I haven’t been playing many games in the last 6 months. This weekend I got the urge to play a RTS, so I read up on reviews, and choose Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 2, Warhammer 40,000.
Both of them suck. At least, if you were expecting to play an RTS in the C&C, Age of Empires, Warcraft sense.
First off, you have zero control. Each game constantly interrupts gameplay by telling you to move to a marker, to engage the target at a second marker, to send artillery to this smoke. You have no control. Each game just tells exactly what to do.
Company of Heroes is the by far the worse. Options to build artillery, barracks, etc.. were all greyed out. You’d literally wait, the screen would shift to a building, a voice would come on and say “click this building, click this button”. Once you did that, the screen would shift again to a location maker, and a voice would say “click here to deploy that other thing I had you click”.
What is the point of playing a Real Time Strategy game, if the game decides exactly what you should do?
And lets talk about how the game chooses to direct you: by taking control of the screen every other minute. That has got to be the most annoying game play “experience” I have ever encountered. Not only are you not allowed to actually make a decision, but literally ever minute the game takes control away from your mouse and keyboard, and moves the screen. It completely breaks any remaining sense of control or immersion.
I suppose that multiplayer is the only true reason those games are popular. I would assume (hope) that a multiplayer match actually allows you to make decisions, place defenses where you want them, and doesn’t interrupt your gameplay every other minute by telling you what to do and taking control of all the keys.
/rant off
