2006 Games Poll (poll is up - see link)

[NTJedi]

Most of these games everyone here has listed sound good... yet when in search of buying a new game I search for specific game features which I've listed below:

1) Random Game Generator
2) Game/Map Editor
3) Multiplayer capability (4 or more gamers)
4) Developer/Publisher communications/updates with gamers
5) Adjusting/Improving Artificial Intelligence


---all of these are not needed but two of the top three are definitely needed.--

[Saber Cherry]

Unless anyone adds anything in the next few hours, I'll go ahead and post the poll.

[RonD]

Rise of Legends link - I haven't had time to get any good at an RTS since Starcraft, but I keep buying them. Rise of Nations and the Kohan games have been my favorites. Rise of Legends certainly wins the "looks interesting" award in my book.

[Cainehill]

Kohan 2 - was that good? I had / have Kohan 1 somewhere, rts ain't my cuppa whiskey, but it was fairly fun.

[shovah]

im waiting on rise of legends too and of course for dom III

[B0rsuk]

WARNING:
Heroes5 will be protected by Starforce. The mechanism is infamous for disabling your software, installing itself without your knowledge, staying on your computer even when you uninstall the game, REinstalling itself after removal (there's no official removal tool, mind you), breaking your hardware, causing crashes and performance hit. It's effectively a trojan.
Also keep in mind that while Starforce may not damage your computer, it may make work easier for other viruses. Just like there are viruses that cause no harm by itself, but attack your body's defence systems and let other bacteria/viruses in. Oh, and did I mention it's windows-only , so if you have dual boot system and buy Starforced game, you vote with your money against multiplatform support for games ?

Criticism by Tom's Hardware:
http://www.tgdaily.com/2005/10/01/th...tes/index.html

List of games using Starforce:
http://www.similarities.org/starforce.html

Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starforce

[Agrajag]

B0rsuk said:
WARNING:
Heroes5 will be protected by Starforce. The mechanism is infamous for disabling your software, installing itself without your knowledge, staying on your computer even when you uninstall the game, REinstalling itself after removal (there's no official removal tool, mind you), breaking your hardware, causing crashes and performance hit. It's effectively a trojan.

Well...
The only known issues in the latest version of Starforce are disabling Alcohol 120% and the Nero burning tools.
I've heard about disabling certaing CD-Burners, but I'm not sure with which version that is.
As far as Reinstalling - that only happens if you try to run the program it came with after you uninstalled the Starforce drivers.
Also, there is on official removal tool on their website.
And as far as being installed without your knowledge, being a trojan and causing performance hits... The rest of the copy protections do that as well.

Also keep in mind that while Starforce may not damage your computer, it may make work easier for other viruses. Just like there are viruses that cause no harm by itself, but attack your body's defence systems and let other bacteria/viruses in.

Yep, like I said, this vulenrability applies to other copy protection methods.

Oh, and did I mention it's windows-only , so if you have dual boot system and buy Starforced game, you vote with your money against multiplatform support for games ?

Yeah, that's true.

I'm not trying to say that Starforce is good, it isn't.
I'm just trying to show the (true) arguements of the opposite side.

And by the way, I played several (well, two) games that came with Starforce, and neither adversly affected my computer in any way.

[Graeme Dice]

B0rsuk said:
Oh, and did I mention it's windows-only , so if you have dual boot system and buy Starforced game, you vote with your money against multiplatform support for games ?

This is ridiculous. Most games are Windows only because Windows, unlike the *nix world, has actual support for the hardware needed to play games. You aren't voting against multiplatform support, since no major manufacturer cares about a market that will always be only a fraction of the size of the already small Macintosh market.

[Vicious Love]

Cainehill said:
Kohan 2 - was that good? I had / have Kohan 1 somewhere, rts ain't my cuppa whiskey, but it was fairly fun.

Played the demo; "generic" doesn't begin to cover it. The game just exuded mediocrity. No clue what all the fuss was about.
Either the demo was a truly abysmal attempt at showcasing the brilliant, revolutionary game Kohan 2 is supposed to be, or the game itself is just another RTS distinguished only by a gimmicky logistics model.
That, and the complete absence of any hint of personality. Honestly, must I be thwacked in the face with a cliche every time I click an undead hero?

[RonD]

How many RTS games have been "revolutionary"? I enjoy the Kohan series because I despise having to click on some specific peon and tell him to go chop that specific tree. Kohan did away with peons entirely, so all you have to build are the buildings and the troops. The depth (and, for me, the interest) in an RTS comes from the interaction between the kinds of units you choose to build vs the kind of units your opponents choose to build. The Kohan series has lots of depth.

For Cainehill - Kohan 2 is both simplified and different from 1, and there are enough differences that you can't claim it to be just dumbed-down (though some of the hard-core players who were still refining Kohan 1 strategies after 3 years of play were quite bitter about the simplification). Unfortunately, it suffered the same basic problem as #1 - not enough players.