4 ms·

C&C is another hugely popular one. Though I was in the minority of not enjoying Westwoods RTS so much. I much preferred Warcraft and StarCraft. But my favourite

C&C is another hugely popular one. Though I was in the minority of not enjoying Westwoods RTS so much. I much preferred Warcraft and StarCraft. But my favourite was The Settlers. This was also an era when business simulation games (you could argue as another “style” of RTS but not combat based) were popular too. Like Transport Tycoon, Theme Park, etc. From past conversations on here, it sounds like City Builders are still popular.

marginalia_nu 3y ago
I feel Westwood's games were always more about the single player experience. The maps were pretty well designed as sort of puzzle boxes you needed to figure out. The amazing soundtracks and cheesy FMVs were also very good at building atmosphere. Multiplayer felt unbalanced in a not very fun way.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Agreed, StarCraft and friends got a big multiplayer scene that I was never into; I'm not a good enough player. But C&C were fun to play through, and felt accessible to scrubs like me. (To be fair to Blizzard, StarCraft 2 is the ONLY Blizzard RTS I ever completed - or at least the episodes I bought ; they did exceptionally well on the difficulty scaling for that game.) Competitive multiplayer was always meh for us, we loved comp stomps, and I somewhat am sad that the AI was so "bad" that you never really could get a good balance between "destroyed you instantly" and "easily overwhelmed". https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/04/the-armageddon-doctrine https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/04/the-armageddon...
baremetal 3y ago
Capitalism 2 also, I played that extensively.
hermitdev 3y ago
I picked up a copy of C&C red alert a year ago. Sadly, it's unplayable on modern PCs. At least it was for me. Too many issues, crashes and the game speed not being changeable before game launch and by the time you can change it in game, it's too late and you're basically already way too behind to catch up. It's a shame because it was one of my favorites from the era.
- dhfs 3y ago
  There are open source engine reimplementations which use the original assets to play the c&c games on modern machines. See https://www.openra.net/ https://www.openra.net/
- nerdix 3y ago
  Both the first C&C game and Red Alert were remastered in 2020 as a part of the "Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection". That version should run on modern machines. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer_Remastered_Collection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer_Remaster...
  - _piif 3y ago
    They're currently on sale for a few bucks on Steam too.

marginalia_nu 3y ago

I feel Westwood's games were always more about the single player experience. The maps were pretty well designed as sort of puzzle boxes you needed to figure out. The amazing soundtracks and cheesy FMVs were also very good at building atmosphere. Multiplayer felt unbalanced in a not very fun way.

bombcar 3y ago
Agreed, StarCraft and friends got a big multiplayer scene that I was never into; I'm not a good enough player. But C&C were fun to play through, and felt accessible to scrubs like me. (To be fair to Blizzard, StarCraft 2 is the ONLY Blizzard RTS I ever completed - or at least the episodes I bought ; they did exceptionally well on the difficulty scaling for that game.) Competitive multiplayer was always meh for us, we loved comp stomps, and I somewhat am sad that the AI was so "bad" that you never really could get a good balance between "destroyed you instantly" and "easily overwhelmed". https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/04/the-armageddon-doctrine https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/04/the-armageddon...

baremetal 3y ago

Capitalism 2 also, I played that extensively.

hermitdev 3y ago

I picked up a copy of C&C red alert a year ago. Sadly, it's unplayable on modern PCs. At least it was for me. Too many issues, crashes and the game speed not being changeable before game launch and by the time you can change it in game, it's too late and you're basically already way too behind to catch up. It's a shame because it was one of my favorites from the era.

dhfs 3y ago
There are open source engine reimplementations which use the original assets to play the c&c games on modern machines. See https://www.openra.net/ https://www.openra.net/
nerdix 3y ago
Both the first C&C game and Red Alert were remastered in 2020 as a part of the "Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection". That version should run on modern machines. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer_Remastered_Collection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer_Remaster...
- _piif 3y ago
  They're currently on sale for a few bucks on Steam too.