Spoiler
Show
Bored out of my mind today, making myself not do any more painting (because if I keep doing for days on end I'll end up going all peculiar); completely stumped as to what to do (it's not like I'm spoilt for choice with the amount of half-played games or untouched games I've got to hand), I decided to have another stab at Earth 2150.
Shoulda stuck with Pokemon...
Even with a walkthrough, on easy, the last mission I did was tiresome. 2150 is great (well, okay, just the positive side of moderate) when the enemy attriciates itself to death on your base (because it has limited resources), but when the AI just sits back in it's base and waits for you to attack it, in particular this mission... Not only is kinda boring (since you spend half your time waiting for your air units to reload), but damn-near impossible without spending several hours whittling the enemy away until they finally run out of resources (and of course, the whole game is on a global timer, so you don't have that luxury anyway). It also has a habit of gotchaing you, and worse, unless you're very deliberate with the quick-save, not always saving. (And the pathfinding at attack routines are pretty dreadful to boot - and the unit selection controls are pretty much the worst I've seen on an RTS. Heck, all the hotkeys are kinda weird and out there, for that matter...)
After what must have been a few hours of faffing around, I finally gave up, threw my hands in the air and said "bugger this, this isn't enjoyable at all, I'm gonna use the cheat code, so at least maybe I can get on to some other mission."
So I did. And it still took about five reloads to actually finish, with it being extra annoying. And then I came to the next mission - for which the only walkthrough on the whole internet stops at - (out of the three sides, the ED, which is the "first" side, this walkthrough only gets about half-way through) and tried to figure out how to even start. Wisely, I used the reveal map cheat, and I say wisely, because you could have spent long hours trying to search the map otherwise, looking for your harvastable resources... Of which there appear to be none, except that held by enemy forces. Which means the solution is probably a rush... And on top of that, the largest resources field (as the mission is get [x] resources looks like it might not actually be accessible without new units, which I would have to research from this mission and I may not be able to build anyway (because I'm well over the paltry unit cap with my high-level veteran units).
I've just sort of given up at this point... It's more tedium that it's worth. The individual bits are a pain, but when the add up together, it's just... a vertibale conacopia of meh. (It's not even at if the game is really bad, so much, just, at this point... dull.) It's a game that's okay for turtling (but not as good as even C&C, depressingly) but really not good for when the computer turtles... Which is a shame, since the concept was actually quite good. It's not the worst RTS I've ever played (that special honour is reserved for Star Trek New Worlds and Perimeter), but it's definately not one of the best I've played.
Trouble is, pretty much every game I'm part way through at the moment is stuck in a bit that either requires grinding or is a more tedious bit, even in my RPGs that I'm part way through, and I just can't seem to work up any ethusiasm for the like, two, that aren't at the moment.