Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Is Total War a RTS game?
Total War is a series of strategy games developed by The Creative Assembly for personal computers. They combine turn-based strategy and resource management with real-time tactical control of battles. The first of the series, Shogun: Total War was released in June 2000. The most recent major game released was Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia on 3 May 2018. The series has sold over 20 million copies.[1]
"Rise and Fall" was received by critics with both positive and negative scores, with an average rating—according to GameRankings—of 65% (78th PC game of 2006). "PC Gamer UK" called it "Pure 24-carat gaming gold!" Games Radar said "This RTS has its ups and downs...", while Games Radar UK said "The RTS Rubicon has been crossed." GameSpot remarked that "this game doesn't quite know what it wants to be."; IGN stated that "...there's very little reason to recommend this title to fans of the strategy or action genres."
Publications judged the multiplayer aspect of the game well. Wilcox noted that, although the multiplayer mode "added [nothing] new [to RTS games], at the very least it's a solid experience that expands the longevity of "Halo Wars"." Adam Biessener of "Game Informer" wrote that "Halo Wars" gameplay was better against human players, as campaign "gimmicks" and poor artificial intelligence were not an issue. "The Mirror"s Kevin Lynch found fault with the "limited" variety of game modes.
"Stalin vs. Martians" received scathing reviews from critics. It has an average score of 23.41% on GameRankings as well as 25% on Metacritic. "GameSpot" named it 2009's "Flat-Out Worst Game", awarding it a rating of 1.5/10 and calling it "perhaps the worst RTS game ever created." IGN, which rated the game a 2/10, noted the game's total lack of any RTS-related elements and asked whether it was 'made in 1994 and sealed into a vault until 2009' given how dated the visuals looked. "Resolution", awarding the game 35%, warned readers not to purchase the game, but conceded that it is occasionally "incredibly amusing".
Bos Wars was on LinuxLinks "42 More of the Best Free Linux Games" list as well as their later top one hundred list. PC Advisor wrote in 2010 about game ""Bos Wars is an entertaining game, but one that takes some time and effort to learn - it's strictly for those who like an RTS challenge"".
The game's plot was well received. Reviewers praised the game's cinematics and voice acting. Geddes said the story was good, but not on par with those of Bungie's "Halo" games, and that most of the characters were stereotypical and somewhat unlikable. Critics noted that for a strategy game, the campaign was rather short, with only 15 missions; Nate Ralph of "Wired" completed each in fewer than 40 minutes. Jon Wilcox of Total Video Games wrote "there's an ebb and flow" to the gameplay, with "lengthy chapters cut with shorter punchy ones or time-based missions, all together creating a surprisingly compelling experience". Wilcox said the additions of performance-based medals added replay value to the campaign. Price said that, although the story and mission structure of the game was fairly standard, levels that were "rote" in other RTS games seemed more substantial in "Halo Wars". Reviewers such as Geddes, Wilcox, and Patrick Kolan of IGN UK said that the lack of a Covenant campaign was an unfortunate omission.
The Xbox One version of "Halo Wars 2" received "generally favorable" reviews from professional critics, while reception towards the PC version was more "mixed or average" according to review aggregator website Metacritic. The general consensus among critics was that "Halo Wars 2" provided an accessible strategy game experience befitting newcomers but that it either lacked tactical depth or was too conservative in its design to appease veteran RTS players who had access to alternatives on PC. Several writers recommended the game to console players, in part due to the dearth of RTS games on Xbox One.
"Halo Wars" garnered generally positive reviews. The game has an average of 82/100 on aggregate web site Metacritic. Critics were split on whether "Halo Wars" was a successful console translation of the RTS genre. GameSpy's Allen Rausch argued that, as "" showed that first-person shooters could work on consoles, "Halo Wars" "is an RTS ... on a console ... and it works". Tom Price of TeamXbox said that gamers have been waiting a long time for a console RTS "to get it right", and "Halo Wars" did so; reviewers for "Official Xbox Magazine" credited Ensemble with creating a strategy game that felt "absolutely at home on the console", rather than a "poorly shoehorned ... port" of a PC game with clumsy controls. 1UP's Thierry Nguyen was neutral about whether it was a good RTS game or "Halo" title, but called it a "solid beginning towards what could be a really good console RTS". Digital Trends' Scott Steinberg said that, while not perfect, "Halo Wars" made a strong case for the viability of RTS on consoles; "There's certainly the potential to have PC holdouts seriously reconsidering hoisting the controller." Peter Hartlaub of the "San Francisco Chronicle" offered a dismissive summation of the game as "a remedial game—real-time strategy for dummies", and stated that the game offered relatively little innovation when compared to other "Halo" titles.
