See, to me "Real time Strategy" is an oxymoron. Strategy requires time and thought. Manual dexterity is not a measure of one's strategic capacity. Give me turn based any day. I'll play Civ II or Alpha Centauri till the cows come home.
I used to think that. I never understood what was fun about trying to click faster than your opponent. And I still generally lose when I play against the computer, because I simply can't process millions of decisions per second. But from my exerience, Warcraft III is a better-balanced game than Starcraft or the previous Warcraft games, so speed isn't necessarily everything. (The addition of upkeep and the relatively low max food limit make sure of that.)
While playing last night, I found that the main advantage to a command unit like The Claw or the SideWinder SC isn't speed, but rather its ability to harness the power of reflex. I've been gaming with the penis and keyboard, and there are certain things I just do without thinking -- shift-1 to add units to a team, for instance. But there are other things that I have to look at the keyboard for each and every time, because the keys I need are on the right side of the keyboard. (Using F8 to select idle workers, for instance.) With a controller specifically designed for RTS, everything's right there -- you never have to take your eyes of the screen -- and once you learn the keys, reflex takes over. (That's the theory, anyway. I only played one game with it last night, so I'm not exactly an expert yet...)
Anyway, that's my experience. I'll try it out, maybe I'll go back to the keyboard next week, I don't know. And I can't imagine finding a controller like this useful for a shooter. But I
can see using it for a turn-based game, or even a simulation game like Sim City 4. (Mental note: Give that a try.) Anybody else find RTS controllers useful in other genres? Or is the learning curve so steep that nobody gets past the initial breaking-in period?
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