In keeping with the theme of recommending some decent and fun games to my audience, this week I've decided to highlight some of my favorite strategy titles for your consideration:
1. XCOM: Enemy Unknown
The popular XCOM franchise has been around for a while but its landmark entry in recent years has been Enemy Unknown. The game allows you to field customizable soldiers with various abilities and equipment to defend Earth against an alien invasion.The game allows you to command your squad from a birds-eye-view as well as manage your base through an ant farm style HUD. It would say it's definitely worth getting the Enemy Within expansion as it'll allow you to augment your troops mechanically and genetically with the new Meld resource. [Pro-tip: Get in on Steam over console so you can take advantage of not only the sales but the workshop for some fun mods].
2. Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath
Unlike the previous C&C titles, Kane's Wrath allows you to switch sides and experience a campaign from the perspective of the Brotherhood of Nod. Bringing back the charismatic villain, Kane, and tying up some loose ends in the lore, it's definitely a worthwhile experience. Moreover, Kane's Wrath expands upon skirmish and multiplayer modes by not only adding sub-factions to the roster (i.e. Steel Talons as a more combat oriented sub-faction of GDI or Black Hand as an infantry focused subset of Nod). This game also introduces the epic units of the three main factions!
3. Supreme Commander II
Another oldie (relatively) but a goodie! The main caveat from this game, as opposed to the others, is that it allows you field relatively large armies (hundreds of units) as well as large, experimental units with various abilities and specialties. Through the various upgrade trees, you can customize your armies to fit your playstyle as well as upgrading your main engineer unit from a simple builder to a war machine in its own right. Multiplayer is kind of dead (at least on consoles, I can't speak for PC) but the campaign and the ability to try out endless scenarios in skirmish should be enough to keep you entertained.
4. Tom Clancy's Endwar
Endwar is a fairly straightforward but pretty rewarding, modern RTS game. The factions have a different enough feel that there's a notable change in how to play them and there's a fair degree of customization based on the upgrades and unit combinations you choose to use. Perhaps the most interesting caveat of the game is the ability to issue orders to your units vocally through the headset! I had to stop doing it as my family got sick of hearing me shout "Unit 3 to Zulu!" and it's not anymore expeditious than manual input but it's a fun feature nonetheless.
