Videogames: Real Time Strategy? Not for Everybody
HYDERABAD : This week, if you’re feeling particularly unintelligent - don’t play a strategy videogame. Steam’s weekly sales sometimes skew the suggestible gamer into buying something that is not her type of game, and we must all be wary of what we’re getting into. The Sudden Strike series tops the list this week in terms of unsatisfactory purchases. Following this is, however, an unbiased review of the game’s chief characteristics, ‘strategically’ ranked.
World War II: Who wouldn’t want to command German, British, Russian or American armies in what is sold as an accurate strategy game! Sudden Strike has a base serious enough to make you feel sagacious, and yet has an element of the whimsy through its multiple tanks, fighter jets and beach landing scenarios. I mean, it is a serious game - but it’s not Chess.
Nostalgia: This game would have probably done well between the years 1998 and 2003. It gives a nostalgic Windows 98 feel, with the sound effects and narration (with accents!), and graphics that rival the earliest Age of Empire games.
Functionally however, it is a pain. I would really appreciate a zoom out feature in the minimaps in Sudden Strike Gold, for example. And also some indication of where I am making the troopers land. Also I can’t move them around the screen because there’s hardly any blip to indicate what I’ve selected. You get the idea – the operational problems with the older games have not been corrected with updates; it’s as if the developers have given up on them. Sudden Strike Gold is now more abandonware than an actual classic.
Real Time Strategy: While the game really delivers on its main selling point of using every strategy with realistic consequences, the element of realism also means that the scenarios get repetitive. The genre itself, might be ideal only for those who really want to patiently wait-out to see the results of your micromanagement.
So, I will be sticking to the only kind of strategy game that I understand and can play without struggles - the juvenile rock-paper-scissors logic of the Pokemon games, of which the new game ‘Sword’ and ‘Shield’ has just been announced for the Nintendo switch!