posted 06-05-99 09:41 AM ET            

That having been said...

posted 06-05-99 10:48 AM ET            

1) too many units
2) too many units which are identical to each other
3) both sides are essentially identical
4) runs a bit slower due to all the 3D (which doesn't look as good as the box made it out to be)
5) Non-existence of a story. (other than "core attacks arm. arm retaliates." woohoo)
6) No cool cut scenes in between missions (like the brilliant ones in SC)

posted 06-05-99 11:32 AM ET            

"runs a bit slower due to all the 3D (which doesn't look as good as the box made it out to be)"
It looks and feels better than SC's sprites, and runs fine on any modern system. What do you use, a 486?

too many units which are identical to each other"
NO Core unit is identical to another, ans the same goes for ARM.

"both sides are essentially identical"
I must admit SC did this much better.

"Non-existence of a story.
No cool cut scenes in between missions"
Again, SC is better at this.

"units are unique and interesting"
What? 3 different types of Peon? That's unique?

Major faults of SC:

1) Sprites. Sorry, not in today's world.
2) Not enough units.
3) No true line-of-sight.
4) Limited resources.
5) Story is unoriginal and boring.
6) Hackneyed cut-scenes.
7) No flammable trees!
8) No D-Gun!
9) Tiny explosions.
10) Pitiful nukes.
11) No proper order-stacking.
12) Music not as good as TA's
13) It won't lead to TA:Kingdoms!

posted 06-05-99 11:50 AM ET            

JonhIII PS-
10) Pitiful nukes.

posted 06-05-99 12:26 PM ET            

Ok, the music in TA was good.

Others:

1) Sprites. Sorry, not in today's world.
They look good. thats all that matters

2) Not enough units.
ok fair enough. more IS better but only if they are truly different units (Kbot = walking tank)

3) No true line-of-sight.
I'm not a 'true to life' fanatic.

4) Limited resources.
You get more than enough to finish the map

5) Story is unoriginal and boring.
You call the SC story unorig? not in my book

6) Hackneyed cut-scenes.
the scene with the Amerigo self destruct is soooo cool.

7) No flammable trees!
i can do that in my local park

8) No D-Gun!
the d-gun is way too powerful anyway

9) Tiny explosions.
ok. bigger IS better.

10) Pitiful nukes.
i dont like nukes anyway

11) No proper order-stacking.
not for the zerg anyway. the others had it

12) Music not as good as TA's
Yeh I know. oh well, put the radio on.

posted 06-05-99 12:38 PM ET            

TA: Too many indistinct units, lack of balance, similar sides, crappy water stuff, Boring Graphics, No humour, No distinct characters, no memorable story.

SC: Looks crap, too many weird areas, steep learning curve, stupid units, indistinct sides (They might have looked different, but palyed about the same), No Quirky units, Crap Infantry, No Humour, Doesn't suck you in (Very on-the-surface), Standard Sci-Fi Story, Not enjoyable like WarCraft was.

Red Alert: Fun Units, Great Story, Good Learning Curve, Cool Missions, Great Multiplayer, Love the graphics (quirky infantry, among others), High Fun Factor, Tanya! (Che-Ching!), Cool Intro.

posted 06-05-99 12:41 PM ET            

"Well nuking half a base out of existence is little fun"
TA encourages making everything bigger, so it shouldn't be half their base.

"Kbot = walking tank"
Have you seen the Sniper KBOT? Or the really fast ones?

"I'm not a 'true to life' fanatic."
In this case it is better than a "flat" map with barriers.

"You get more than enough to finish the map"
Not in a huge skirmish.

"You call the SC story unorig? not in my book"
Have you seen many SF movies, or read many Sci-Fi books (especially the older ons)?

"the scene with the Amerigo self destruct is soooo cool."
That's only one example.

"i can do that in my local park"
Not with an artillery shell

"the d-gun is way too powerful anyway"
But your Commander has it, and so it is rarely used.

"i dont like nukes anyway"
?

"the others had it"
No they didn't. Can you order an SCV to go build 3 supply depots and let him get on with it? CAN YOU?

