight as troops are picked off whilst doing blatantly stupid commands. You ant your teams to charge the armoured vehicle they cant hope to destroy ? These guys will do it ! It is really not so far from Quake, except the graphics are better than before, and the setting has changed.
A truly great war game would place the gamer in command of a country's entire military, Airforce, Army, Navy, Marines, and have a global scope. Conlflicts and crisis' would break out anywhere anytime with different numbers of enemies, troop types e.t.c everytime. The player would then choose how to tackle these with his available forces. How the situations were handled would then give the player more funds/less funds to replace casualties thourhg faster training. Really the scope for this kind of game would be enormous.
Too enormous ? I don't think so, because Micropose did a similar kind of game in the 80's which ran on a humble 486, UFO Enemy Unknown. No game was ever the same twice !
Last year saw war simulation games take a big step forward. Operation Flashpoint, whilst flawed, gave PC gamers a real insight into fighting a whole war. Ghost Recon improved upon Redstorm's Rainbow six series and took Special Forces games to a new level. All the time PC gamers were having fun taking each other down on Counterstrike over the internet.
Yes none of these have really, when you think about it, taken gamers much further than Command And Conquer and Quake. Let me explain why I think this;
Operation Flashpoint : The whole war for the islands in the game is going on about you but the events, such as overflying helicopters, are scripted into the game, they always happen, the same goes for he enemy forces and troops you will face. Once you learn by trial and error where they start from it is simple matter to line up your troops or yourself in the best firing position and slaughter them. Each mission only gives you a limited amount of troops, like Command And Conquer, and whilst each mission can expand across the whole island you are on, its not worth it because there is nothing happening outside of the immediate mission area. It is a ghost island. Command And Conquer with different visuals and less resource management.
Ghost Recon : A Special Forces game involving little to no mission planning, how realistic. The command interface for giving your troops orders is simple, but, ineffective. Watch in delight as troops are picked off whilst doing blatantly stupid commands. You ant your teams to charge the armoured vehicle they cant hope to destroy ? These guys will do it ! It is really not so far from Quake, except the graphics are better than before, and the setting has changed.
A truly great war game would place the gamer in command of a country's entire military, Airforce, Army, Navy, Marines, and have a global scope. Conlflicts and crisis' would break out anywhere anytime with different numbers of enemies, troop types e.t.c everytime. The player would then choose how to tackle these with his available forces. How the situations were handled would then give the player more funds/less funds to replace casualties thourhg faster training. Really the scope for this kind of game would be enormous.
Too enormous ? I don't think so, because Micropose did a similar kind of game in the 80's which ran on a humble 486, UFO Enemy Unknown. No game was ever the same twice !
Yes none of these have really, when you think about it, taken gamers much further than Command And Conquer and Quake. Let me explain why I think this;
Operation Flashpoint : The whole war for the islands in the game is going on about you but the events, such as overflying helicopters, are scripted into the game, they always happen, the same goes for he enemy forces and troops you will face. Once you learn by trial and error where they start from it is simple matter to line up your troops or yourself in the best firing position and slaughter them. Each mission only gives you a limited amount of troops, like Command And Conquer, and whilst each mission can expand across the whole island you are on, its not worth it because there is nothing happening outside of the immediate mission area. It is a ghost island. Command And Conquer with different visuals and less resource management.
Ghost Recon : A Special Forces game involving little to no mission planning, how realistic. The command interface for giving your troops orders is simple, but, ineffective. Watch in delight as troops are picked off whilst doing blatantly stupid commands. You ant your teams to charge the armoured vehicle they cant hope to destroy ? These guys will do it ! It is really not so far from Quake, except the graphics are better than before, and the setting has changed.
A truly great war game would place the gamer in command of a country's entire military, Airforce, Army, Navy, Marines, and have a global scope. Conlflicts and crisis' would break out anywhere anytime with different numbers of enemies, troop types e.t.c everytime. The player would then choose how to tackle these with his available forces. How the situations were handled would then give the player more funds/less funds to replace casualties thourhg faster training. Really the scope for this kind of game would be enormous.
Too enormous ? I don't think so, because Micropose did a similar kind of game in the 80's which ran on a humble 486, UFO Enemy Unknown. No game was ever the same twice !
Dont go silly Belldandy!!!
Sounds like you need to get yourself in a high ranking military position!
Was C&C red alert not enough for you?? cruisers AND destroyers, and even fighter jets ! wow ! Skirmish matches eh, those were the days. I remember the days spent competing against cheaters playing on their own gem invested maps (coincidently next to their base) with their 150 tanyas and 30 mammoth tanks, all within 3 minutes of starting the game.
