When you go back and play the originals (even Red Alert remastered) the modernised gameplay added by Open RA becomes very apparent. I can't go back to the originals now.
I never understood why people loved them so much. Perhaps it was because of their simplicity thus allowing for more mainstream appeal?
Im sure I’ll get downvoted by the Red Alert fans with their rose tinted glasses for saying this because a lot of people forget just how basic those games were. But I played a hell of a lot of strategy games back then (it was my favourite genre) and Westwood did some of the most simplistic games in the genre.
Where Westwood excelled at was the presentation more than the game play. Great music, FMV in the later games, etc.
Anyhow, I might check out this OpenRA project if they’ve tweaked the mechanics.
The complexity difference was sort of interesting I think. I recall there was a lot more… stuff the units could do. Basic infantry for one side could lay down, take cover behind sand bags (maybe?), garrison in NPC buildings. Gain experience and level up. And these are just the most basic dudes.
It is neat stuff that makes the game feel good to pick up and play. But designed in complexity in a game can get in the way of developing emergent complexity. I think this is particularly noticeable in an RTS, where there’s already a lot going on.
StarCraft Marines only really have like one thing they can do (stim), otherwise it’s just positioning. This promotes the whole emergent “micro” gameplay skill. Which isn’t to say micro doesn’t exist in C&C (I have no idea what competitive play looks like there), but there are a lot of alternatives (Deploy them? Let them go prone?).
What Starcraft 1 does very well and what many other games cannot really emulate is the dynamics of units - that the battles can happen across the whole map - because few units are often still significant enough. There is obviously the whole "death ball" concept too - but Starcraft Brood War is full of mechanics that actually go against the death ball - for example siege tanks, or psionic storm that just annihilate clumped units. This never existed in Westwood games, what meant that most games were mostly just sitting in one place and building 50 tanks.
The whole "you can garrison marines in a building" thing in RA2 was nice.. but at the end again it was static defense.
On a personal note, I really enjoyed "Dune 2000" and "Emperor: Battle for Dune" but I have never really been a huge fan of the "Age of Empire" series. Recently I tried "Impossible Creatures" and it was frustrating. I suppose for I am a very casual RTS player. Each to their own.
It feels really cool to escape into these worlds, each unit and building feels alive and unique.
They're mechanically not the best games, but that's never gotten in the way of the fun factor for me :)
Whereas StarCraft was released in 1998. Which, if we are to use your examples, would make C&C 5 years behind StarCraft in terms of game play. Which is a hell of a long time given how games were evolving in the 90s and early 00s
However, this also meant that the gameplay wasn't well-suited for deep strategy or multiplayer, which was what RTS ended up being about down the road.
What I remember is a bigger scale for the fights, C&C let you control dozens of units at a time, Warcraft I and II let you control maybe 4 or 6 at a time. The unit cap was larger and you didn't have to spend half of it on resource gathering.
Yes, they're simple, factions don't differ as much as in Starcraft where they demand very different strategies and tactics, and there isn't as much power in 'microing'. One element that matters quite a bit is there's a hurdle to establishing a new base, it's not just to send away a cheap, fast unit, instead you need to spend a chunk on a slow special unit. This means that rushing a base has more impact in the early to mid game, and sometimes that's how you can stop an enemy attacking your base.
I still like RA2 quite a bit, but it’s not in the same league as others.
While I agree with the statement as written, what I take away from it is the polar opposite. RA2 is (to me) the best RTS ever created.
I've been intermittently grinding Mindustry recently...
The units are all unique. The few differentiators between nations are actually very relevant.
The only thing that comes close is Starcraft.
Which is to say that so much money has been spent on those designers, whether at Blizzard or Westwood, or later in the near billion dollars that has been handed out to former Blizzard people starting their own thing. And then, some guy Tya in his bedroom in China designed better games.
They should be credited for building communities first and foremost. It wasn't ever really about the games.
Menu hangs on start for up to 10 seconds for no apparent reason, people leaving the game during the “connecting to server” stage seems to make everyone else wait indefinitely usually forcing them to quit.
On the multiplayer screen, tab between “Join” and all the other tab buttons and notice how each one moves a few pixels.
Then the obscene inefficiencies overall. Sitting at the main menu not even moving my mouse gets the CPU hot enough to make the fans loud. During gameplay a 4v4 multiplayer match turns into one big lag fest about 15 minutes in.
The "connecting to server" player drop bug has been fixed for a while now.
Never noticed any pixels moving.
Yes, OpenRA is, unfortunately, ridiculously inefficient. You're right in that you just sit in the main menu, even with the moving background set to disabled, and your computer will slowly get hot with excessive CPU/GPU usage. It seems like there is no dynamic use of computer resources at all.