Part X - What makes strategy games so great?

Power.

Strategy games can give you a bit of a Napoleon complex. In fact, in some games you can actually play as Napoleon. You are in charge. You alone control armies upon armies of soldiers, or ninjas, or zombies, or bugs, or lemmings, or whatever it is you control. And you can order them to live for you, or die for you. Sometimes you mess up too much and have to hit the mushroom cloud button at the bottom of the screen. Oh well.

When your armies succeed, you succeed. Even simple-looking games like Advance Wars (notice I said simple-looking, not actually simple... Advance Wars has been an incredibly deep Game Boy Advance/DS game ever since its first iteration) can give you a great sense of accomplishment when everyone does exactly what you tell them to do and you quash a rebellion of uprisers, or overthrow an oppressive tyrant, or finally make it to the moon.

One neat thing about strategy games is how you need a PC to play almost all of the relevant classics. Point-and-click is still the way to go for strategy, although the overwhelming success of Halo Wars and the intuitiveness of Civilization Revolution may finally signal an emergence of strategic love for consoles. Still, people are still playing Warcraft III and Starcraft to this day. We'll see if Halo Wars (or even Xbox Live on 360) last that long, or they will simply be replaced by something newer, shinier, and better. Until then, bring on the orcs! And not the WoW ones... the original gangsta versions in their full isometricly viewed glory. Mmm.... mining is fun.