Say you have an itch to scratch; the type of itch where it can be soothed by playing as a demigod or general of sorts, lording over your army of peons and toy soldiers pillaging and annihilating other peons and toy soldiers of varying colors, shapes, and sizes. Seems like you have the real-time strategy itch, my friend. The question is, which one should you make it a priority to play first this year?

Luckily, I’m here to help. I’ll be comparing four current RTSs that are out this year and see which one should be on your priority list. They are, in no particular order:

Supreme Commander 2 (PC, Xbox 360)

Command & Conquer 4 (PC)

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II- Chaos Rising (PC)

Starcraft II Multi-Player Beta (PC)

This shootout will judge the game on a few categories: Scale & Army (RTSs are all about the armies), Accessibility (can a n00b play it?), System (gameplay, mechanics, the works), and Multi-player & Online (is it a good enough game to wage war against people online?). I’ll be using a simple grading system: A is very good, D is very bad.

Scale & Army

Here, we talk about the sense of scale you have as a disembodied head giving out commands ala top-down view and the little minions you control. Which game makes battles look like something out of Band of Brothers (only with robots, aliens, and space marines)?

Supreme Commander 2: Large and in charge – that’s all I can say about the game’s graphics. While scaled-down in terms of technical prowess, the game’s aesthetics are a sight to behold. Just zooming out at a proper distance and you can see the King Kriptors and slew of jet fighters, bombers and gunships swarming around the battlefield, causing all sorts of explosions and mess in their wake. Since each map in the game are large enough to house four players, don’t expect to be rushed too easily by two or four units early on in the game.

Supreme Commander 2 pretty much has it all: tiny air and land units coming in huge formations, slightly medium-sized transports and artillery, and huge-as-heck experimental units tailored after 60s Japanese kaiju movies and Ray Harryhausen flicks after they’ve been waxed with futuristic shoeshine. (A)

Command & Conquer 4: There’s something a little murky and generic about C&C4’s look. I was hoping for a little more of Red Alert 3’s absurdity with its art style, units, and setting (man-cannon, bears, and dolphins oh my), but nothing about C&C4 inspires. Tanks with huge barrels and a shiny coat of paint, with scorpion claws attached to it? Really?

To be fair, it doesn’t insult either; the single-player campaigns that take place in populated areas are nice to trek around in (and blow up). All in all, it’s decent to look at. Nothing too outstandingly horrid nor impressive. A shame, given its futuristic setting and lineage. Also, where the hell are the Scrin? (C)

Dawn of War II – Chaos Rising: Compared to the three other games on this shootout, Chaos Rising’s scale feels small. They look detailed and manageable, and there’s that sense of alienation when sending your space marines out to kill off hordes of Orks with their machines. But at the end of the day, you’re playing with just a squad of units. Beautifully-crafted and rough-tech-looking squad of units fighting against other squads of units.

Granted, there are big units you have to take down with your squad in well-paced multi-part battles, so that part at least feels grandeur on a modest size. While it presents itself on a smaller scale when compared to the other three games, it stands out with its gritty steampunk-slash-rough-tech dressings and a sense of personal attachment to whichever number of grunts you’re controlling. (B)

Starcraft II Multi-Player Beta: You will believe that a horde of purple aliens accompanied by an even bigger purple alien can make battles seem epic. Or a swarm of Protoss Carriers under the watchful eye of a giant Mothership ending the game in a conflagration of glory.

That is, if you can get that far with the beta. Online matches won’t last more than 10 minutes (unless you yourself are at a pro level) and the majority of swarms that will kick your teeth in will comprise of tier 1 units. Unless you’re really, really good, you watch Starcraft 2 pro matches on YouTube, or if you just play against the laughable A.I, don’t expect to see grandeur-level battles of pyrotechnic glory of your own doing. (B)

Verdict: Supreme Commander 2 takes home the gold for this one.

Accessibility

An RTS won’t mean jack if you put in too many mechanics and resource-management minigames to juggle. Which game is the easiest to jump into without any prior knowledge to its prequels?

Supreme Commander 2: The game follows the standard resource-gathering and unit-building. While the research tree system takes some time getting used to and can overwhelm people from the get-go (people will wonder why their tier 1 tanks are getting creamed by other people’s tier 1 tanks), the single-player campaign solves all of your questions as it acts as an extended tutorial for all of the game’s three races.

Someone new to the series will do something silly like sending their Armored Command Unit into the field straight away (a big no-no, since it builds structures for unit-churning and resource-gathering), ergo playing the campaign is mandatory. (B)

Command & Conquer 4: This game decides to turn its tradition upside its head. Since base-building is dead, you now have a Crawler unit which spawns out units at a fast rate. Veterans might scoff at this, but anyone who really don’t like worrying about economical management can jump into this one straight ahead.

The problem lies in the vague unit description and functions. Unless you like trial-and-error experimentation, you won’t know which unit does what as your ranking progresses and you get access to said high-level units. Information is scattered all around during the game and even on the front end. You won’t know what’s the difference between the support class’ Sheppard tank and an offense class’ Hunter tank unless you’ve experimented with them heavily with a willing online participant. That’s a lot of extra effort that the developers should have accounted for.

Still, the system is easy to pick up at face value, provided you don’t mind getting your units killed because you don’t know what to do with some of them. (B)

Dawn of War II – Chaos Rising: You have five main squad members to worry about. Much like Dawn of War II, you capture Victory Points to earn points for winning, secure Beacons and Strategic Assets to automatically get reinforcements. You lose if your whole squad dies. The only resources to worry about are the beacons, the energy and hit points of your main squad members (for their special powers) and supply crates. That’s it.

The game seems to have a bit of role-playing stats-allocating mechanics, but that’s what makes DoW II-CR accessible and enticing for newbies. (A)

Starcraft II Multi-Player Beta: You will need first-hand knowledge of how Starcraft 1 works, which shouldn’t be a problem if you’ve at least touched an RTS since 1999. A number of us do, and can get into playing the game straight away since Starcraft II follows the good-old micromanagement-intensive from the good old days of the genre.

A tutorial and race breakdown would have help, but keep in mind that this is a multi-player beta catered to those who have at least played the first game and still care about the old ways of how an RTS works. There’s also that one little problem where you have to be invited to be in the current beta, but if you look hard enough, you can get around that. Still, you can’t get around the fact that Blizzard will and always cater to the hardcore among us.  (C)

Verdict: Dawn of War II- Chaos Rising wins this round.