Hello Again Madam Strategy, It Has Been A While Hasn't It?

It was the year 2000, it was a cold dark rainy evening much like any other day during the December month in Malaysia. I was alone at home, my parents were out at some function where like minded older folk spoke of topics that I found uninteresting. I chose to stay at home with a friend I met years before, her name was Ms. Strategy and together we conquered the Earth, saved it from alien invaders and Hippos in pink tutus. We were the best of mates until I abandoned her for console gaming and we have been apart for close to a decade but last month we reconciled to save the Earth once again like the old days.

More after the break.

Mildly creepy stories aside I felt a need to write an article dedicated to a game genre that has been absent from my game library for about a decade. I want to tell you guys and girls about why I loved the genre but please do not for one second think that I place this genre above that of the First Person Shooter or any other genre, I love all game genres in equal measure but the fact is that this is the one class of game I have not even touched for a very long time.

I did have a strong and solid love for the ball breaking but varied genre known as the Strategy Game. Before Call of Duty there were two games that resonated with young folk within my school, the first being Counter Strike and the other was Red Alert 2. CS as it was known was more accessible therefore many of my schoolmates would go to cybercafes after school(or during school for that matter) to play a rousing game of Hostage Rescue.

I enjoyed Counter Strike too but I also fell in love with the intelligent gameplay of Red Alert 2 mainly because it felt like I had a legitimate challenge against the AI of the game and I felt that there was more than one way to win a match.

For example in one mission in Red Alert 2 I had to take down a Psychic Beacon and this tower like structure was behind a wall of Soviet forces, one way to complete the mission was through sheer brute force where I would charge in with many infantry and tanks but I knew that doing so would result in huge losses for me. So I figured out a better alternative which was airpower.

I built two airbases with each one containing four Harrier Jumpjets, these bases took a while to build and the AI was decent enough to send in wave after wave of hostile forces while I built up my airpower. So I dug in with a force of tanks and a massive legion of infantry and waited till my air force was built up to a point where I knew I could destroy that tower. After a long period of defensive fighting I was ready to launch my air attack, my eight Harriers flew into air and with great bravery flew through the air defenses of the hostile base, the sky was black with flak rounds bursting into the air ripping through at least three of my Harriers to shreds. The remaining Harriers launched their missiles at the Psychic Beacon and it came tumbling down magnificently. The Harriers flew through the gauntlet of air defenses again and a few more were shot down but by the time my remaining jets came home I was the victor with minimal losses to me and massive losses to the enemy AI. I felt proud knowing that my tactics worked and that my underlings came through for their overweight, short sighted commander.

As Red Alert 2 went on the game forced me to switch tactics again and again, sometimes I had to go on the defensive from the very beginning of the mission which I was actually quite good at while other times the game demanded I take the fight to the enemy immediately...which I was not good at. The point is that during the single player campaigns of any Strategy game the tactics used in one battle might not work in another. This in many ways appeals to one of my hallmarks of what makes a good game that being "Do not treat the player like an idiot". Red Alert 2 always felt it was about to creep up behind me with a massive counter offensive and rip me to shreds and on many occasions I either had to change my tactics mid-game or I had to go the low route and spam (Zerg Rush) the opposition forces, a tactic that I was not proud of. 

One word can describe the Allied forces(the guys in Green) right now... SCREWED....or are they? 

To go beyond Red Alert 2, strategy games be it turn based like the XCOMs or real time like Starcraft and the aforementioned Red Alert 2 tend to be more long lived than say an FPS game. Please do not misunderstand me when I say this, I love FPS games (despite their overabundance) but after a while you as a player can see all the tricks the AI will throw at you and eventually you are able to deduce enemy patterns and spawns by heart. RTS games react on how you react to it.

Another RTS game of my youth was a fine game known as Rise of Nations (RoN) developed by the late Big Huge Games. All in all the game was a step up compared to Red Alert 2 mainly because the game demanded a lot more from the player with increased emphasis on resource gathering and diplomacy. The game spanned over several centuries, in the first hour of the game all you had was a woodcutter to gather...wood and a few dozen bowmen to protect your village and by the end missions of the game you have ultra modern tanks and machine gun crews backed up by self propelled artillery.

