What was the last strategy game you played that had you so addicted you still think in the late hours of the night how to go about overcoming the defenses of stubborn AI-controlled bases that had obliterated every last unit you threw at them?
In all the years that I’ve been playing strategy games, the answer is one and the same: Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn.
The answer amused and shocked me as a few weeks ago, as I was mopping up what was left of a GDI base, I exclaimed “Heh!” with a smug grin. I haven’t felt so triumphant since 12 years ago, back when 486 systems reigned supreme and I was playing ---
--- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, the. Exact. Same. Game.
Command & Conquer owes its charm to the traditional you-against-a-dumb-AI-with-resources-as-prodigious-as-Bill Gates single player campaign scheme. It may be annoying for some but it certainly glues me to my keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Who can remember the frustration and challenge of throwing Medium and Mammoth Tanks at an Obelisk of Light while MLRS work on the laser tower from behind only to witness despairingly as the AI erects another obelisk seconds later?.Read more...
Back in 2002, a company named Ageia surfaced, bringing into the PC industry avant-garde hardware designed to offload physics calculations from the CPU. The hardware, a dedicated physics card (much like a separate sound card, only this one calculated physics, not audio) didn’t do so well, considering that enhanced physics didn’t produce game altering changes back in the early part of the decade. In 2008, Nvidia acquired Ageia, fusing the innovative physics technology with their video cards. Ageia might not have survived the decade, but their legacy, the hardware and the middleware PhysX, continues to live on in several games.