There Can Be Only One

[G.Silver]

Starcraft is the only RTS besides Pikmin that was ever able to strike my fancy. I think that like Pikmin it has a very tactile kind of feel, the overall polish of the game and even just the way the units move around is somewhat satisfying, and the depth of the sci-fi setting does make it a lot more fun for me. But I also find it somewhat stressful to play, there's a lot of learning involved, etc. If you're going to go into it with resistance to the idea then you're probably not going to like it. A lot of my interest in Starcraft comes from the fact that most of my RL friends are unapologetic PC gamers and Starcraft was, for a time, the only multiplayer game we could all agree on, and I was not especially interested at first but I did find things that I liked about it so I kept at it.

I have only played a tiny bit of SC2, enough to feel like I needed to relearn everything in order for it to be fun, but I know nearly all my friends will be playing and many of us have moved away from each other so it would be nice to get together online with it and that's really the only thing that could convince me to bother with it. That, and I do enjoy the incalculable moisture of the Zerg.

[Delphine]

Crisis, if you don't like RTS games, then don't play RTS games. SCII is an RTS game. Therefore, my recommendation is, don't play it, because it's an RTS game, and you don't like those.

[Kogen]

I am going to bitch about something marginal.

Why is the genre called RTS? As in: 'Real Time Strategy' ? Strategy is never done in real time, as per definition: 'A plan of action resulting from strategy or intended to accomplish a specific goal.' So in Starcraft 2, defeating the other player in a typical match and planning what you are going to do ahead of time is the strategy. However, during gameplay what you perform in real time is tactical, as per definition: 'The military science that deals with securing objectives set by strategy, especially the technique of deploying and directing troops, ships, and aircraft in effective maneuvers against an enemy'. Furthermore, all tactics are in real time, so that part of the name is redundant. Therefore Starcraft 2's genre is simply 'tactics' and nothing more.

[Segaholic2]

Why is the genre called RTS?

Because Brett Sperry/Westwood Studios/Dune II called it that.

[Esrever]

Because the "real time" is describing the game, not the strategy itself?

[Kogen]

Well Brett Sperry is a penis.

And since when were games not in 'real time' ? Unless there is a fake time I have not heard about.

I seem to remember all of this when 360 was just coming out and SEGA was trying to convince everyone that their terrible games were all running in 'real time'.

[Segaholic2]

Have you never heard of Turn-Based Strategy games?

[Kogen]

My point is that the RTS genre is actually a tactics genre. That is where the core gameplay comes from (maneuvering military units).

Strategy is planning the goal, as any dictionary states. So essentially the mission debriefings in single player for example, not the actual game.

[Segaholic2]

Except the name obviously came as a direct contrast/comparison to the previously established "Turn-Based Strategy" genre, in which nothing occurs in real-time.

[Kogen]

Except the name obviously came as a direct contrast/comparison to the previously established "Turn-Based Strategy" genre, in which nothing occurs in real-time.

Why is Starcraft being compared to something like Risk or Civilisation? Starcraft is more similar to Sim City in that sense, which is not turn based.

[Segaholic2]

Because that's what the genre is called now!

[Delphine]

SimCity is a building/managing simulation. I guess if you make a custom StarCraft map with no enemy forces you could compare that to SimCity, but that's not really how the game is meant to be played. If you really want to get pedantic about semantics, then the genres should be called Real-Time/Turn-Based Tactics, but calling it a sim game is like calling Mass Effect a shooter; sure, some of the elements are there, but uh, it's not.