FacebookTwitter
Hatrack River Forum   
my profile login | search | faq | forum home

  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » Do not, do *not* buy Command & Conquer 4

   
Author Topic: Do not, do *not* buy Command & Conquer 4
Boris
Member
Member # 6935

 - posted      Profile for Boris   Email Boris         Edit/Delete Post 
I had to Delurk again to vent my frustration at the latest iteration of this venerable series. Electronic Arts has finally succeeded in utterly destroying Command & Conquer.

For those who haven't played any of the C&C games, let's face it you probably won't play this one anyway, but there is a *feel* to C&C. It's about base building, resource management, and either fast rushes or drawn out battles of attrition, chipping away at the other guys overly defended base. C&C 4 is none of this. They have stripped away the resource management and dumbed it down to "You can have this many units. If one dies, you can immediately build the next". They have removed base building and dumbed it down to "You have three construction buildings, and can use one at a time. One of these buildings builds defense buildings. You cannot build any other buildings."

EA said this was the end of the Tiberium story line for the series. It has to be, because they have so thoroughly destroyed the gaming experience that was Command & Conquer and replaced it with something designed specifically for ADD addled FPS gamers where all you have to do is point and click. I feel like I have wasted 50 dollars on a game.

And if you're curious about what happens in the story, seriously, wait a week and read the spoilers. The game almost isn't worth playing to find out and it certainly isn't worth the cost of admission.

Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Mucus
Member
Member # 9735

 - posted      Profile for Mucus           Edit/Delete Post 
Sounds like when Simcity Societies crashed hard after SimCity4. Although not quite as bad since SImCity4 was pretty fun (if slow) but C&C has been bad for very long (since Tiberium Sun maybe).

Too bad, I always had a soft-spot for the old Red Alert and original C&C game.

Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Blayne Bradley
unregistered


 - posted            Edit/Delete Post 
They made it like Company of Heroes, so if you liked Company of Heroes you will probably be fine with C&C4.

On that note, SupCom 2 is NOT like SupCom 1 or Total Anniliation as they radically changed many parts of its core gameplay BUT on its own is still an alright rts still pioneering dual displays, strategic zoom, ferrying, unlimited map resources etc.

Unfortunately now its more arcade RTS like, ie you have to HAVE the amount of mass and energy stockpiled to build something rather then simply building something and the time to build it being tied to the amount of mass you had.

IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Boris
Member
Member # 6935

 - posted      Profile for Boris   Email Boris         Edit/Delete Post 
That's the problem, Blayne, C&C is *not* Company of Heroes. If I wanted to play that, I would have gotten it.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
TomDavidson
Member
Member # 124

 - posted      Profile for TomDavidson   Email TomDavidson         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
on its own is still an alright rts still pioneering dual displays, strategic zoom...
Didn't SupCom 1 "pioneer" both of these?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Tstorm
Member
Member # 1871

 - posted      Profile for Tstorm   Email Tstorm         Edit/Delete Post 
I wasn't planning on buying C&C4 after reading previews earlier this year. Or was it late last year?

The constant internet connection requirement killed it for me, without a doubt. I'm not going to pirate the game, but I'm not going to jump through all their hoops just to play it.

The changes to building units and resource management are just icing on the cake for not buying this game. You're right, EA has finally succeeded in doing what they set out to do...destroy C&C.

Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Tarrsk
Member
Member # 332

 - posted      Profile for Tarrsk           Edit/Delete Post 
You can generally take it as a given that whenever a game franchise gets taken over by people other than the original developers, it will suffer for it. This goes double if the new team comes from EA. At the very, very least, the new developers won't grok the "feel" of the original (both in terms of story and gameplay) - more often, you'll get the C&C4 situation, wherein the new developers just take a popular recently-released game and graft its game design onto the existing franchise's universe.

IOW, there's a reason I haven't bothered to play a Command & Conquer game since Tiberian Sun.

Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Raventhief
Member
Member # 9002

 - posted      Profile for Raventhief   Email Raventhief         Edit/Delete Post 
On a tangentially related note, has anyone played Red Alert 3? Worth it?
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Mucus
Member
Member # 9735

 - posted      Profile for Mucus           Edit/Delete Post 
Red Alert 3. Dumb campy fun. Clunky GUI.
No real innovation. What you would expect really.

Actually come to think of it, in many ways what was fun about the original C&C has been supplanted in many ways. For me, the gameplay focused on three areas, base building, epic battles, and tactical battles.

