A Bit Conspicuous

I’m not sold on the idea of RTS games on the consoles in the first place, at least not in their current form. Selection is just too cumbersome, even with the BFME control style. From what we’ve seen of Halo Wars so far it doesn’t look like I will be changing my outlook any time soon.

Here is a gameplay demonstration from GameTrailers.com, watch it around 3:20. Trudging down a corridor, and then sitting there as the units stand in a line and shoot at each other does not look fun. After Company of Heroes proper cover dynamics are practically mandatory.

Hopefully the final levels will be much more open. Corridors are a cheap way to funnel the player, but they don’t serve RTS games very well. They are fine when used sparingly, but the meat of the levels should be far more open.

RTS games need a full design overhaul in order to work well on consoles. The controller is too cumbersome to pull off large scale RTS battles. I’d like to see console RTS games scale unit counts down and focus more on tactics, while keeping the core mechanics of resource management and reconnaissance at the forefront. Reduce the number of squads to around four, and eliminate the selection problem altogether by having you assign squads when a unit is built.

So much of an RTS could be streamlined in order to facilitate console controls, but current games are clinging to the PC style RTS design too closely. Distill that design, and re-design it from the ground up for the console. Then we will get the RTS experience from our couch.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 7:13 pm and is filed under Games, Reviews, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.