Strategy Games

Alan Barthelmess
Generally, if you love strategy games then you probably play on the PC. The only issue I have with PC gaming is always having to upgrade to meet the system requirements for the game. Unless you put out a serious amount of cash into a decent Alienware laptop, you’ll find yourself putting more and more money into your PC to keep up gaming requirements. Anyway, RTS (Real Time Strategy) games are more aimed at PCs than at other consoles, and tend to play much better on PCs.

There are, however, a few great RTS titles that I will recommend for consoles such as the 360 and PS3. These are games that have made it easy to handle with a controller and multi-task between commands without requiring too much attention. To start off, I personally love the Supreme Commander series, a power house among the RTS category. In Supreme Commander 1, the unit cap was 500 units, and the games requirements for processing power would lock up your Xbox, and then make your graphics card go into overtime just to keep up. The battles are colossal and more gratifying than any RTS I’ve ever played. In Supreme Commander 2, which was just released last summer, they toned down the processing requirements and made the graphics better. It made the game much nicer, but a lot simpler as well; it’s still fun as heck launching waves and waves of experimental units at each other.
A great co-op RTS game is Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3. Not many games in this genre can offer a co-op campaign that is fun, but C&C 3 did a great job. You’ll battle the U.S., Russia, and, because of a time travel incident, the rising sun with nanotechnology. The game is very bright in graphics and offers some decent strategy options. Most online matches end with whoever launches their super weapon first, but if you take them out first it will not matter.
If you’re a huge Halo fan, then give Halo Legends a try. Only try it if you are really into Halo though, because if you are looking for a great RTS, it could be more of a disappointment. The game play is so simplistic that you’ll see the same strategy online every time you play; you are limited to one 6 slot box to build your base and can’t expand. That being said, the clip scenes are beautiful and it delivers a great Halo storyline.
These are just a few of my personal favorite RTS games that are for consoles instead of just PCs.