"SC: Brood Wars "
Is crap.

posted 06-05-99 01:08 PM ET            

more stuff:

1) Big huge base (like you need in TA) becomes unmanageable and hard to keep an eye on.

2) The reason the base building is one at a time is because you dont need that huge a base in SC. Just a well designed one.

3) Other cool cut scenes: Arcturus's victory speech. Very cool.

4) Combat in TA = click and drag a huge mass of tanks and then click. sit back and watch a million things blow each other up. hope that you win.

5) Combat in SC = use each unit to its strategic advantage. ie guardians are dead it attacked air-to-air, therefore must use brain and find a way around this.

6) Battle.net . . . Enough said

7) The tree burning thing is a bitch when your base is in the middle of a forest.

8) Insert pro-SC propaganda here: _________!

posted 06-05-99 01:38 PM ET            

"Battle.net . . . Enough said"
Boneyards......Galactic Wars...... Enough said.

"Other cool cut scenes: Arcturus's victory speech. Very cool."
Incorrect use of a plural there.

"The tree burning thing is a bitch when your base is in the middle of a forest."
So, you play like Deirdre, do you ?

"4) Combat in TA = click and drag a huge mass of tanks and then click. sit back and watch a million things blow each other up. hope that you win."
WRONG. You use a mxture of carefully co-ordinated land, air and sea (remember those? SC doesn't have them) to crush your foe.

"Combat in SC = use each unit to its strategic advantage. ie guardians are dead it attacked air-to-air, therefore must use brain and find a way around this."
That is the same for any half-decent RTS.

posted 06-05-99 06:24 PM ET            

The coolest thing about Starcraft is the messages you get when you continually click on the units (e.g. many Diablo references .). I do not really care much for sci-fi stories anyway, so I can't say if it was good or not. It seems fairly balanced, though, and there wasn't that big a difference between the races (However, I did have some difficulties with early Zerg development.). What irritated me most was that I didn't get to kill that moron Arcturus Mengsk .

As for Red Alert, I didn't play it long enough to make a judgment, but I can remember being annoyed when I found out that only the Allies had a navy and only the Soviets had planes . Tanya was cool, though .

posted 06-05-99 09:46 PM ET            

Although I thought the storyline in StarCraft was better, I much prefer the gameplay in TA. I really liked the ability to have truly useful artilery pieces, even if they weren't mobile (Big Bertha, baby).
StarCraft was okay, as far as it went, but did seem a bit too limited in diversity of units, even counting TAs near-duplicates. I really can't wait for TA: Kingdoms to come out (Zhon is already looking to be my favorite).

As for the StarCraft unit quotes, they were pretty pitiful. Compared to the ones in Warcraft and Warcraft 2, they seemed to just have been put in cause they were trying to keep it as a "feature" rather than from any good jokes. (I loved the goblin sappers: We've got explosives.... Kabooom! Oh, it's beautiful...)

posted 06-05-99 10:39 PM ET            

Why?

posted 06-06-99 12:30 AM ET            

Unlimited resources is good? I like limited resources a lot better. I suppose it's really just a question of what you like rather than a question of which one is better.

Red alert? boring boring boring, and totally unoriginal... it was almost exactly like the first one.

The terrain in TA was pretty good.
Starcraft had 3 levels of terrain or so. Bah!

No water units in Starcraft. Bah!

Ta - both sides too much alike.

Red Alert - rush rush rush, what more can I say? (And I don't just mean tank rush).

Fun? Red alert? what fun.. if you call that fun, well, lets just say that a rock has more fun compared. And being able to create a few-thousand tanyas.. what do they do? Clone her?

" "Combat in SC = use each unit to its strategic advantage. ie guardians are dead it attacked air-to-air, therefore must use brain
and find a way around this." That is the same for any half-decent RTS. "

posted 06-06-99 11:58 AM ET            

1. The ghosts were the best part of the game. And the nukes were just the right size. Other than that, the game was pretty average in my book.

2. Good intro.

3. The cut scenes sucked! Like watching a soap opera. And I hate soap operas.

4. If you played the mission you were usually ok...but if you played one of the misc. scenarios you were quickly overrun by the enemy(ies).