Combat became a lot harder because of this multiple period mechanic mainly because of the massive tactics change that comes about after every generation upgrade. You can get away from lining up a hundred musketeers and have them fire a volley against a charging cavalry group but this tactic will be worthless once tanks and more potent artillery come into play. I loved having to think ahead on not only on my tactics but what my individual unit was capable of, what enemy units were weak to him and those that were developed to counter him.

To make things even deeper every nation be it the Koreans,  British or  Germans each had their own special unique unit which could turn the tide of any battle if used correctly. This concept is not entirely new but combined with the generational changes the game has, this mechanic works great in the combat scenarios.

Not only was the combat harder to follow but so was your economy and to my recollection there were about six resources to gather which sounds insane to some folk but in many ways it made sense. A nation runs on food, water, oil and other resources that nations will kill each other for, no country can run just on gold or Tiberium. So I admired the thought that went into RoN and since then I felt that resource gathering was just as important as the combat in strategy games and it was a key part to what separated it from other genres in the video gaming world.

I must have spent nights building up nation after nation and many times I came up with these outrageous scenarios that defied confirmed history. For example, I used the map editor in the game and made  a custom map and scenario. One scenario involved the African nations represented by the Bantu (a faction within the game) were fighting against the slaving nations of the world represented by the British, French and Spanish on an actual battlefield somewhere in Africa and finally I set the game's time period to be set in the time of the musket and cannon. I played as the Bantu and let the computer take care of the opposing force, I lined up my Bantu musketeers on a small hill and hid a force behind a forested area and the computer came marching in with their intent to enslave all my men. My men took a severe beating from the numerically superior force but after releasing my cavalry and reserve musketeers I turned the tide of battle in my favor and after a few more minutes of ragged fighting I had defeated the slavers and liberated Africa.

 I was proud of my map that I had built and the freedom the game gave to me in carrying out my scenario, it felt good to have liberated a continent against entities that would have shipped them in the hundreds on cramped ships. I was learning about slavery in school at the time so it felt timely to make that particular map and scenario. Other scenarios include Battle of Stalingrad and Battle of the Bulge maps with each one made according to what I learnt in history class and as evidenced by the aforementioned war story I could also take liberties on how the battles were fought and won.

I also got cheeky by sending spearmen to go up against tanks mainly because the game allowed me to and I had a colorful imagination. I know that map editors are not new to any genre but I never had as much fun as I did in RoN's map editor and Strategy games benefit from such a tool mainly because of the modularity of the genre as a whole.

Artillery, tanks, machine guns and giant telescopes and wheat fields...what's not to love? 

Now there were many other strategy games that I played within my childhood each one having their own set of challenging and unique aspects. But one aspect of strategy games that should not ever be forgotten is of course the multiplayer. Multiplayer in strategy games is more than "Who Can Shoot the Other Guy in the Face Quicker?" scenarios instead many multiplayer matches in strategy games can get downright brutal and very long winded.

Imagine for a moment any strategy game in existence, now remove the time limit, set resources to all teams to maximum and put players in a large map and you have a recipe for what is either the dumbest idea in gaming or the greatest one. I for one have not experienced a multiplayer match for more than an hour (even that is considered long by modern standards) but there are strategy games whose multiplayer matches can take weeks to finish.

The main catalyst of this usually long and bitter fighting is the individual player, in every game genre the imagination and wit of the individual is an invaluable asset to have. In strategy games this is taken a step further because of the aforementioned modularity of the genre.

In my experience the longest game I had took place in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, I played as the Global Defense Initiative and my opponent took the Brotherhood of Nod side. The game started out innocently enough with each of us building up our resources and military and eventually we started probing each other's defenses with small and expendable groups of skirmishers but as time went on we each dug in with lines and lines of defenses and hordes of infantrymen, armor and air power. It got to a point where both our bases were burning, our lines of defenses were each shattered and our air forces took a severe beating. But then my opponent performed a daring offensive on my right flank and naturally I shifted my defense there but I was blindsided by a far larger force spearheading into through the center which caught my moving defenders off-guard. I lost because of that brilliant maneuver and  using the game chat I acknowledged his victory and together we toasted to the long and brutal battle that had played out. It took an hour but it was a glorious one hour of sheer vicious but intelligent gameplay between two folks who have never met each other in real life. It was a glorious moment in time in my gaming life.