In 2004, the Microsoft-owned Ensemble Studios—developers of the "Age of Empires" strategy series—began work on the game that would become "Halo Wars". The studio confirmed in April 2006 that it was working on a console-based RTS. CEO Tony Goodman said, "We're giving RTS games on the console a shot. We actually spent a whole year just trying to reconstruct how the controls would work on an RTS game." Without revealing the title, Goodman described the game as being shorter and more visceral than their previous projects.
On "Heroes of Mana", development of a real-time strategy game became so difficulty they had to start development all over at one point.
Another challenge of game development was due to the Japanese gaming audiences lack of familiarity with an RTS style of gaming. The world of "Seiken Densetsu 3" was chosen due to its plot involving warring states, which was thought to be well suited for an RTS game.
"Star Wars: Empire at War" was first mentioned in 2004, by then-president of LucasArts Jim Ward. He discussed the possibility of a RTS video game set in the "Star Wars" universe, stating "...there's a bright future there for games based on these new properties as well as original Star Wars games like a new real-time strategy PC game that Petroglyph is developing for next year". Ward described the game as taking the real-time strategy genre in a new direction and outlined plans to balance the gameplay between hardcore games and audiences familiar with the "Star Wars" franchise. The game was unveiled by LucasArts on January 21, 2005 with an original release date set for the end of 2005. LucasArts said that the newly formed Petroglyph Games would be developing an original 3-D game engine, titled Alamo, for "Star Wars: Empire at War" and that the game would support online battles for up to eight players.
The moniker "real-time strategy" (RTS), usually applied only to certain computer strategy games, (however, this genre is probably the most well known of strategy games and is what most websites mean when they say "strategy games") indicates that the action in the game is continuous, and players will have to make their decisions and actions within the backdrop of a constantly changing game state. Real-time strategy gameplay is characterised by obtaining resources, building bases, researching technologies and producing units. Blizzard Entertainment's "Starcraft" is a popular RTS played competitively in South Korea and televised to large audiences. Other notable games include the "Warcraft" series, "Age of Empires" series, "Dawn of War", "Command and Conquer", and "Dune II" (essentially the first RTS game). Outside PC world, very few strategy games are real-time; a few examples are "Battle for Middle-earth II", "Pikmin" and "Halo Wars". Even fewer ones use physical pieces, but at least "Icehouse" is an example of such.
In the August 2005 edition of "PC Gamer", it was announced that Gas Powered Games was developing "Supreme Commander", Chris's first RTS game since 1997. It is described as the spiritual successor to "Total Annihilation", but was not able to be named as such because Atari (formerly Infogrames) owns the rights to the "Total Annihilation" name. Although Atari has shown no interest in reviving the TA franchise, the company nonetheless held on to it until July 2013.
"Total Annihilation" was one of the first RTS games to feature radar that showed enemy units within its radius on the minimap. This added an additional element of electronic warfare to the game: players could construct radar jammers that prevented units in a small radius around them from appearing on radar. Mobile radar jammers could be used to create surprise attacks, necessitating the deployment of scout units on a regular basis to reveal said units visually. In addition, radar jammers could disguise the presence of visually cloaked units, such as the commander or land mines. Radar fields rendered cloaked units detectable; a radar jammer could make said units undetectable until the radar jammer was destroyed. "Total Annihilation" was also one of the first RTS games to point the way towards battlefields with hundreds and thousands of units. Previous games could field a hundred units or so. However, Total Annihilation initially permitted 250 units per side which was later patched to 500. A third party patch allowed up to 5,000 units per side.
The first RTS game was developed in the 1970s on a mainframe, and RTS for home computers appeared in the early 1980s. "Dune II", released in 1992, established conventions that most subsequent RTS games followed, including the "collect resources, build base and army, destroy opponents" pattern. "Warcraft: Orcs & Humans", two years later, was the next well-known RTS game, and introduced new types of missions, including conquering rebels of the player's race and limited-forces missions, in which neither side could make further units. It also included "skirmishes" which were single-player games that were not part of a larger campaign. To support multiplayer and skirmishes, "Warcraft: Orcs & Humans" used a random map generator, a feature previously seen in the turn-based strategy game "Civilization". In 1995 Westwood's RTS "Command & Conquer" series adopted the use of non-standard mission types and skirmishes, and Microsoft's "Age of Empires" included these features and a random map generator in 1997.
