RTS

With the release of Starcraft 2 this year (This year? Heh, I'll keep my fingers crossed...but you never really know with Blizzard), I figured that I should brush up on my RTS skills since they're a bit rusty.  It's been a long time since I've really been into RTS games; I've mainly been sticking to my FPS (killing terrorists, zombies, and the likes).  But gaming is kinda like riding a bike, the skills are always there once you learn them, you just need to get back on the horse...or bike, whatever the metaphor is.


For those of you who aren't familiar with gaming terminology, RTS stands for real time strategy.  Examples include SC, WC, C&C, CoH, AoE, etc (n3rd props if you know what those games are).  For me however, RTS stands for real time suckage.  I learned tonight just how bad I am at these types of games.  My skills were never that great to begin with, and with so much time spent nowadays on FPS, I guess my abilities have atrophied into uselessness.  In an FPS, it's fairly simple, focus on one enemy at a time, shoot, kill, repeat.  There are elements of strategy: stealth, traps, teamwork etc, but most of the time, your attention is focused at a single target or area.  And I excel at this.  It's weird how I can multitask without problems IRL, but completely suck at it in game.  Especially when it comes to playing the Supreme Commander series.

Supreme Commander, its expansion pack - Forged Alliance, and the soon to be released sequel, Supreme Commander 2, are the most intense RTS games I've ever played.  The sheer scale of the game is massive - micro in on a single unit or macro out to see a global view, with individual units turning into shapes and symbols on a map.  It may not be the prettiest RTS graphically, but with land, air, and sea units, fully upgradable tech trees, and sometimes OP AI, it's definitely one of the most demanding.  Which is why I fail miserably at it.  It's hard enough managing my own resources in the real world, how can I expect to micro and macro manage enough resources to complete my objectives in a game?  Tonight I spent an hour building up enough defense and offense to complete the first objective, another hour to complete the second objective, only to have my base raped once I was given a third objective (the map expanded and what I thought was a well protected base - with map edges on two sides - turned into a shoddy fortification with critical flanks exposed and vulnerable to counterattack).  Two hours of strategy and planning - derailed in less than 10 minutes.  I guess I'm not cut out to be a supreme commander.  Give me a gun, some ammo, and a couple of frags any day.  


I hope they have head shots in Starcraft 2.