Commenting on the “polish” behind Blizzard games, SynCaine likens every Blizzard product as being a rehashed version of old IP. Says SynCaine on Blizzard’s next product:

…what happens when you apply the Blizzard business model to a Blizzard game and play it really, really safe? You get StarCraft 2, a highly polished port of SC1 that leaves you feeling bored and burned out halfway through your first game. When you can build a base and pull off a rush with your eyes closed using the same strategy and hotkeys you used in 1998, you’re game just MIGHT be a little too similar to its predecessor.

Starcraft was a good RTS. We never played competitively, but as someone who probably played every RTS up until Starcraft’s release (and likely sometime thereafter, too), Starcraft didn’t leave us with the impression that it was way ahead of the pack. The backstory wasn’t fantastic, the races were only marginally unique, and in truth, we can’t even say we loved Starcraft more than Blizzard’s previous RTS offerings.

So now we have Starcraft 2 on the horizon, with many bloggers already having posted early play impressions of the game. And really, we can’t help but think it’s just more of Starcraft. And that’s not to say this is a bad thing, because we’re all for sequels being “more of the same” if the formula was perfect. We just don’t think the Starcraft formula was perfect, and we’d much rather have seen something more epic for Starcraft 2. Maybe that puts us in the minority. Either way, we’re way more eager to see what comes out of the Diablo franchise, because between Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 doesn’t need to be revolutionary to be perfect – it just needs to take one small iterative step forward.

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Electronic Arts (EA) is already preparing the Command & Conquer (C&C) franchise for the future vehicle for software proliferation: digital distribution. Kotaku, meanwhile, says that some fans are skeptical:

News of the transition was sending fears of a Facebook-ized, watered-down C&C among some series fans.

And yet C&C always was watered down, offering little more than eye-candy to recent sequels. The good news is that EA CEO John Riccitiello hopes to change that, and bring more innovation to the real-time strategy (RTS) genre.

“…I have a shared vision that the RTS category is due for fundamental innovation and not just cooler graphics,” Riccitiello said. “We’ve gotten to the point where you can see the particles around individual grenade explosions inside rooms where windows fall apart. That was never what made RTS good. That was just sort of eye candy on top of a very traditional game mechanic. From when Red Alert and Starcraft sort of defined the genre, it hasn’t moved.”

While Riccitiello’s take on RTS games mirrors our own, his seniority is at question when he uses Red Alert and Starcraft as examples of genre-defining games. In reality, predecessors Command & Conquer (yes, the original), Warcraft, and Warcraft II, solidified the genre that Dune II built. And really, nothing fundamental has changed since then, either. And that portends danger for developers not willing to let go of the tried-and-true method of simple throwing a new unit or two at a player each level, while making them rebuild from scratch on a new map. The repetitive play is what kills the genre in one game alone, let alone when looking at new RTS games.

“Some of what Facebook does, in terms of letting you collectively experience things, have not been stitched together by the game industry in terms of lessons learned there. You start applying that thinking to a C&C franchise you get something pretty special.”

This is where Riccitiello’s price as CEO may be worth it, because at least Riccitiello is looking at some aspects of what make Facebook games, and MMOGs, so alluring. If RTS games are meant to illustrate a greater struggle, then the thousands of players participating in battlefield combat should be able to assist one another, participate in local battles, and change the tide of war one small step at a time. In many ways, this mirrors the idea of Warhammer Online’s Realm vs. Realm PvP scenario, but at a less granular level.

If there’s a clear disadvantage for one player to effectively handle a large army, compared to many players handling less units at a more focused level, then new aspects in RTS titles emerge: buildings alliances, strategies, and resource flows become important. And ultimately, the complexity of individual units can grow, because with less units, players have the ability to use more unit abilities in order to create battlefield synergy, whereas in purely single-player games, players must first be concerned with amassing large armies and rushing the enemy head-on.

Adopting certain key aspects of social and multiplayer games can be a good thing for the RTS genre, as long as it’s done right and with the intent to grow the genre “up,” rather than “out.” That is to say, adopting the wrong aspects of social games will result in a watered-down RTS experience that may be more accessible to non-gamers, but at the expense of the RTS faithful. Maintaining the complexity of strategy and risk-taking, however, and adding on top of this formula a perpetual battlefront that all players share, will only satiate RTS gamers more.

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Strategy games based on World War II are a dime a dozen, which says something about the purchasing power of what one would think is a relatively niche market. It seems like there are numerous small, independent developers that pop these kinds of games out like China pops out babies. To the passive video game audience, these titles are nothing more than noise with the occasional hidden gem obfuscated by static, as was the case with Panzer General, which was perhaps simplified, but nonetheless a solid strategy game in its own right.

It wasn’t long before these games entered the real-time strategy genre, following in the success of Command & Conquer and the many clones. Some, like Sudden Strike, would briefly flash on the radar before fading away in a sea of antiquity.

Recently, however, THQ’s Company of Heroes was revealed to me, and it occupied a good chunk of my weekend. The game is based on the Havoc engine used by Warhammer 40k, which I didn’t play but nonetheless heard lots of good things about. What sets Company of Heroes apart from other RTS games is that the strategy component is maximized, where players use such things as cover and concealment to better their odds at winning.

For missions where actual building is done, players obtain resources by holding objectives, not by mining or lumbering or farming. This is WW2 after all, and the resources we’re interested in are manpower, munitions, and fuel.

Holding key points on a map gives players one of the aforementioned three resources. The maps themselves are carved into territories (each one usually holding one resource type), and in order to generate the respective resource, the territory must be connected to one’s base of operations directly, or through adjacent territories. In other words, losing a territory can cut one’s supply line off, meaning that one needs to build adequate defenses when expanding one’s territory.

I’ve only played the single player campaign at the moment (where you follow the success of the American’s Able Company), but I can already see how team-based multiplayer would positively wrock. My only real complaint at the moment is the small resolution I’ve been playing the game at, and the fact that the enormous UI doesn’t help free up and screen real-estate.

Nonetheless, Company of Heroes is a solid RTS, and I daresay the best of of the WW2 genre. Heck, I’d say it’s the best RTS I’ve played yet, period. If you’re a WW2 fan, you ought to pick this baby up, especially if the normal crop of RTS games is too “omf zerg” for you, and you crave deeper strategy.

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