RTS phase

One of my favorite videogame genres is the RTS (real-time strategy) games. Namely Warcraft, Starcraft, and Command & Conquer, and all the ones that continue those franchises.

It all started when my uncle brought over a free demo of Warcraft II he had gotten. Not sure if it was from work, came with some other game, or he just happened to see it in a store, but it included the first few levels of each campaign, and it was awesome. I knew I needed the full game at that point.

Eventually I got it, probably as a birthday gift or something, proceeded to play it non-stop. At that point I didn't have many cool computer games, so this one got my undivided attention. I was pretty young though, and the computer I was using wasn't all that great, so between my limited concept of strategy and the lag my computer caused, I found the game pretty difficult.

That didn't stop me from playing though, and I managed to get pretty far in the campaign before I hit a difficult level I just couldn't get past.

Then came Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Still running on a very outdated computer, I managed to become pretty good at this game. It had a lot more options for defending your base, and not having to worry so much about defense I could concentrate on building up an army and taking it to the enemy. I tried the campaigns, but this game really had me hooked on skirmishes and just seeing if I could beat the computer.

Starcraft came next, and I got this pretty late, after the expansion had already been released. I finally had a computer that could handle it, and the fact that it had three factions just made it so much better. Plus they were very different from each other, and that meant you couldn't just win by having more units. I don't even want to think about how many hours I spent on that game, lets just say it was more than enough.

It was a while before I thought about playing another RTS game. Sure more came out, but I had a lot of other games to concentrate on and just sort of forgot about the genre.

That is, until Warcraft III came out. I managed to download it and beat the entire campaign within a couple weeks of its release. The only problem was I didn't have a valid CD-key to play online, so after beating it I sort of lost interest.

In the past couple years I decided I wanted to go back to those older games and go through the campaigns. The problem is, with all the new Windows versions, my old DOS games no longer run on my computer. Luckily Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition was released, solving my problem there, and also allowing online play. Along with finding a downloadable copy of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and a DOS emulator, I can play through the original wars, all the stuff I see mentioned in WoW but I never got to see.

Even more recently Command & Conquer: The First Decade was release, which included every game from the franchise that had been released up until that point. I managed to scoop that up and now I have a whole lot of games to get through before I'll be satisfied, although I'll probably burn out on it before I finish.

Right now I am looking at checking out the latest Command & Conquer 3, which has been out for a couple years, but still looks cool. I've heard some bad reviews about it, but I might get it anyway.

At the moment I am working my way through the campaign of the Warcraft II expansion and it's great. I love the simplicity, and I think as I progress through the games and the increasing level of complexity it won't come as such a shock as it would if I had just started with one of the new ones.

If you've never played any of these games you really should. They pretty much set the standard for RTS games, and are so much fun to play you'll get hooked even if you aren't that good.