Most overpowered defensive structure...ever. 

Now to shift to a wider aspect, I understand that there are plenty of other sub-genres of strategy games other than Real Time Strategy, like turn based strategy, real time tactics(RTT) and others. The Commandos Franchise is one example of my experience in RTT, unlike RTS RTT required no resource management and emphasizes more on overall combat. However one's mind is still needed to combat their enemies even without resource management. 

Commandos is basically a squad based game, where the player is in a control of a squad of commandos each with their own special abilities. For example the character classified  as the Sniper (as the name implies) is able to take down enemies from a distance, whereas the character classified as the Driver is able to drive enemy tanks and use them against hostile forces. As you can tell by now this game is combat heavy but if a player decides to go into an area guns blazing they will be met with a tank shell to the face. However like any other game, if a player calmly assesses the situation and objective at hand, if he/she uses her squad and their abilities in the right fashion and in the right time they will be rewarded with a brilliant end score. The missions within Commandos can be won in many ways, some players enjoy the direct route where they are able to engage in direct combat but do so in a way where they are able to protect their squad and give the enemy a very decent fight.

Other players enjoy the more stealthy approach by taking down a few hostiles with the Sniper or come in from the rear using the Diver and his um...dive...ability. The choice on how to complete the missions is up to the player and their own tactical know how.

I tend to go the guerrilla warfare route where I have my Sniper covering my more direct combat squad members like the Driver (who was armed with a submachine gun) and the Sapper (armed with explosives). These two men  supported the Spy and the Green Beret both of whom favored stealth as opposed to direct combat, the Spy and Green Beret tend to be the men I would complete the missions with mainly because of their ability to hide bodies or in the case of the Spy disguise himself as an enemy soldier.

If the mission would up in a massive battle I knew I would have two men who would cause havoc and destruction behind enemy lines and that these two men were supported by two frontline combat troops who will cause the most harm and they in turn were supported by the Sniper who would kill targets that the other two could not reach. 

This tactic of mine sounds solid on paper but the game will throw a few surprises at you like tanks or an armored train car full of enemies so I failed many times and it forced me to rethink my tactics. The concept of failure within a game is nothing new nor is it exclusive to strategy games but that does not take away from the fact that a player in a strategy game after a failed mission needs to think more on the lines of a general on the defensive rather than a soldier on the front. But after serious thought and recollection on why they failed the mission the player then shifts his/her tactics to counter that of the enemy and in many ways is akin to a counter offensive in a real battle. Commandos strategic gameplay and emphasis on combat made me fail many times but I always managed to get back up after every fall and tumble I took. 

Commandos was much like a fast game of checkers...if checkers had explosions and throat cutting.

Around 2002 I bought a new PC to replace my Windows 95 based computer and yes I know that changing your computer every decade is not exactly standard protocol but my old 95' PC served me well and to retire her was the honorable thing to do. I got this PC from Hewlett Packard, I was a moron child who believed the processor was the end all thing on how a game ran and I didn't give a thought to the importance of a good graphics card. I did get some decent playtime with it as evidenced by my time with Rise of Nations but as time grew on the piss poor graphics card made games all but unplayable and I decided to retire from PC gaming for the console.

Fast forward to 2012 by now strategy games had left my library mainly because of my shift in gaming hardware and as we all know it is hard to make a decent strategy game on consoles though there were a couple of cases that defied that stereotype. However in late 2012 I finally upgraded to a new computer, the build of my current rig known simply as Eleanor (I like naming my PCs...leave me be) was enough to power all games on the market. So I was happy to get such a new PC but it took a sale, hours of free time and a thread on Facebook to find Madam Strategy again.

In December 2012 there was a game was on sale on Steam for around $34 (RM102 or AUD32), it was called XCOM Enemy Unknown. When it first released I remember saying to myself "Nah I would never love this game" but I decided to give the game a chance and relive the good old times. So I bought the game, played through the tutorial and first missions and then I stopped playing it...and gave a silent yell to the video gaming gods praising them for what I have just bore witness to. I loved XCOM Enemy Unknown, everything about it reminded me of the old days...XCOM was fun, engaging, addictive and hard.

