Where are all the good games at? A slice of nostalgy

[SirArtturi]

I've been waiting for new rts to come to fill the niche that games like these never forgotten left:

Anyone happen remember/know these fantastic games that in so greatness combines rts, fps and rpg


Battlezone II


Battlezone I


Natural Selection (hl-mod)


Tribes I

Here's some videos to demonstrate this longing a bit more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8npf7k1s ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaypRfgE ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJbR7wUo ... re=related

Now, these games are absolutely best I've played so far besides Spring and couple other unrelated. Imho we need more such games. I have a lot ideas how to combine the best sides of these + spring and making awesomest game ever!

[1v0ry_k1ng]

tribes 1 = best game everer

[Gota]

Battle zone series..awesome stuff.

[Teutooni]

Where are all the good games at?

In the past.

If you were to combine battlezone with TA, you'd get a game so awesome it'd be the death of us all! (i.e. Spring TA-based game with actually worthwhile fps control.)

[Gertkane]

Spot on about the battlezone games. Tribes i tried out too late and NS bored me after some time.

Too many good games to list. Too bad pretty much every new game has so strict rules when in development ("we are making a fps so we have to stick to the basics" mentality). Back then almost every game had something new to offer or even just polished features taken from other games. That is not to say, that there weren't extremely shitty games back then, but for example, everyone knows Doom was good fun. Doom also had another good game built on its engine - Strife. Just think Doom + RPG + Post-Apocalyptic environment + multiple endings and a nice story.. and consider that this was just in the doom days..

System Shocks, C&C's, Z, Star Control 2, HoMM series etc..

And let's not get into all the adventure game goodness that was offered back then (players actually preferred puzzles to scoring touchdowns)..

[SinbadEV]

It's all math, back in the day (just as now) 10% of the population actually could play and enjoy good games. Then one day game-makers realized that half of those people, along with 50% of the rest of the population would play crappy games... so now crappy games have a market of 55% and the good games have to fight over that last 5%.

numbers are made up but you get the picture.

problem is that it takes just as many man-hours to produce a crappy game so all the good games are locked in the minds of the folks making the crappy games.

[KDR_11k]

Define good and crappy, maybe your tastes are just eccentric.

[SinbadEV]

I'm part of that 5% who like pretty much any game so my opinion doesn't matter.

[SirArtturi]

Maybe you guys are concentrating too much on the "topic"

What im trying to say is what these games share is concept of FPS and strategy combined in very clever way and I haven't bumped into any such since those days. Well, natural selection 2 is going to release next year or something, but i have my doubts of that project.

Whatsoever, I think there would be very enthusiased and active target group (market-wise) in need of such quality FPS-RTS game. I mean, there's still people playing these old games because they simply are so damn good ones. Or maybe it's just too small slice? You tell me?

I'd love to see something Battlezone type of game with "Spring" features and rts concepts.

[pintle]

Try the source mod: Empires

[hamsate]

Natural Selection.. one of the best HL mods I ever played.

[smoth]

savage was fps/rts....

[KDR_11k]

Raven Squad (lol)
Br├╝tal Legend, if you accept a brawler instead of an FPS as the other element

Anyway, I think the issue is that FPS and RTS don't go together well.

[knorke]

Natural Selection was one of the best onlinegames ever imo. Wolfenstein ET was great too.

Machines - Wired for War by Acclaim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSJ-qet6AT0
RTS but you can fps all units. FPS controll is not really needed to win but its fun and can be used for some very effective/abusive strats.
It runs on XP but not really good...

I think there would be very enthusiased and active target group (market-wise) in need of such quality FPS-RTS game.

Not sure. The few times i tried battlefield for example there was total choas, planes crashing everywhere etc, teamkilling to get a tank etc.
Imo there is not market, for example on the NS or ET servers i played there were always the same people. I guess that is why it worked but thats no target group for a big company.

[Master-Athmos]

I guess there's not enough potential customers for such niche games - even at the times of Battlezone II it didn't sell that well. Imo nowadays things have gone the wrong way a bit: There's too much importance put into the graphics while not enough put into game design and things like music (which game nowadays has a decent remarkable theme?). With high costs to produce a game that has good visuals I guess it's not really worth the effort to produce such niche games instead of a classic design people probably will buy...

I'm quite sad about that too as there are so many games that would be a blast if they got a sequel (if they won't focus on visuals too). Freespace being one example or this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwBblhHLjIQ

[SirArtturi]

savage was fps/rts....

Downloading Savage 2 free trial atm :) Seems promising...

Anyway, I think the issue is that FPS and RTS don't go together well.

I totally disagree. Let's take Natural Selection for example: Very elegant way to combine RTS and FPS. Commander is like a general, who takes care of strategy, giving orders, placing the structures, choosing techs etc. And then theres is the team, which handles the building and battles. For victory you need a clever strategy, hardcore teamplay and polished fps skills(which for aliens are very crucial.)

The problem might be, that this is too challenging, especially what comes to earlier mentioned teamplay. There's really much no room for solo, unless you are really good. Basically this means, that one troll or noob can fuck up the game. This kind of concept also needs lot of devoution to learn it, which really suits only for marginal players, nerdy gamers like us :)

[Pxtl]

BattleZone 1 was good. I think the problem with most FPS/RTS games is that they insist on making it a team-game, which involves teamplay way, way too tight for a pub.

BattleZone was 1-player = 1-army, and it worked well.

Sure, it was incredibly simplistic - harvest resources, raid the enemy harvesters, and build up a force to stomp the enemy base. But it worked, and was fun.

[KDR_11k]

I guess we can group FPSRTSes into two types, type one being the RTS games where you pilot a unit or something like that, type two being multiplayer FPSes where one player takes the role of a commander. The difference is that in type one most units are controlled by the computer and if the player is another unit his unit needs to be somehow special to warrant the effort of piloting it around when there's so much cannonfodder available. I think type two are just minor extensions of the FPS genre while type one is fairly unworkable.

Could use a commander player in Section 8 though, people just do whatever they fancy so you may find 10 people running a DCM while the CPs are completely undefended, a commander could make sure when enough people do one job the rest can be reassigned to neglected tasks.

[Pxtl]

I wouldn't say they're unworkable, just that it's a limited and tricky genre without a lot of room to manoever. Fundamentally, they're just an extension of the Wing Commander games where you have a squad of extras following you around - give them something useful to do, and a way to get more of them.

[PicassoCT]

Battle zone series..awesome stuff.

true words spoken