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I am terrible at Halo. From day one, no matter how much I played I was terrible. Multiplayer, single player, lowest difficulty setting, I suck. Which is a shame because I liked the narrative. I finished Halo on the easiest difficulty somehow. I only made it half way through 2. After that I stopped buying the games because I knew I’d never play them. At some point I heard they were making an RTS game, but I never paid much attention and lost track of it over time. I remembered that it existed the other day, randomly, and think I’ll see if a person can still find a copy. As far as the story goes I think I’m just going to have to see if people have posted the high points on youtube, or something.

I’m on an RTS kick because I realized the new PC can play games from several years ago at their max settings, which I’ve never been able to do, so I installed Warcraft 3. I am also terrible at W3. I like making units and wandering around, but eventually the whole thing stalls out and I can’t defeat the other teams. Even when the computer is set to easy they somehow take my fully upgraded fighters down with ease. In spite of this I keep playing. Starcraft, in contrast, I can play relatively well. As long as I’m playing as Terran. I find the other teams annoying, so I never really learned how to play them. Of course I’m still terrible at Starcraft by the standards of people who play constantly, but I just like making the little guys and wandering around. Almost ever game I actually win ends with me just making starships. I’m not much of a tactician. Once I have my primary base established I hold the line. Kirahee style.

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Halo Wars is the best console rts there is… but that’s not saying much. It’s a good, farily simple game that I found alot of fun but true rts fans hate it. It’s very solid though, with not many glitchs and exploits and has a decent story (and awesome cut scenes if that counts for anything).
If you get it you should let me play co-op with you.

You don’t like Protoss? Think I know what your problem is, there.

YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS.

That sorta killed me on the ‘toss too at first. But once I figured the whole thing out; Dayumn!

there is just something about having such advanced tech AND psychic powers even on your most basic unit. (which, by the way, is strong enough to take down elite units from other teams. just saying. Assuming you know what to do with ’em)

And he’s got a wife for hire! I mean, dude get’s around!

As for sucking on WC3, Crave, you ain’t alone there, man. I had my freinds teach me some basic stuff back in the day, though. It’s a very tactical game. So unless you’re an adaptable dude you’re not gonna be a hit on the multiplayer. But the singleplayer can be handled with some basic understanding.

As for halo: Co-op. Find someone patient enough to carry your bullet-riddled body trough the missions. I do that for some of my freinds.

Second the co-op suggestion. Not only will it help you get through, it’s also way more fun. The creepy Flood bits work better when you’re alone, but the fun of the straight up action parts is hugely amplified by having a friend along.

If you’re on an RTS kick I’ve got some suggestions for you. Any of the Dawn of War games are a good start, even better if you like the Warhammer 40k mythos/setting. DoW2 is probably the best to be taken by itself though Dark Crusade is my favorite. If you want something with a different feel Sins of a Solar Empire is excellent. Overwhelming force can win the day and it adds some 4X elements to it. Skirmishes can be huge, spanning several star systems and hundreds of planets. Supreme Commander (either 1 or 2) are also worth looking at. 2 plays easier but 1 just feels massive (almost unwieldy). Both have some neat units (amphibious battleships anyone?).

If you need more suggestions I’ve got tons, I love RTSs.

Oh my goodness, I freaken love the Dawn of Waar series! The most recent one was a bit of a shift from the regular gameplay though, have to say that made it all the more difficult.

Normally RTS is one of the few genres of games I avoid, but recently I bought Command and Conquer 3, and the Kane’s Wrath expansion. I have been blissfully getting trumped by and trumping the AI ever since. There’s something wonderfully simple about it. The extra factions from Kane’s Wrath are fun, I think I have to go with Traveler-59 as my favourite of them. Without the expansion there’s still enough destinction between the three sides to make each one playable. I just prefer the Scrin.

I wouldn’t say you’re missing too much, story wise RE: the second two Halo games. Second game is mostly a straight up rehash of the first. Aside from the introduction of the Gravemind, the Arbiter sections are the only things that really push the Halo story forward (by showing us how corruption and sectarian conflict within the Covenant are fermenting into civil war).

Third game resolves the story, but in pretty nearly the most straightforward way possible. Kind of disappointing given how the second one ends hinting that shit’s about to go completely off the rails. Also it kinda ruins the Gravemind in the process by dumbing it down and hamming it up compared to the the calm and alien-minded schemer presented in 2.

Don’t get me wrong: they’re both solid in terms of gameplay, it just sort of felt like plot-wise the further they went along, the more the creator’s reach exceeded their grasp. It’s like they had great ideas, but weren’t skilled enough to put those ideas together into a great story, so as the series advanced they had to sabotage them one by one to allow for the sort of simpler, dumber story that actually was within their ability to deliver.

Reach and ODST are both basically add-on side stories, and are not in any way necessary to knowing or understanding the main plot (they basically go into detail on some background events that at best you only really need to know happened period, and the fact that they happened period is already established in the main games). Again: good, solid gameplay, but story wise they’re just extra background fluff, not plot.

Hah! Reminds me of my struggles with the Mass Effect series. I was never a huge first or third person shooter fan, although I loved Doom! back in the day. Oh, and the System Shock games that I never did make real progress with.

Starting mass effect, I sucked royally, but beat the game at the extreme-wimps mode. Came back and replayed often enough that I can now beat it on insanity without struggling too much. ME2 was a much straighter shooter though, so beating that on the ‘regular’ difficult was a struggle, made possible by conserving all my heavy weapon ammo for the final boss!

