/ch3/ - Video Games

The devs of Forgotten Kingdoms or whatever it's called ended up getting hired by Microsoft to make endless official AoE II expansions. That has to count for something.

>>14269
I think I played that one like over 15 years ago. Maybe it's more of a standalone game than a real mod, but I'm a Combined Arms guy now. I've really spent too much time playing it.

As far as an unequivocal mod goes, the Blitzkrieg Mod for Company of Heroes has probably been my favorite. Especially when stacked with the D-Day June 1944 & Afrika 43 mod that adds cosmetic changes to make it more historically accurate.
>>14270
I've got all their expansions but never felt the need to try the Definitive Edition version of Age of Empires II. It just seems unnecessary to me. And there's no way I'm spending any shekels on the newer version of Age of Empires III with the retarded changes they made.

>>14271
are the trannies dead, Yuri?

>>14272
No, Anon. It has only begun.

>>14271
Blitzkrieg is top tier ludokino

>>14276
True. It leaves the vanilla game in the dust.

>>14271
aoe 2 definitive edition is really good and a lot of the expansions are high quality. They are starting to get away from the original vision of the game though with stuff like the Three Kingdoms DLC which is set around 200AD and adds 3 era specific Chinese political factions (one for each kingdom) when the original idea for the factions were supposed to be broad cultural groups that broadly represented a faction over its historical existence. I don't mind it as it probably means we'll get a weeb adventure DLC set during the Sengoku era with Oda, Takeda, and some other faction(s) but I guess they can only squeeze so much juice out of "China 200AD-1600AD" until they just say fuck it.

>>14295
>adds 3 era specific Chinese political factions
why do they keep doing this, they added china to age of mythology as well, many years after it came out

>>14292
True but vanilla is still top tier and there was nothing like it back then, or even today.
CoH1 is special, a bunch of tabletop nerds, WW2 history nerds and PC nerds with a big budget making an action focused RTS that captured the feeling of a WW2 Diorama and played like both a classic and tactical RTS game.

Something like that won't ever be made ever again.
The amount of innovation Relic introduced in the span of merely 10 years was unreal.

>>14295
The new graphics engine is enough of a reason for me to avoid it. I'm stuck on the overall look of the original, even if there are certain things I don't like about it. Other than that, I feel like it's getting overly narrow with its civilizations for the exact reason you mentioned. To me the pre-Definitive Edition expansions already struck a good balance.
>>14297
And the Chinese faction wasn't very interesting in that Age of Mythology expansion from what I read. I still never bothered buying it.
>>14303
>True but vanilla is still top tier and there was nothing like it back then, or even today.
If it wasn't for the difference in setting, even vanilla Company of Heroes would almost make Dawn of War feel obsolete. I never liked how clunky the vehicles feel in Dawn of War.
>Something like that won't ever be made ever again.
For a long time I've wished we could at least get an open-source equivalent of Company of Heroes. I'm not even saying it would necessarily have to use the same engine. I would prefer a detailed 2D game in terms of aesthetics if it could be pulled off. While it's nice to be able to go down to the ground level and rotate the camera, I've always disliked the way 2D strategy games have been supplanted by 3D ones. Especially when there games that looked as good as American Conquest coming out. Maybe that would make things like the terrain destruction harder to implement though.
>The amount of innovation Relic introduced in the span of merely 10 years was unreal.
True. I remember the Homeworld games from back in the day, although I never got to give them a try, but the games from Impossible Creatures to Company of Heroes each added at least something really interesting to the genre. In particular Dawn of War and Company of Heroes found ways to streamline the genre and limit the gookclick tendencies within RTS games without jettisoning the integral resource management and recruitment aspects and just becoming RTT games. Although I have lots of nostalgia for the '90s Blizzard games and respect them a lot, I think it was the right move to move away from micromanagement-heavy gameplay. While Z and Kohan are two games that were predecessors to the Dawn of War/Company of Heroes style (although Kohan 2 and its counterpart Axis & Allies brought back traditional base building for some reason, as if the self-contained city system of the original wasn't part of the appeal), those weren't very prominent games in the history of RTS games.

