We’ve all played Real Time Strategy games, but which ones are the best? Some are fast paced, some challenging to our intelligence and some had the best multiplayer.

Here is a selection of the RTS games that we couldn’t get enough of and challenged our minds:

5. Company of Heroes: Set in World War II this game is fast paced and has lots of units to choose from. You can only play the allies in the campaign, I think they should let you play both sides. In multiplayer you have to take strategic points from your enemy to win the game. I think they should have gotten rid of that and just have the players destroy buildings and units as the game’s objective, that way the matches last longer than 10-15 min.

4. Command and Conquer: There have been many great games in this series, from the first game to Red Alert. Well advanced for its time, you could attack with Orcas (Helicopter) and Tanks with decent graphics. C&C had a smooth interface and you could build a giant army in a fast pace. Had a good storyline too which was impressive. A major breakthrough for the RTS industry and led to many contemporary military games today.

3. Age of Empires: One of the first games to let you choose between dozens of cultures. It also had time periods such as stone age and iron age. They have made lots of games since the original, and all of them have been commercial successes. The only ones that got off track were the Mythology games with Gods and “God Powers” and even those were fun for a few weeks.

2. StarCraft: Will always be a classic, it’s still fun to play over twelve years later! Obviously Blizzard wanted to go futuristic after Warcraft. This game has some of the fastest RTS play, but it also has great units, memorable races like Zerg and Protoss and an impeccable storyline as well. Involves a lot of strategic thinking and you can mix up your strategies in a million possible combinations.

1. WarCraft: The game that defined RTS games as we know them today. I think we can all remember being hooked on this game and playing online against our friends using “modems” ha modems! Now everyone is hooked on World of Warcraft and strategy has gone out the window. How I wish strategy would come back to the forefront of gaming. Instead we’re stuck leveling and grinding away and not even able to kill our friends in-game. Where’s the fun in that?