Nothing more was heard about the game until June 2008, when John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts, commented at an investors meeting, "you can play ["Godfather II"] both at the street level, much like a "GTA"-style game, but you can also play it top-down, almost like you're in an RTS, controlling the strategy of the boroughs so you can see what's going on." On August 7, "Xbox World 360" ran a story featuring information on the as yet still officially unannounced title. According to the article, the game would be """ meets "Total War"", and would feature an open world environment combined with RPG and RTS elements. The article revealed the game would take place in New York City, Miami and Havana, and would once again feature extortion of business owners as a central gameplay element. It also revealed information about the crew mechanic, character classes, crime ring bonuses, and the basics of the favor system. In a press release on August 8, EA officially announced the game, which would be released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and was slated for a February 2009 release. In the press release, EA stated
In 2014, 343 Industries began developing "Halo Wars 2" after approaching UK-based developer Creative Assembly. Creative Assembly was chosen because of their reputation in developing real-time strategy games such as "Total War". The studio had considered creating an RTS for console and PC for a long time, so the prospect of working on "Halo Wars 2" was viewed as a perfect opportunity. The "Halo Wars 2" development team within Creative Assembly was composed of people who worked on "" (2014), the "Total War" series, and new employees hired for the project. While Creative Assembly is a PC-centric developer, staff from the "Alien: Isolation" team were able to provide experience in producing games for consoles. On January 18, 2017, the development team announced that the game had "gone gold".
The gameplay is primarily focused on battlefield tactics, thus not featuring RTS gameplay aspects like base-building, resource harvesting or in-battle unit production. Instead, the gameplay is intended to be focused on high fantasy/late medieval battles. Its gameplay is superficially similar to its predecessors and the "Total War" games; however, the basic game play model is significantly more simplified, and battles are more similar to real-time strategy games like "Warcraft III" than other real-time tactics titles.
Although "Warcraft: Orcs & Humans" was not the first RTS title to offer multiplayer games, Blizzard's game persuaded a wider audience that
multiplayer facilities were essential for future RTS titles. The game introduced innovations in mission design and gameplay elements, which were adopted by other RTS developers.
Activision, the game's publisher, produced a combination of "Medieval: Total War" and "Medieval: Total War: Viking Invasion", called the "Medieval: Total War Battle Collection", released on 7 January 2004. "Medieval: Total War Battle Collection" contained both games, patched to the latest version, and their manuals. On 30 June 2006, Sega, the company that took over the publishing of the series, released a collector's edition version of the "Total War" series, called "Total War: Eras". The edition included patched versions of "Shogun: Total War", "Medieval: Total War" and "", together with their expansion packs, a documentary detailing the creation of the game series, and "Total War" memorabilia.
Total War: Warhammer is a turn-based strategy and real-time tactics video game developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega for Microsoft Windows via the Steam gaming platform. The game was brought to macOS and Linux by Feral Interactive. The game features the gameplay of the "Total War" series with factions of Games Workshop's "Warhammer Fantasy" series; it is the first "Total War" game not to portray a historical setting. It is the 10th title in the "Total War" series and the first title to be released in the "Total War: Warhammer" trilogy.
Phantagram is rumored to be making "Total Annihilation 2", the sequel to Cavedog's 1997 RTS, "Total Annihilation". It is speculated by some that the game will never be released, or was never in production, as many game websites have confirmed its release year, but they say anything from early 2004 to late 2011.
Overall, the opinions of reviewers seem to have been summed up by Pro-G: "One day someone is going to combine the RTS with another genre and pull it off really well; "Rise & Fall" isn't that game. The basic RTS elements are sound, but the hero mode verges on awful, boat control is a nightmare, and the campaigns are dull... There are so many other games out there that offer a better all-round RTS experience, there's really no reason to bother with Midway's effort. Some praise must be given for trying something a little different, but Rise & Fall is another idea that falls a long way short of its potential."
While "Herzog Zwei" is regarded as the first true RTS game, the defining title for the genre was Westwood Studios's "Dune II", which was followed by their seminal "Command & Conquer" games. Cavedog's "Total Annihilation" (1997), Blizzard's "Warcraft" (1994) series, "StarCraft" (1998) series, and Ensemble Studios' "Age of Empires" (1997) series are some of the most popular RTS games. In addition, online games such as NukeZone can be considered belonging in this genre as well.
Lead designer Joe Bostic outlined the gameplay for "Star Wars: Empire at War", stating the developer's priorities were for players to have easy control of ships during space combat because of difficulties with the structure of the space aspect of the game. He said that the scaling of the various units in the game was another difficulty that the developers had to overcome to balance the gameplay. In 2006, Chris Rubyor, a former employee of Westwood Studios, discussed the galactic conquest mode of the game, stating that the initial mode had to be overhauled several times because Petroglyph was unhappy with the original mode. Rubyor said the game's skirmish mode incorporated a variety of new and traditional strategy mechanics found throughout RTS genre. He also said the game's focus was primarily combat and unit tactics, while allowing units and new technologies to be purchased during skirmish combat, a feature that was not put in the main single-player campaign or galactic conquest. The game's musical score was composed by Frank Klepacki. Klepacki said surround sound was an important aspect for the game because he said he believed many past RTS games did not take advantage of the features of surround sound. The game's audio took elements from the "Star Wars" films, as well as adding new elements to add variety to the game. Much of the sound effects were created by Klepacki, including all sounds in the interface and structure.