5. Not enough diverse units. Not enough weaponry.

posted 06-06-99 03:18 PM ET         

1. Half of them will be useless
2. The game would be unbalanced.

Both things happened it TA.

I can't remember the last time I built a spider mine, it was useless. And the Korgoth was very unbalancing. And the Annihilator, 'nuff said.

IN SC there about 10 units per side each. Only one of them is the same (the peons, duh). The game is balanced and a blast to play on B.net. For me, TA's mp code was full of bugs. Only 10% of the games actually got going.

Another thing, TA's unit sounds where really annoying.

posted 06-06-99 03:36 PM ET            

TA is far too hardware intensive, where Starcraft will run smoothly on anything above a 486. Large games of TA are unbearable on anything below a 200.

Starcraft has fewer units which are more useful. No unit becomes obsolete later in the game, where in TA there are a number of units that are all but useless except in certain situations. BTW, last I heard, that's what Cavedog is going to do with TA:K. Fewer, but more diverse and useful units.

Multiplayer. They both have some good features. I like the ability to give resources to your allies that TA has. I like shared vision in SC. I like all the different game types in SC. I like all the different map types in SC. All the stuff you can do with the triggers is cool.

Frankly, I think TA has some nice features (able to select more than just 12 units, for example), but it isn't anywhere near as good as Starcraft.

posted 06-07-99 12:59 AM ET            

Having said that, there are several flaws that make T.A somewhat inferior. Except for the sight of couple of advancing Krogoths, the game has virtually no personality (click, whirr, buzz, etc) to it. Secondly, the top down perspective, and the small field of view, require that the units themselves be very small and inconsequential. There is also little variety in unit size - a couple of PeeWee units (human size infantry robots) take up about the same space as a Goliath tank. This leads to the commonality of all T.A units - they look different, but they're all more or less the same size.

SC excels in its visuals and unit personality - the quality of presentation of the whole game, from the registry onwards, right up until the final scenes, is unmatched. Moreover, the vareity of gameplay gives it a dimension that T.A lacked. Example:

T.A mission template:
"(flashy landscape) You are here. ARM is here, doing stuff. We don't like the arm or the stuff they're doing. Now go kill them."
"(map appears with commander unit and some other stuff standing in today's theme world)."

SC mission template:
"(flashy picture) You are here."
"Listen to stuff. Be shocked and appalled. Feel cunning and ravenous. Feel honored and dutybound. Feel afraid."
"Read the mission objectives in the corner."
"Begin the mission. Listen to more classy dialogue. See new areas open up. Start building a legion of Peons."

Red Alert mission template:
"(Allies: Roll on the floor laughing at the actors in the cutscene)"
"(Soviet: Enjoy the amusing and well acted cutscene.)"
"Start the mission and discover which of the terrain types you are on. Move your harvester."
"Forget the cutscene and read the in game instructions to find out the mission."
"Change the music to something good."

As for the fighting, while the common SC based criticism of TA having 4-5 units to do one job (missile vehicle, missile kbot, missile tower, missile hovercraft) isn't accurate, it did suffer from a steep learning curve and the units' tendancy to do futile things, like firing missiles at blocking terrain and wreckage, and to keep walking around when inside attack range but outside retaliation distance). The lack of any firm ingame stats on damage, armour, or effect didn't help at all either. And the sheer number of buildings needed for an average base tended to crowd things (not to mention the radar map problems with invisible buildings - things you can see on radar but can't record on the main map? They weren't going to move or anything...)

Finally, the T.A resource model wasn't the best. Building slowdowns were no fun, constantly rebuilding metal extractors was a pain, and the whole metal patch idea seemed a bit dumb (infinite patchs of metal in the ground?? Not at all well explained).

posted 06-07-99 02:04 AM ET            

take a look here,

posted 06-07-99 02:20 AM ET            

T.A Kingdoms (June 25): nuff said. Probably the best RTS ever.

Homeworld (third quarter): A revolutionary RTS, 3D space combat and all that. Potentially the Half-life of the RTS genre.

AoEII (??? this year ???): Better combat, same basic idea as the original. HUGE maps, great atmosphere, etc.

