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.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
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.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
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.
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
That's the problem, Blayne, C&C is *not* Company of Heroes. If I wanted to play that, I would have gotten it.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:on its own is still an alright rts still pioneering dual displays, strategic zoom...
Didn't SupCom 1 "pioneer" both of these?
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
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.
Posted by Tarrsk (Member # 332) on :
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.
Posted by Raventhief (Member # 9002) on :
On a tangentially related note, has anyone played Red Alert 3? Worth it?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
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.
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
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.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Red Alert 3 had George Takei and Tim Curry Hell YES!!!
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
That would be the campy.
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
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.
Posted by Badenov (Member # 12075) on :
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 Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
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.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
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.)
Posted by Badenov (Member # 12075) on :
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*.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
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.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)