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Video Game News and Reviews - April 2006

A Real Time Strategy Guide Pt7 (final)

To wrap this series of articles up I’ll present a few general points.

Try different strategies; doing this will get you used to dealing with opponents who use them and will also let you add them to the mix of things you can do. Study your opponent’s methods while playing; if you come up against a seemingly unbeatable opponent, chances are a good look at the way he or she is accomplishing this will also show flaws which you can then exploit. Learn to adapt! If you are flexible in the way you play then no one strategy will work against you. The difference between winning and losing is, more often than not, about speed. Be ready to bring about a culminating point in favor of yourself if an opportunity presents itself. Finally, have fun! Flood your opponent with peasants or build farms all over the map.


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A Real Time Strategy Guide Pt6

Today I would like to discuss some tricks I have found to be particularly useful when playing rts games in a multiplayer situation. I will divide this up into: free for all play and team play.


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Gaming Music

I just added the main theme from the old Super Nintendo RPG, Secret of Mana, to the list of songs I’m currently practicing with my violin (kindly arranged from an orchestral version by my girlfriend). This got me thinking about writing a short article on game music, so here we go.


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Oblivion Performance

If you have been playing Oblivion and have found that it ravages your system, as it often does mine, you might find this article on gamespot useful here.

Alskreek, out.
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A Real Time Strategy Guide Pt5

Today I would like to make some points about using infiltration and pin-point strike methods in your rts games.

Infiltration covers all methods of covertly inserting units into your opponent’s base.

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A word from our sponsers!

And now, a word from our sponsers.

David:

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A Real Time Strategy Guide Pt4

Today we look at the hedgehog strategy.

The Hedgehog

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A Real Time Strategy Guide Pt3

Today I would like to start talking about a few of the most common strategies employed in RTS games; this applies to a.i./computer opponents as well. It’s a good idea to try a couple of these yourself so you can see how they operate and this will hopefully make it easier for you to counter them.

The Rush

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A few brief comments on Oblivion, the Elder Scroll

For a review better than I could give go here.

Indeed a few brief comments.

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A Real Time Strategy Guide Pt2

This time I would like to introduce some terms to help us better understand the flow of an RTS. The terms I will be explaining include the means of production, the culminating point and, the difference between strategic and tactical mindsets.

The means of production can be said to be that which allows one to continue to wage war. This will include, but will not be limited to, several aspects: raw resources. In game terms this consists of those areas or conditions which yield resources, such as wood from trees and metal from mines; structures. In game terms this consists of those buildings that create units or resources such as a barracks or power generator; finally, a newer innovation, the concept of strategic points. These points, once captured, provide a steady source of income – a good example of this can be seen in Dawn of Wars’ strategic points – these are generally harder to hold than other methods and so require a greater concentration of force (one can expect fights over these areas to be particularly fierce).

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A Real Time Strategy Guide Pt1

The RTS, or Real Time Strategy, is a gametype where 2 or more (computer or otherwise) players attempt to defeat one another on the field of battle by using various unit types and structures. For a better definition go here. The gametype is most often used to portray warmaking in both production (albeit on a simplified level) and conduct stages. Examples of this include Red Alert, Total Annihilation, C&C Generals and Warcraft. Others, which I would put more into simulation than an rts category, include those focused on only single battles and so are generally more in-depth and an example of this can be seen in the Total War series. I will be focussing on the first subset of rts games.

Firstly, let's look at the interface of your average rts. This usually takes the form of: a build menu of some description; the perspective of the game; map or radar and resource bars. Your resource bar, obviously, provides information about your reserves and, often, your resource intake. The build menu is where you can select buildings and units for construction. Depending on the game you will be able the build menu in several ways; if both unit and/or structure menus are not already available they can usually be accessed through dedicated build units and buildings. Most rts will include ways to upgrade your building capacity, quality and whatnot; these options are most often found in build menus. The perspective of the rts game is, most often, that of the top-down view or eagle eye view. Zoom functions frequantly feature and, for the most part, you will want to be as zoomed out as is comfortable in order to watch for early threats developing. Your map usually takes the form of something on your interface bar and will be invaluable to your warmaking and intelligence gathering capabilities. Oten, especially in mordern or sci-fi, the map will be related to a specific structure or unit and will therefore be an important target. Finally, an important feature to point out is the Fog of War. The fog of war most often takes the form of grey/black areas on the screen and map and can be uncovered by moving units or using special abilities in it. The fog of war is an attempt to represent confusion inherent to the battlefield aswell as actual line of site blockage.

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Star Wars, Empire at War

Questionably delicious game chef, Lucas Arts, throws us yet another Star Wars title and this time it appears to have actually been cooked through.

The storyline featured in Empire at War is the same one they have been pounding out in the majority of their games. This is, in my opinion, not necessarily the wisest thing to do when such good materials can be brought from pre episode I and post episode VI…but that’s another discussion entirely. Suffice to say it doesn’t seem to detract all that much from the game experience. The gamer is served up steaming portions of timeline only hinted at in the movies; starting from the rebellions’ attempts to acquire the, then prototype, X-Wing star fighters.

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50 Cent. Bullet Magnet?


Watch as I conduct a totally impartial preview, review…whatever.

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Guild War Linguistics

I was playing guild wars a couple of weeks ago and I can only hypothesise that I was in a decidedly cheeky mood.

My friend and I were about to head out from D’Alessio Seaboard and I just randomly added a person to our party. We head out the gate and this person, once mr load screen has disappeared, starts asking what we are doing. Now normally, as one would expect, I would suggest some quests to do or some such…however, I suddenly had the urge to pretend to speak another language but make it so ludicrously obvious that it was fake; would never have guessed that someone would take me seriously, here’s the picture.

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Computer component requisition adventure!

As I mentioned in the previous post my computer, far from what it once was, is now fairly antiquated...at least in terms of proper performance for gaming. Today, with this in mind, I endeavoured to acquire components to upgrade my ailing cpu, video card and motherboard. My housemate agreed to come with me as, he too, has the same problem.

And so the unlikely heroes set off into the labyrinthine city of Sydney. What we found was disappointing to say the least; all my careful price research on the internet several days before hand was torn up before my eyes by an angry salesman who, as it turned out, wanted both my arm and leg along with a pack mule, five chickens and a sack of grain in return for the hardware...ok not really but the components we looked at far exceeded our budget and expectations. I toyed with the idea of purchasing the highly priced merchandise anyway but common sense and the comments of mr housemate swayed my opinion into the ordering from the internet = cheaper but waiting several days category.

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An introduction of sorts

Hi all, my first post I do be making!

As way of introduction I'll briefly go over what this blog is all about and what you can expect from me.

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