The concept of turn based strategy ( the type of gameplay that is found within XCOM Enemy Unknown) is slower than that of real time strategy and real time tactics, much like RTT there is a heavy emphasis on combat though in XCOM there is still a management aspect where a player are given resources from dead enemies and downed ships after every mission and in turn these materials can be used in anything from the research and production of armaments to the development of offensive robotic units.

But overall resource gathering in XCOM requires little to no effort when compared to an RTS game like Red Alert or Rise of Nations mainly because the game just gives you the materials after every successful mission. Combat however in turn based games is vastly different when compared to RTS and RTT,  turn based games are far slower and more calculated in their approach to combat.

 The players would take turns moving their units around the map and during this period of time they are able to attack or maneuver to cover, every unit under the player's command can only move at a limited pace and every movement whether it be an attack or the us of a special ability will use up the unit's action points and once all the action points of the units are used up that unit will be inactive until the next turn, so this process repeats on every unit under the player's command  and once the player has finished with their movement of their units it will signify the end of turn for that player and then will be the turn of other player. It is very much like a game of chess  where the concepts of maneuvering, flanking and tactical observation tends to beat out on rushing your enemy.

Cyberdisc vs Two snipers and a rifleman...yeah that thing never stood a chance against yours truly. 

XCOM was the first time I had played a turn based strategy game and (for the lack of a better word) it felt  very alien to me. Fortunately the tutorial mission was very educational and I managed to get a firm grip on the game in a very short amount of time. About an hour or so after the tutorial missions I nailed down my tactics on the combat side of things and much like other games in the genre XCOM allowed players to come up with tactics that the player is suited to.

I for one was suited to a protracted close quarters battle, I dug in and made small attacks against the aliens to lure them out to face my full force which tend to have heavy weaponry and armor while my friend decided to go with the more fluid approach by equipping his force with armor that could get his forces to higher ground. The game also had  a permanent death aspect which forced the player to think deeply about his or her next move especially considering that the troops gain experience and special abilities based on their class, losing just one veteran will feel devastating especially if they have been by the player's side for a long period of time.

XCOM had the hallmarks of a good game, it had decent enemy AI, it had plenty of replayability, it had a decent management aspect and the gameplay was solid. The game did it have its fair share of glitches and a really average story but the thing that made me come back to the game were my friends who like me loved the game.

I made a thread on Facebook where we would all tell our war stories to one another and we would listen (or in this case...read) with much glee. We all named our soldiers after each other and when they died we as a group gave a moment of silence for our deceased digital counterparts. We then told each other of our progress in the game, our tactics, what we might face up against and the usual banter between fellow armchair generals. It feels great  I never thought I could fall in love with strategy games ever again and I certainly never thought I would share my exploits with my friends.

We grew attached to our digital squad of troops and we comforted each other whenever one of the the team gets killed. It may sound overly dramatic but when a game allows you to not only raise your individual soldier from a lowly rookie to a full blown machine of death and badassery you too will feel a relationship with your digital squad. My friends and I comfort each other in times of loss but at the same time we honor each other when a mission goes brilliantly. We share our victories and every time our uninjured squad stands on top of a mound of our fallen enemies with the flag of humanity flying on top it is a good day for us.

Brilliant job lads...utterly brilliant. 

I missed the strategy genre and I am glad that I made a return to it since all the things that I loved about it all those years back are still there. I am humbled by the notion that I could experience a genre that has been absent from my gaming life for years and still enjoy it.

I also love the fact that these games are loved by my friends with who I can share my successes and my failures with. To be honest, I never thought I could play a strategy game again much less enjoy it but I was proven wrong and I am glad that I was.

I really hope that as you are reading this article you do not think of me as some sort of pretentious urban gamer hipster who dislikes Call of Duty. Also I acknowledge that there is plenty of freedom for the player in other genres and I do point out these out to my readers, if you need further proof of this read my Far Cry 3 review. I play what I want to play and I love most genres of games (except for rhythm games since...I have no rhythm to speak of whatsoever).

Strategy games have always challenged me in a special way, the fate of the battle can be decided with just one move of your tank column or a swift advance with fast moving infantry. So my advice to you my readers is to expand your horizons, find a game that you never thought you would love and just play it for an hour so and you might just love it.

Except for rhythm games...a fat,clumsy and down on his luck writer is the last thing you will think of when it comes to fast dancing and movement...