C&C2 Tiberian Sun: C&C gone 3D, but with voxhals, which can't be accelerated (the first reason for slow SMAC). Will probably be great for the singleplayer campaigns aspect alone.

And...

posted 06-07-99 01:22 PM ET            

"Kingdoms has just gone GOLD"
OMG!

"Ta - both sides too much alike."
And people say they're unbalanced ?

"Big Bertha, baby"
Oh yeah. Not so useful on 7 Islands, though...

"Listen to stuff. Be shocked and appalled. Feel cunning and ravenous. Feel honored and dutybound. Feel afraid."
WTF? The only things that scared me in SC were the terrible quotes and apalling storyline.

"The coolest thing about Starcraft is the messages you get when you continually click on the units"
1) I think the whirrs in TA make the units feel more "solid".
2) You don't play many RTSs do you?

"can't compare them with the utter carnage in TA"
Exactly.

posted 06-07-99 01:40 PM ET         

I didn't really like Starcraft or TA. Mind you, I only played the Shareware versions, but there's something about most RTS games where strategy goes out the window.

TA formula: build units/bases, select units, massive attack (or rescue), return to base, rinse and repeat

Starcraft: pretty much the same thing, except there's a storyline in there.

posted 06-08-99 02:28 AM ET            

As for the Quotes, I take it you must have missed Tassadar's:

"In the face of Total Annihilation they still cling to their failing traditions!"

Classic.

ONE thing that T.A undisputably did better than anything else in the RTS genre is the music. I play that CD nearly as often as a commercial one. I take it on holiday, cunningly disguised in an old mozart case. Starcraft was good, but Blizzard make the unfortunate mistake of leaving the C.D unenabled. Bad idea - especially after WarcraftII.

posted 06-08-99 02:49 AM ET            

Oh, and I forgot to mention - SC has nothing to match the feeling of having a fully powered rapid fire plasma gun at your disposal. Virtually impossible in multiplayer, I know, but SO MUCH FUN! Better than Nukes, better than Krogoths, just goddamn great.

posted 06-08-99 02:26 PM ET         

Another thing I really didn't like about TA was the "slower than molasses" tank bullets. Any time my eyes can follow the cource of a shell fired from a tank, somethings wrong. Faster units shouldn't be able to "outrun" tank shells. Inaccuracy is frin (though no RTS has put in the concept of inaccuracy, AFAIK) but the ability to "dodge" most of the large bore shells. Come on.

What really does it for me in SC is the spells. They add a whole diminsion to the game for me (Though Psi Storm can go and I'd be happier.) Dark Swarm and plague make for intresting defence breakers and tacticle weapons, as the Ghost Lockdown, Science Ves Irradiate, etc. The handful of useful spells which can really turn the tides in your favour make for much more intresting battles. (Although, Psi Storm was their big mistake, since it requires little planning and skill, you just throw it out there and all is good.)

posted 06-08-99 11:14 PM ET            

units firing up towards higher terrain or to air units suffer a 30% penalty or something like that.

i like Tiberian Sun's concept of verterans...i hope they can pull it off well.

As for the TA-SC debate:
Personally, having the full game of SC and only the demo of TA, i have to go with SC.
TA is nice, and I may get that later...after i get the other games i want this year.

posted 06-09-99 06:33 PM ET            

Half-Life takes rather more thinking (tactically, at least) than the average FPS, and it certainly has one of the best stories for them (System Shock still has it beat, tho... can't wait for System Shock 2).
I was also partial to Sierra's Space Quest adventure games

For those of you looking for a new RTS, TA: Kingdoms should be out in a couple weeks (25th, I believe). To address earlier arguments: it's supposed to have a really good story-line (the authors know and admit the TA storyline was just sort of there to justify robot wars); it's got four unique sides with different abilities, should run fairly well on low-end machines, and has some truly awesome firepower (a god can show up in some circumstances... big enough booms for you?), and will have over an hour of between mission animation.

Don't know about you, but I've already reserved a copy I'm really looking forward to playing the Zhon (no fixed structures at all!), since I'm a very air personality, and the thought of hit and run raids with my entire army, including "builders".... oh my