Arguably, each of these have natural successors, tower defence games like Defence Grid for base building, the Total War games for epic battles, and the aforementioned Company of Heroes games for tactical battles.

So if I really think about it, I don't really miss C&C and I suspect I will get my old school RTS fix with Starcraft 2.

The only old-school RTS that I wish for a remake is maybe Homeworld with its relaxing and simply gorgeous (at-the-time) space battles.

Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Tstorm
Member
Member # 1871

 - posted      Profile for Tstorm   Email Tstorm         Edit/Delete Post 
I bought and played it, mostly single-player skirmishes.

Meh. The double-functionality of each unit is cool, or ADD-inducing, depending. The graphics are great, the unit animations cheesy, so typical Red Alert fare. I have no idea how good it is from a multiplayer point of view.

Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Blayne Bradley
unregistered


 - posted            Edit/Delete Post 
Red Alert 3 had George Takei and Tim Curry Hell YES!!!
IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Mucus
Member
Member # 9735

 - posted      Profile for Mucus           Edit/Delete Post 
That would be the campy.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Tstorm
Member
Member # 1871

 - posted      Profile for Tstorm   Email Tstorm         Edit/Delete Post 
It's campy as heck, it's Red Alert 3, after all. I guess that's part of what makes (made?) it fun.

I know it's a long shot, but I hope that EA doesn't event attempt to make RA4.

Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Badenov
Member
Member # 12075

 - posted      Profile for Badenov           Edit/Delete Post 
The Red Alert series has definitely been more consistent than the Tiberium series. C&C3 wasn't bad, and Kane's Wrath was supposedly fairly good (haven't bothered to get it yet, though I might now). Apparently most of the original C&C team started up Petroglyph, so I should probably take a closer look at their stuff [Big Grin]
Posts: 38 | Registered: May 2009  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Alcon
Member
Member # 6645

 - posted      Profile for Alcon   Email Alcon         Edit/Delete Post 
Petroglyph are the ones who did Star Wars: Empire at War and Star Wars EAW: Forces of Corruption. Frankly, they both fell flat for me. They felt like they were attempting to update Star Wars Rebellion and add a new flair to it. But they just got bored at the most basic recreation of something vaguely similar and called it quits. The number of units is limited, the combat engine is cool the game play on the galactic level SUCKS. The number of buildings is lame. The whole thing just... right track, terrible implementation.

I found a couple of mods that brought it as far as they towards actually being Rebellion 2 given the limitations of the engine. But they still kinda sucked.

Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Sterling
Member
Member # 8096

 - posted      Profile for Sterling   Email Sterling         Edit/Delete Post 
C&C 3 began to annoy me with its insistence on speed, speed, speed. My way of playing C&C has always been more invested in "turtling up" and probing my enemies' defenses before making a decisive surgical strike; by C&C 3, it became nearly impossible to create a cost-effective defense with the structures offered that would stand up to a fairly unorganized mass of tanks.

Even if C&C 4 hadn't done away with the resource gathering and base building mechanic that's been the C&C hallmark for years, it would still be raising my eyebrow with its insistence on logging into the servers to play a retail-purchased game in single player mode.

I understand that earlier C&Cs were starting to catch some critical flak for not innovating on genre conventions. I also understand that some people think that requiring server connections is a good way to prevent piracy (I happen to think those people are wrong, but that's another story.) But between addressing the two, EA seems to have hit the sweet spot where there is no way in hell I'm going to pick up the game at any price.

...Although in fairness, I have Mass Effect 2, GTA 4, and Batman: Arkham Asylum awaiting my attention on the bookshelf while I struggle on a project, so I really shouldn't buy any more games right now anyway. (And I should get off of Hatrack, speaking of such things. Argh.)

Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Badenov
Member
Member # 12075

 - posted      Profile for Badenov           Edit/Delete Post 
I've been playing it more, and it just feels like there's only half a game there. It's like EA invested all the time they had into building the multiplayer environment and forgot to make an actual *game*.
Posts: 38 | Registered: May 2009  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Samprimary
Member
Member # 8561

 - posted      Profile for Samprimary   Email Samprimary         Edit/Delete Post 
Metacritic.

Go to it.

Learn to love it.

Don't buy any game that dips into the yellow. Games journalism is so blatantly plagued by grade inflation, overhype, and superficial, cursory vetting and examination that even average games are well in the green. A yellow or red score is nearly inexcusable.

Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
   

   Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:


Contact Us | Hatrack River Home Page

Copyright © 2008 Hatrack River Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classic™ 6.7.2