Dipswitch: Thanks, Franklin Mint

posted Oct. 21, 2008 06:19:08 PM by     

I have to apologize for lack of a comic update last Thursday, I have had a lot going on and it totally slipped my mind. I promise it will never happen again.

This weeks comic comes a little late after the announcement of Ensembles closure, but it still is relevant. It is a sad day when one of the old studios goes under, especially one with a pedigree like Ensemble has. Age of Empires was one of the first RTS' that I cut my teeth on, and I believe they truly had a grasp on the genre. It is disheartening that RTS's haven't found their place on console, and it really comes down to the controls. You truly cannot replace a keyboard and mouse with a console controller and hope to have the level of control over an RTS title. I haven't gotten a chance to try out the Endwar beta yet, but from what I've heard, the voice controls are decent, but nothing to write home about.

What we need is a game like Halo, only in RTS form. Many of us had been playing first person shooters for years and years on the PC, so Halo was nothing that new (albeit a great game). To the people who never had never truly enjoyed a good FPS game on a PC before, it was a total and absolute kick to the head, and ignited the FPS console genre as the staple of console gaming. If someone could implement a strong, userfriendly, competent user interface, then it would at least ignite a fire under the genre, and developers could figure out a way to itterate, and innovate.

I eagerly await that day.

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