Command and Conquer may be missing in action, but a new Steam RTS serves as the spiritual return of Red Alert, Tiberian Dawn, and the other ‘90s classics.
I realise I should link the game to allow people to skip the clickbait title
It’s modern enough but old school. I had barely sampled C&C back in the day (this game, I’m told, is a lot like C&C3), but I played a ton of StarCraft, and the mission they gave on the show floor was definitely great for showing off the unit escalation and rock paper scissors of it all. If you’re looking for another one of those, there’s a good chance they nailed it. For me, however, I think I’d like to see a different take on the genre, at least for multiplayer. The fog of war would instill a sense of dread in me that no amount of scouting could ever alleviate, and while winning a game of an RTS is super empowering, losing felt so awful that I’m not sure I want to do it again. They’re seemingly not changing anything drastic and just making another one of those, which is fine, because there aren’t a lot of those. I’m much less interested in playing games with a mouse these days, but somehow this game has full controller support listed on the store page. I know AOE2 got updated with clever controller options, but like I said; they’re not rocking the boat with this game, so it’s surprising that they somehow have controller inputs working. When I played the demo, it was on a mouse and keyboard.
I’m also not familiar enough with C&C to know what this game is doing different from C&C. But a lot of old designs aren’t broken and could just use modernization. Look at the last few games Mimimi has made, modernizing Commandos and Desperados. At this point, I’m desperate for “boomer shooters” to catch up to the 00s in design, because no one really makes FPS games like that anymore. A friend of mine was playing some TimeSplitters: Future Perfect on Discord, and I never played those games in their heyday, but I would absolutely be into them. There just aren’t games made like that anymore, and I miss them. This game could be that for RTS or C&C fans.
Side note. There are allegedly TimeSplitters and Perfect Dark games on the way. I fully expect Perfect Dark’s campaign to not resemble that first game at all and for its multiplayer to be a live service extraction shooter, because that’s what these big companies think people want. To be clear, this is based on nothing but feelings, conjecture, and cynicism, and I’m usually not very cynical. And if TimeSplitters ever does come back like they say it is, I expect it to be exactly what I want because they can’t afford to build the thing that’s going to ruin Perfect Dark.
As for BG3, the way Larian makes those games systems driven, such that you can say, “I wonder if this works” and it usually does, is doing more than just playing on nostalgia, and it is doing things that video games excel at, even if it’s still doing things outlined in the tabletop game.
It’s modern enough but old school. I had barely sampled C&C back in the day (this game, I’m told, is a lot like C&C3), but I played a ton of StarCraft, and the mission they gave on the show floor was definitely great for showing off the unit escalation and rock paper scissors of it all. If you’re looking for another one of those, there’s a good chance they nailed it. For me, however, I think I’d like to see a different take on the genre, at least for multiplayer. The fog of war would instill a sense of dread in me that no amount of scouting could ever alleviate, and while winning a game of an RTS is super empowering, losing felt so awful that I’m not sure I want to do it again. They’re seemingly not changing anything drastic and just making another one of those, which is fine, because there aren’t a lot of those. I’m much less interested in playing games with a mouse these days, but somehow this game has full controller support listed on the store page. I know AOE2 got updated with clever controller options, but like I said; they’re not rocking the boat with this game, so it’s surprising that they somehow have controller inputs working. When I played the demo, it was on a mouse and keyboard.
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I’m also not familiar enough with C&C to know what this game is doing different from C&C. But a lot of old designs aren’t broken and could just use modernization. Look at the last few games Mimimi has made, modernizing Commandos and Desperados. At this point, I’m desperate for “boomer shooters” to catch up to the 00s in design, because no one really makes FPS games like that anymore. A friend of mine was playing some TimeSplitters: Future Perfect on Discord, and I never played those games in their heyday, but I would absolutely be into them. There just aren’t games made like that anymore, and I miss them. This game could be that for RTS or C&C fans.
Side note. There are allegedly TimeSplitters and Perfect Dark games on the way. I fully expect Perfect Dark’s campaign to not resemble that first game at all and for its multiplayer to be a live service extraction shooter, because that’s what these big companies think people want. To be clear, this is based on nothing but feelings, conjecture, and cynicism, and I’m usually not very cynical. And if TimeSplitters ever does come back like they say it is, I expect it to be exactly what I want because they can’t afford to build the thing that’s going to ruin Perfect Dark.
As for BG3, the way Larian makes those games systems driven, such that you can say, “I wonder if this works” and it usually does, is doing more than just playing on nostalgia, and it is doing things that video games excel at, even if it’s still doing things outlined in the tabletop game.