ME3 was a real struggle, and several times I considered giving up after wiping for the 10th or 20th time in a row. Turned out the most frustrating wipe was actually the last battle of the game, it simply had not advertised itself as being epic in any way. I’m not going to comment on the final ending there though, more than enough has been said elsewhere.

I now find myself wondering if I should dust off the System Shock 2 CD and give it another try though. Sadly, I no longer have a floppy drive to install the first one.

System Shock 1 has been made legally downloadable/redestributable by it’s creators. You can legitimately download it free from lots of places now.

I got mine here: http://www.systemshock.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=6aoas1u4i4pd5npakqb0kdncq6&board=13.0
I reccomend the native Windows mod version. The music doesn’t work in that version, but IMO that’s a plus, as the original music is… wrong: the game is much, much more atmospheric without it.

Word of fair warning: it’s much more of a straight FPS than SS2 (it gets called an FPS/RPG hybrid a lot, but that’s just people confusing it with SS2). It also uses a very weird and overcomplicated old-school control/interface scheme, which isn’t internally remappable(a macro-remappable gaming keyboard or keypad can make a big difference with this game).

That said, it’s awesome. I only played it for the first time last year, so I have no sentimental connection to ye olde primitive graphics and control schemes, but IMO despite these it still manages to be better than a lot of modern FPS’s. It’s like a smarter version of Doom 3.

That’s your problem then, you play defense and turtle. Every RTS practically demands you to rush at some point, not always to win but to disrupt the enemy’s production. Most RTS are clickfests, so you have to know your hotkeys and have the construction orders for each strategy commited to memory.

Playing against the computer turtling can work, but only if you can outspend the AI by a wide margin. AI on every game sucks at combined arms, so as long as you have a decent grasp of how the tactical rock/paper/scissors dynamic of the game you’re playing works and you have enough income, you’ll win sooner or later.

*sigh* And to think I used to LIKE RTS games up until I worked for Blizzard…And then everyone used to think I was crazy because I would go into the break room and play pinball after I was off.

I realized when I got to the last screen that Thomas is still sporting that sexy hair. Nice. :)
Also, second to last panel=awesome. ^^

If your interested in two very different RTS games, I’d suggest, “Starwars Empire at war”. The tactics can get interesting. But Really you can invade from space, and overwhelm your enemy, very easily. Also another game is “Emperor Battle for Dune.” That is an older game, it dates to around when Star craft first came out, plays better. Has a good storyline, but the chances of finding a copy is hard. My copy died on me so now I’m in search of a new one because it was my favorite game and it was good enough to re-buy.

Funny. I had Echoes of War playing before I pulled this page up.

I’ve had better luck with RTS games recently, but never had a problem with WC3. Well, except the last solo undead mission. I’m more of a ‘best defense is a good offense’ player, so that one takes me about three tries before I get comfortably outside my comfort zone…

That being said I don’t do much at all with Starcraft. It’s not a bad game, or anything, I just tend to be more fantasy than Sci-Fi in my gaming tastes. Or maybe it’s because sci-fi tends to adopt a bleaker outlook than fantasy? Maybe I just don’t know.

Ah, well.

Well, the good news with Starcraft and Warcraft is that they both come with a very powerful world editor that allows you to make basically any type of game you want (and by extension find some pretty good custom material online), so you don’t have to be good at the RTS aspect to still get a lot of fun out of it. I’ve been messing around with the world editor for WC3 since it came out and still suck at the RTS gameplay, most of the time when I actually play the game it’s with my friends in a LAN party, and we just try out a lot of the custom maps. (Gem tower defense, Jurasic Park, and Tomb of Jarahcon were some of my favorites for WC3).

But yeah, it’s annoying that the computer trys to exploit your troops armor weaknesses with all there attacks, if you don’t set your spellcasters to fallow your ranged units they pretty much evaporate with every conflict. The heros in WC3 add a new level of micromanagement you need to achieve victory to which is kind of annoying, can’t fall back on milions of zerglings XD. I’d say undead is probably the most straight-forward of the 4 races, basically all their units cover rolls present in the other races and their abilities make a lot of their troops pretty archetypal for their rolls. Night elves are the most exotic with a lot of unique and hybridized troops.

one of the best RTS games of all time, in my opinion, has to be Red Alert 2 and its expansion, Yuri’s Revenge. Windows 7 has some trouble running it, but with some tricks you can still make it function well. If you get ahold of a copy of Command and Conquer: First Decade it’s on there and I can tell you how to make it work.

Word of advice, though: do NOT buy Red Alert 3. Despite the amazing gameplay of RA 1 and 2, 3 was one of the worst games I have ever played.

Well, as for story games, I’d say Bioshock. The only thing that stopped me from listening to all of the audio diaries on my first playthrough was the difficulty in finding some of them.

Halo Wars, though, not bad, but I’m not sure if you can find it on anything but Xbox.

An RTS that my friends and I had loads of fun with was the original Rise of Nations (mighta had an expansion pack or two, not sure.) That and Age of Empires 3 pretty much sums up my still-likely-to-be-awesome list for RTS games.

Bonne Fortuna in your search!

Not an avid rts fan but the few I played and loved were Universe at war and Rise of nations, and yeah story wise bioshock is hands down the best Ive played

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