In high school what got me into gaming were two very distinct games, games that not only got me hooked, but have been quoted as forming the field of RTS gaming. Those two games were Stronghold, and Total Annihilation. I loved stronghold for the historical aspect, being able to wage battles with ancient weaponry, and well everyone knows what Total Annihilation did for the gaming industry. So far the successors to these games has not lived up to their ancestors legacy. Supreme Commander may not have been a total flop, but somehow it seemed to fall short of the legacy TA left behind. Stronghold 2 was a decent game, very buggy, very exploitable, but still fun to play. Now Stronghold 3 has come out. I’m sure you can imagine my excitement when I heard it announced, I followed the developer diaries very closely, seeing things like a physics engine being added, dynamic lighting, and all those cool modern technologies coming in to play… I thought this is going to be awesome. I was a bit disappointed when they didn’t have a pre-sale… well they sold the game early, but I don’t think you can call giving away the old games and not reducing the price a “sale” I already own the old games, could we do something a little better?
Well, not to worry, I could wait until the game came out to get it. Only… when it did come out I didn’t have much urge to buy it. I sat around watching the developer videos the night before it hit the market and got very discouraged. What’s the point of including a physics engine if the animations it produces are going to look exactly like the pre-baked building destructions of SH2? What’s the point of including dynamic lighting if the textures and shadows look worse than games I bought 6 years ago?
I understand small studios don’t have the big budgets, or huge developer teams to work on these things… and I understand that there was a bit of a time crunch to launch the game on the 10th Anniversary of the original Stronghold game… I guess I just got spoiled by Company of Heroes. Especially in a game like Stronghold where the main focus is to build a castle I want army units that are smart enough to dodge big things like a stone flying at their head, I don’t want to control every unit individually, squads just makes sense a commander doesn’t tell every person under his command exactly what to do does he? Give me a game that allows me to make my own squads by grouping people together and I’ll be ecstatic! Make them smart enough to put shooting units (arrows) in the back, and stronger units up front to block, and I’ll jump with joy! Make the battles as simple as possible for the players, the economy and castle building takes up enough time as is. Also what is the point of building a castle if it doesn’t defend anything? 4 shots from a catapult and whole sections of wall drop… seriously? Are they nuclear explosive rocks? You’ve got a physics engine, make a rock take out a rock sized section of the wall! Yeah, so it’ll take a long time to cut through a wall, but isn’t that the point of a castle?
I am probably asking too much… And I don’t know that I’ll ever see these features in a castle builder game… the market probably just isn’t big enough. Even the total war series had some very quirky, pretty bad battle sequences at times, and it wasn’t even a castle builder.
written by Archmaille
It was creating a bit of a violent attitude for me. I figured racing games would be a better release… and for the most part that is correct. I actually became a more careful driver, crashing is no fun, even in a game (it also doesn’t help ya win)… so it taught me how and what to look for in others behavior to detect an accident coming up. However, now that I’ve been playing NFS: Hot Pursuit I’m running into my original problem again 
