Red Tides: Art of War
Don't you just miss the good old days where real-time strategy games came out every now and then and being able to play one made you a cool kid? Well, I do. In a way, it made me feel superior — researching various techs, fortifying my base, carefully planning flank positions, commanding hundreds of different units and launching my own superweapon. I mean, games like Command & Conquer, Age of Empires, Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes — these games were my "stepping stones" into PC gaming.
Nowadays, most developers want a piece of that hot MOBA pie with a bit of co-op FPS on the side, so games like League of Legends, DOTA 2, Smite, Paladins, and Overwatch are what's in. And, to be honest, playing them was fun at first until you receive the toxic trashtalk of doom first-hand. I gave up.
That's until I found a diamond in the rough — Red Tides: Art of War — it's a free-to-play game developed and published by Game Science that mixes the MOBA's lane system and the RTS' resource and unit production. Did I mention it's free-to-play?
Red Tides: Art of War adapted the common characteristics of classic RTS games: playing in real-time, varying factions, resource management, unit production, and superweapons, while mixing in MOBA elements like rune systems, a single lane with turrets and a protected ship at each end, a dragon that grants a buff, loot chests, and a ranked league.
Here's how the game works: choose one from the three distinct races offered - Terrans, Atlac, and Yaoguai, each offering a different playstyle. If you're wondering how each race function, you can use Starcraft's races as reference - Terrans as the Terrans, Atlac as the Protoss, and Yaoguai as the Zerg. From there, you select ten units from more than forty units of each races and use that "deck" into battle. While in a battle, you can adjust several factors that can affect the whole game, such as the combination and number of units that are being deployed for each wave. Destroy three enemy turrets and then the base, and you win. Leveling up unlocks new units for each race and grants credits and gems that can be used to purchase loot chests and runes.
I've only had a couple of matches but I can agree that every match is heart-pounding. The only flaws, however, are the fps drops that you might encounter once over 300 units are present on the screen and the cheesy music every time you win a match. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend this to people who enjoyed playing classic RTS games and are craving for that sense of superiority. It successfully merged MOBA and RTS without compromising quality.
Red Tides: Art of War is currently in BETA/Early Access on Steam until the 24th and will temporarily shut down its servers on the 25th, specifically:
25/01/2017 09:00 PDT 25/01/2017 11:00 EST 25/01/2017 16:00 GMT 25/01/2017 24:00 GMT+8
and will stay that way for a few months before its release. For more information regarding their game, you can visit their Steam page here and their Facebook page here.