Sounds like you need to get yourself in a high ranking military position!
Was C&C red alert not enough for you?? cruisers AND destroyers, and even fighter jets ! wow ! Skirmish matches eh, those were the days. I remember the days spent competing against cheaters playing on their own gem invested maps (coincidently next to their base) with their 150 tanyas and 30 mammoth tanks, all within 3 minutes of starting the game.
neilc wrote:
> Dont go silly Belldandy!!!
Sounds like you need to get yourself in a high
> ranking military position!
Was C&C red alert not enough for you?? cruisers
> AND destroyers, and even fighter jets ! wow ! Skirmish matches eh, those were
> the days. I remember the days spent competing against cheaters playing on their
> own gem invested maps (coincidently next to their base) with their 150 tanyas
> and 30 mammoth tanks, all within 3 minutes of starting the game.
----------
Ha ha, my mate and I would play over a link up, on maps he'd made. Of course he knew where everything was and where the gems were, where the quickest routes to somewhere were and everything. He'd send hovercrafts full of Tanyas at me
> Dont go silly Belldandy!!!
Sounds like you need to get yourself in a high
> ranking military position!
Was C&C red alert not enough for you?? cruisers
> AND destroyers, and even fighter jets ! wow ! Skirmish matches eh, those were
> the days. I remember the days spent competing against cheaters playing on their
> own gem invested maps (coincidently next to their base) with their 150 tanyas
> and 30 mammoth tanks, all within 3 minutes of starting the game.
----------
Ha ha, my mate and I would play over a link up, on maps he'd made. Of course he knew where everything was and where the gems were, where the quickest routes to somewhere were and everything. He'd send hovercrafts full of Tanyas at me
You should get Advance Wars for the GBA: troops, tanks, boats, planes - and fronted by an adorable cartoon general called Nel. Perfect.
neilc wrote:
Was C&C red alert not enough for you?? cruisers
> AND destroyers, and even fighter jets ! wow ! Skirmish matches eh, those were
> the days. I remember the days spent competing against cheaters playing on their
> own gem invested maps (coincidently next to their base) with their 150 tanyas
> and 30 mammoth tanks, all within 3 minutes of starting the game.
C&C Red Alert wasn't really that much fun. Tank Rush anyone ? Very strategical that ? Asking for a bit of variety and realism isn't asking for anything that couldn't be done, and hasn't already been done in other genres.
Take FPS games for example. Max Payne and Counterstrike give the player a massive, oftern very similar, choice of weaponry. The ships in C&C were, quite frankly, rubbish ! As were the planes and submarines. Red Alert 2 was no better. Ace Combat 4 on the PS2 is one war game that I do like - 27 different accurate planes with a wide choice of weapons and choices of how to accomplish the missions. Flashpoint could have also done this - even if the player just got to allocate forces prior to a game from a selection, but instead if you wanted to take out those Soviet tanks then you either did it in a tank or tried, hilariously, to do it on foot, ah endless fun.....
Don't get me wrong, Redstorm and Codemasters have advanced the genre so far its unbelievable, they just need a little push to go that bit further, because if Micropose can do it nearly 20 years ago I'm sure and updated version of this is quite possible...:)
Was C&C red alert not enough for you?? cruisers
> AND destroyers, and even fighter jets ! wow ! Skirmish matches eh, those were
> the days. I remember the days spent competing against cheaters playing on their
> own gem invested maps (coincidently next to their base) with their 150 tanyas
> and 30 mammoth tanks, all within 3 minutes of starting the game.
C&C Red Alert wasn't really that much fun. Tank Rush anyone ? Very strategical that ? Asking for a bit of variety and realism isn't asking for anything that couldn't be done, and hasn't already been done in other genres.
Take FPS games for example. Max Payne and Counterstrike give the player a massive, oftern very similar, choice of weaponry. The ships in C&C were, quite frankly, rubbish ! As were the planes and submarines. Red Alert 2 was no better. Ace Combat 4 on the PS2 is one war game that I do like - 27 different accurate planes with a wide choice of weapons and choices of how to accomplish the missions. Flashpoint could have also done this - even if the player just got to allocate forces prior to a game from a selection, but instead if you wanted to take out those Soviet tanks then you either did it in a tank or tried, hilariously, to do it on foot, ah endless fun.....
Don't get me wrong, Redstorm and Codemasters have advanced the genre so far its unbelievable, they just need a little push to go that bit further, because if Micropose can do it nearly 20 years ago I'm sure and updated version of this is quite possible...:)