Over the past few months my aversion to console gaming has slowly melted away. I’ve gone from a staunch PC gaming fanboy to a more liberal minded “every platform gamer.” Ok, maybe that’s not totally true, I still don’t like the Wii, but I digress. Really, what has happened is that I can see the obvious perks that the 360, PS3 and PC offer. All of them have games I want. However none but the PC have ANY RTS titles I want to play. When it comes to playing an RTS title on a console (with a gamepad) I’d seriously rather have someone put a cigarette out on my arm.

Find out which two RTS titles are headed to the 360 this month after the jump!

Before anyone starts crying foul, I realize a major part of my dislike for console RTS titles is the lack of a keyboard and mouse. Yes I realize that console RTS games have come a long way and some even feature a few great innovations to allow gamers to cycle through (and control) commands, formations and units. I may not be a fan of C&C 3 but that game was “decent” on the 360. Even so, it was a total joke when compared to the PC version.

This month we have two RTS titles headed for the 360.

The first is, you guessed it, C&C 3: Kane’s Wrath. Despite the fact that the original C&C 3 for the 360 got pretty high marks from most reviewers, I can’t remember EVER seeing or even hearing about someone playing it. Yeah I’m sure some of you have, and my heart goes out to you all. I’ve no doubt you enjoyed using your gamepad to lead individual units around the screen, because that works oh so well (slow and steady wins the race). Well now you can play the expansion, which was mediocre at best on PC anyway, on your 360. Kane’s Wrath will be a stand alone expansion, feature a revamped UI, and allow up to four players (4 players?! WOW!) to battle it out over XBL on more than 50 multi-player maps. Oh and an exclusive 360 mode called Kane’s Challenge, which offers 10 skirmish battles for each of the three factions in the game. Still not hyped? If you pre-order Kane’s Wrath for the 360 through Gamestop you’ll get a talking Kane Bobblehead doll. Bam, I’m sold!

Next up we have Supreme Commander.

Now, I already tore this 360 port up back in march when the initial details came out. C&C 3 is one thing, that game can only really lay claim to the first two letters in RTS anyway, but Supreme Commander?! Is this some sort of sick joke? Your telling me one of the most massive, detailed, control intensive and difficult (especially online) RTS games in recent memory is coming to the 360?! Controlled by a freakin gamepad? I don’t give a damn how well the que system is done, or how easy it is to group units, Supreme Commander requires a lot of specific control. This isn’t C&Spam, it’s Supreme, I’m gonna place individual turrets at key locations on the fly, guide individual Experimentals and key units, build a complicated base, Commander people! All those things are semi doable on the 360…if you enjoy taking ten times as long as you would on the PC. I’m sorry but relying on templates to build my base doesn’t sound very strategic. Even if your playing on the same map over and over, your base building needs change dramatically all the time, so unless you spend a major amount of time creating a template for every possible scenario that may occur, you’ll still end up fighting with one hand tied behind your back.

My god. Consoles are big, I get it. What I don’t get is why we still have no straight up keyboard/mouse option for the 360. Without it your playing the short bus version of two RTS heavyweights.

Both games come out on the 23rd of this month for the 360. If you like playing dumbed down versions of uber popular RTS games, then your in for a real treat. If however you actually like this thing called “strategy”, do yourself a favor a show your PC some love.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go bandage this burn on my arm.

Source: Gamespot & GameSpot