>>14304
>I'm stuck on the overall look of the original
me too, i like the gritty look of those old prerendered 3D models as sprites style games

>>14304
>I never liked how clunky the vehicles feel in Dawn of War.
The fact that Dawn of War 2 kept the same awful basic ass system as 1 still breaks my heart.
>I would prefer a detailed 2D game in terms of aesthetics if it could be pulled off. While it's nice to be able to go down to the ground level and rotate the camera, I've always disliked the way 2D strategy games have been supplanted by 3D ones.
I agree in spirit, but it's impossible to make 2D sprites play like modern titles, at least in isometric view, top down view with less detailed models makes things easier, which is why Flash Games like Mud and Blood 2 have such fantastic amounts of content and detail.
Closest thing is Dorf RTS who went from sprites to voxels exactly due to running into impossible to solve physics issues.
I really do understand you, especially back then, going from C&C Red Alert 2 to something like Empire Earth was rough on the eyes, then again, the lower res and CRT scanlines hid a ton of blockyness.
You might want to give https://store.steampowered.com/app/3305930/Panzer_Strike/
A try, or the Close Combat series, though that one is closer to a RTT wargame with plenty of realistic autism.
>I never tried Homeworld
Please do, It's a fucking DUNE inspired 6DOF RTS, there's nothing like it and it might me of the most unique games ever made.

>>14307
I remember how high tech Age of Empires II felt to me when it came out compared to the original, like the little water effects when your units would walk through shallows. I still think it looks good in most ways.
>>14309
>I agree in spirit, but it's impossible to make 2D sprites play like modern titles, at least in isometric view, top down view with less detailed models makes things easier, which is why Flash Games like Mud and Blood 2 have such fantastic amounts of content and detail.
Do you have anything simple I could read about that? I'm a complete layman when it comes to the technical aspects of games and have never heard that before.
>Closest thing is Dorf RTS who went from sprites to voxels exactly due to running into impossible to solve physics issues.
I was actually going to mention that due to how they're doing the lighting system
>I really do understand you, especially back then, going from C&C Red Alert 2 to something like Empire Earth was rough on the eyes, then again, the lower res and CRT scanlines hid a ton of blockyness.
Empire Earth was such a letdown for me as a kid. I remember visiting the website, playing the demo, and being so excited about it coming out. I actually had family members being on the lookout for it in stores (although I do think I saw it in Wal-Mart once around that time), but I was disappointed when I actually played it. That didn't stop me from paging through the thick strategy guide it came with.

I've always thought it was disappointing due to the scale of the game being an inch deep and a mile wide, but Rise of Nations came out a few years later with a similar but reduced scale and did it well. That's still one of my favorite games. I decided in recent years that the AI in the skirmish games was one of the reasons the game never connected with me. I just never found it fun to play against. Rise of Nations has much better AI than the average RTS game in that it plays more like a human and tends to fight in formation and everything. Even back then I preferred 2D graphics engines too. There are some I think that added something to the game, like Populous: The Beginning. That's a lot of fun and wouldn't be the same if it was entirely 2D. But back when it came out, I still thought Empire Earth looked like crap.

Honestly, my favorite RTS games in terms of presentation are probably the early DOS ones like Dune II and WarCraft: Orcs and Humans, and I couldn't imagine most games going with that level of primitivity. Continuing the style RTS games were headed in prior to 3D taking over would be the next best thing for me.
>You might want to give https://store.steampowered.com/app/3305930/Panzer_Strike/ A try, or the Close Combat series, though that one is closer to a RTT wargame with plenty of realistic autism.
I'm allergic to RTT games for some reason. I don't necessarily have anything against turn-based strategy games. I played some Civil War Generals 2 for a while and thought it was pretty fun (although some later maps looked overly complicated and time consuming), but for me the tactical and economic parts of an RTS game are like peanut butter and jelly. Having an RTS game without generating resources and spending them to build up an army just feels like a big step down. On the other hand, I'm not that big on in-depth base building anymore. It's not anything I have a problem with, but after playing games like Kohan I could do without it. I also gave A Bridge Too Far a try a long time ago. My family had it when I was a little kid, but I didn't play it until I was maybe out of high school.

The Panzer Strike graphics engine looks great though. It's exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. I was thinking something like a more detailed Sudden Strike, which I bought as a kid and always liked the look of but never gelled with. The Blitzkrieg mod for Yuri's Revenge actually would probably come close too, but that still used some vanilla assets for the infantry from what I remember.
>Please do, It's a fucking DUNE inspired 6DOF RTS, there's nothing like it and it might me of the most unique games ever made.
How hard is it to get ahold of the original 1999 release? I recall reading complaints that the remastered version changed some things around.

The perspective looks disorienting a bit, which has always made made me leery, but I feel like it's a game I should give a proper shot.

Yunru is a loli