So it’s time to sum up the genre of real time strategies of 2007. There was a good dozen of them, but only 3 ended up being really good. Those games are Command & Conquer 3, World in Conflict and Supreme Commander.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is the sequel to a revolutionary game series that’s been in the hearts of gamers for decades now. Being a Warcraft3 hardcore gamer, I have to say that I was a bit confused playing C&C3. It’s a decent game, but maybe I just don’t get it.

The story plays out in a true C&C fashion with LIVE action cut-scenes. They might be cheesy at times, but they do the job well. Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost) does a great job there, as well as other famous actors. Story is fairly standard - beat up the bad guys that are occupying your land.

The confusion kicks in with gameplay, as the game does a well (perhaps even too well) job of guiding you through the levels. There is no accent on building a huge base and gather resources, it’s more action based. You do eventually get to build structures, but it’s mostly having a single squad and waiting for backup. The actors from the cutscenes make their appearances frequently, giving you hints and pretty much take you by the hand and guide you through the whole level. There are couple of challenges, but being an action gamer, to me it gets boring just telling 3 squads to occupy 3 buildings and wait for backup. Yes, your squads can actually occupy buildings — and so can the enemies, so you’ll have to take down enemy buildings.

In terms of revolutionary, this game isn’t. It just takes everything good from other RTS games, and mixes it up, while leaving behind most of the boring stuff associated with the genre (building bases?). The live cutscenes are something we aren’t really used to, but it’s a nice touch. Professional acting also does the job well. It’s not as great as the previous Command & Conquer games at the time, but it’s definitely worth checking out and is one of the best games of the year.

World in Conflict puts you in the shoes of a commander fighting for the salvation of Seattle…. that’s being occupied by Russians. Wait, why is Seattle being occupied by Russia? Nevermind. This topic is so old with Russians being the bad guys, but I guess the muslims taking over the world bit is even older.

So imagine Battlefield 2, put it in a Real Time Strategy perspective — and there you have it — World in Conflict. It’s literally an action/shooting game put into a “gods view” mode — which isn’t a bad thing at all.

While in C&C3 you had very little focus on building an actual base that produces units, there is no such thing in World in Conflict. It’s all about the action and reaction time. It seems that the dev team behind the game was split into 2 parts — one were hardcore RTS gamers, the others were shooter fans, and both were trying to come to an agreement. As a result, we have a very appealing game with incredibly high production values.

Supreme Commander is an interesting take on the genre, it actually lets you make EPIC battles with thousands of units on-screen. You can zoom out “in space” and see all the action, or zoom in and see every single detail. This is very realistic, as in real battles, the battlefield is enormous, and it takes time for units to come up on their targets.

It’s impossible to describe the feeling of having a thousand units attacking the enemy on all sides, and trying to control every single squad becomes a very hard and mind-intense task. At that point you really start to wish you’d have a quadcore inside your head. But once you get the hang of it, it gets exciting.

Overall, if you missed out on any of these games — even if you’re not a hardcore RTS fan — they are definitely worth checking out.