Your guess is as good as mine. I submitted the review to 1up a week and a half ago. They must be pretty busy over there…
-Tom
Both Starcraft and Warcraft III spank it pretty hard, they have reasonable structure, but more importantly they managed to tie their stories and characters into the missions and advance the story while you played.
I think it would be better if they included alot more Myth type missions. You get all the units you’re ever going to have at the beginning you lose one it’s gone.
IMHO, I think the SP campaign in Kohan killed that franchise. I played the FULL campgin of both Kohan, and Kohan-AG (expansion) and thought the whole thing was sorta ho-hum (insert comments eerily similar to GrinR’s here).
It wasn’t until months later that someone coaxed me into playing Kohan in skirmish mode that I discovered the hidden gem of a game buried benath the SP campaign layer of “bleah”.
I can see some people feeling the same way about COH’s campaign, although personally, by NOT using “cheese” I’m find the campaign VERY enjoyable (V2 mission excluded).
SamF7
Heh, Myth. That made me wonder if I was going mad or if there was a Myst RTS.
JTF follows that sort of structure, allowing for a slight amount of in-game unit purchase over the course of the mission. Every. Unit. Counts.
YMMV I guess, I would agree that Warcraft and Starcraft had excellent narratives, but there was nothing fancy about the missions anyway. IMHO Relic improved on the formula…
Umm, dude? Not at all. You do know what that dollar sign in a commander’s orders panel is for, don’t you?
-Tom
The missions were simply extensions of the story, which is IMO why they worked so well, because the very nature of the RTS beast works against it in campaign games.
Take an FPS in single-player and imagine being able to do nothing except what you do in multi-player (be it bots or humans) but with less guns. That’s what most RTS developers seem to think makes for an acceptable campaign.
I would love to have been able to kill those boring fuckers in Myst. “Here I am stuck in a book!” BLAMMO! O.o
On topic-er: the Relic Online chat room is filling up right now with people arguing about Bush. I hope the Campaign keeps being fun because that’s the kind of crap that keeps me away from multiplayer gaming.
In just about every SP RTS campaign you can win by holding out until you have massive resources to overwhelm the enemy. You can always find a way to take advantage of AI behavior to lead them into kill zones. Heck, for a long while this was really the primary play mechanic in RTSs (remember the original dune where you could just set up a kill zone of turrets and use a unit to lure the enemy into it, or in Warcraft where you could do the same thing, using a fast unit to lead the enemy into your trap). While I’d love to see an AI which can not be easily led into traps, it is par for the course.
One thing I noticed with the regular AI (haven’t played on hard yet) it that it doesn’t seem to use special weapons/abilities much. I have never seen it throw a grenade.
Typically, higher difficulty settings mean the computer starts with more resources and sends more enemies at one time. This wouldn’t change what I’m talking about aside from making it take longer to break the AI’s back.
Hmm. The enemy AI is pretty smart, I’ve found. Good at taking out defensive positions without just meatgrindering, and good at spotting weak points (cheating…). Seems odd that we’ve had such different experiences.
Ordering a slight amount of units, like I just said. It’s hardly the endless machine of war in most RTSs. Can you even double the size of your initial army?? I don’t think so.
Seriously? I’ll have to look into that. I think that alone would merit a purchase of an expansion.
I hate you, firstly. Strategy games shouldn’t test twitch skills.
Second, have you even played CoH? It’s microheaven! Tank facing matters! Nearly every unit needs individual upgrades, and once upgraded you need to tell those units to individually use their special abilities.
It depends on the scenario, but the answer is yes. Methinks you might want to play a bit more of this game you claim to love so much. :)
At any rate, my point was that Joint Task Foce is nothing like Myth. Myst. No, I meant Myth. In that game, you got your starting units and you just had to deal. A significant part of Joint Task Force is making money – note that silly world media opinion bar – to build new units and equip your forces on the fly.
-Tom
Oh, I will. I’ve held off because I’m going to go through it co-op with a pal of mine and he’s been on vacation for the past 2 weeks. This weekend though.
Well, even if you can double your initial forces, that’s a far cry from the endlessness of CoH and most economy-based RTSs. Hell, even C&C stuff had you running out of tiberium/gold/etc. at some point.
CoH has no scarcity.
“Even C&C”? That’s pretty much the established model. For a guy who claims to love the genre, you sure make some odd comments, GrinR.
In fact, I’d be hard pressed to think of very many “economy-based RTSs” that are endless. Certainly not most of them. Most RTSs have some finite resource as a way to prevent turtling. BFME2 and Relic’s latest are exceptions rather than rules.
-Tom
True, but the limit didn’t often come into play at all in single player for most RTS games. Though limited you usually had more than enough to gather a giant force to deliver the final blow to the AI opponent.
You old hen, nitpicking at motes! There’s a wide range of economic models in RTS’s and a wide variety of gameplay mechanisms for players to get resources. You should know that, being a game reviewer.
The point, I’ll repeat, is that there is a massive difference between Myth/JTF/Soldiers/etc. and C&C/TA/Warcraft/CoH. You can niggle all you like about the details, but my point stands.
Heh, you’re so sensitive! I need to buy you a beer. Calm you down.
Nice try. Not only does no one dispute that, but it’s not even what you said.
I was responding to 1) the silly assertion that Joint Task Force was like Myth (as you’ll see when you play it, it’s nothing like Myth), and 2) the equally silly asseration that most “economic based RTS” are “endless”.
Do you have this much trouble communicating in real life?
-Tom