I've had a few rather slow weeks lately - and what better way is there to deal with that than to replay the entirety of my old C&C collection? TL being a Starcraft forum, I'm sure that at least a few of you must be fans of this old franchise. And seeing how much my view of the games has changed since I played them ages ago (in a time when I was a weaker RTS player) I thought, why not revisit my view of each game?
Command & Conquer (Tiberian Dawn) The first game of the series, and the one that established a few key features that survived into the later games. Tiberium, GDI and the Brotherhood of Nod, and Kane were the only plot elements of particular worth here; the characters generally turned out to be quite throwaway. In terms of units, a few key classics were created: stealth tanks, mammoth tanks, ion cannon, Temple of Nod, engineers, and in general just the C&C combat interface. I have to say that, seeing what ca,e after, this game was just too clunky to be enjoyable. It doesn't age well in light of its successors, but it does deserve praise as a pioneer.
The game also comes with extra "scenario" missions in the expansion "The Covert Operations." These are basically all very simplistic and easily won scenarios. The one that most caught my attention was one where you're in a huge Nod base, but without money or any prospect of getting more. I remember how daunting the mission looked when I was playing it in my youth, but it just turned out to be a simple "defend the first massive assault and roll over the opponent" mission. And the other missions are even more simplistic.
Red Alert For a 1996 game, a masterpiece of refinement. Both the Allied and Soviet campaigns told a compelling story of a world in which Hitler was killed off early and Stalin made a grab for Europe, as a shadow entity (Kane) plotted the C&C storyline. It's a very unusual storyline for an American game, with a remarkable focus on Europe and European nations. The units and mechanics are much better thought out than in its predecessor - though Tesla Coils behind walls are just OP, lol. Overall, a game that has aged in a manner similar to BW - certainly feels clunky at times, but has lots of replay value and is alright once you get used to it. Introduced far too many new and interesting units and story elements to list. Probably my favorite in the series, tied with RA2 (albeit for different reasons).
The "bonus missions" expansions (Aftermath and Counterstrike) are a great improvement on Covert Operations. The missions actually turn out to be challenging, introducing some impressive new units like the Tesla Tank, MAD Tank (<3), and the Nuke MiG. Not to mention the bizarre but amusing secret campaign of the ant missions. Overall this game was like the game that C&C hoped to be, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Tiberian Sun A hard game to judge. On the one hand, it did flesh out the two factions, GDI and Nod, in a way that the original didn't, and it had an interesting and compelling storyline. On the other hand, the gritty and dark feel of the game saps a lot from replay value. It was released slightly later than Starcraft, which didn't have this problem. Overall I have to say it's a "campaign game" more than a multiplayer game.
The Firestorm expansion... meh. It was ok, just ok. Don't have much more to say about it.
Red Alert 2 On the one hand, it's a notable stylistic departure from Red Alert in both storyline (a pivot towards the silly) and gameplay. On the other hand, it's a great game in its own right. The campaign is a pretty average story, but the missions are all a lot of fun. In a way I wanted a real sequel to Red Alert in its old style - but I'm fully happy with what Red Alert 2 is, so it's alright.
The Yuri's Revenge expansion adds an odd storyline of Yuri (Soviet second-in-command) using his psychic power to try to take over the world. Kind of wacky, and I'm not really into that, but it was certainly a good play-through. Only problem is that the Yuri faction is OP as hell, lol. I enjoyed playing YR multiplayer for fun but it's no competitive RTS.
Renegade An excerpt out of Westwood's lost years, in which it wanted to expand the C&C franchise into different genres - FPS, MMO, etc. It didn't impress me. But I did play enough to get a feel for it. Meh.
Generals In some sense, a bit of a disgrace of a game - clearly derivative, with a mediocre storyline, and lacking all the merits of the other games in the franchise. And yet it had a decent multiplayer following. Personally, it wasn't my cup of tea.
Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath The third Tiberian game. It was the first in a long time (a decade or so?) and it was quite controversial. Personally, I really liked it - it felt like a modernization of the C&C formula. And the campaign was solid.
Well at the very least, that would be my full thoughts as of my first few playthroughs. But at some point, I stumbled upon an interesting mod for C&C3: Tiberium Essence. The mod did a lot of things, but what stuck out most to me is how it reimagined each unit in the new game in the style of Tiberian Sun and the way the factions worked in that game. GDI tanks were replaced with Titans, Mammoth Tanks, and the Mammoth Mk II. Nod got a lot of their old tech, and a few new units that would belong in what is essentially a "terrorist superpower" faction. And I have to say, it felt like so much better of a game for those additions.
So I suppose I have to say: good game, but it had the potential to be a true revival for C&C rather than just an entry in the series.
Red Alert 3 Changed a lot of mechanics, but ended up being gimmicky in both story and gameplay. I beat the Soviet campaign then just lost interest. I know it had its fanbase though.
Tiberian Twilight I honestly forgot this game was coming out - until I saw it in the store and thought about buying it. There was one line on the box - "persistent internet connection required for play" - that struck me the wrong way, so I hesitated. Came home, looked it up - and found out it was a disgrace of a game that killed the series.
Conclusion In parallel to the Starcraft franchise we all know and love, was another franchise core to the RTS genre that focused more on conventional/modern warfare than on a fantastical alternate world. And though none of the games ultimately gained the multiplayer following that Brood War or SC2 had (though some certainly had the potential), the C&C franchise still sets the standard for what I've come to expect from the single player of an RTS. I started at C&C before coming to Starcraft, and I have to say it's still a great series to revisit. If Starcraft is the best multiplayer RTS, then I would say that C&C is the best single-player.
Anyone who hasn't played them before, I recommend you take a look. They all sell pretty cheaply these days since the games are quite old.
Haha, good old gimmicky and wacky RA3. Even though it wasn't for me I have to admit it does have some sort of wacky charm to it. They went a bit too far with the skimpy clothing though.
But this is what I really enjoyed about the series.
Brett Sperry correctly predicted the US government would use "terrorism" as the new "boogey-man" to replace the Soviet Union after it collapsed in 1989.
Playing C&C on a friends computer when I was 9-10 years old was a major formative experience for me. From that point on I was a computer nerd (back when such a label was usually derogatory). By the time I convinced my parents to buy a computer Red Alert was out and I played that game to death. Later I moved on to Total Annihilation and that became my favourite for years. I bought the whole C&C series in a bundle for like $5 a months ago, I think I'll load up Counterstrike soon, which I never got to play at the time.
I also agree that when Red Alert was trying to be more series was more enjoyable than when they were trying to be silly.
I think the C&C series, the Total Annihilation series (TA, TA:Kingdoms, Sup Com, Sup Com 2 and Planetary Annihilation) and the 'Craft series (WarCraft 1-3 and StarCraft 1 & 2) are the triple cores of the RTS genre, back when it was thee premiere genre in PC gaming.
Edit: As TaShadan pointed out I'll the Age of series (Age of Empires 1-3, Age of Mythology) also should be on this list.
Overall for me RA2 was the best for it's cinematics + gameplay / unit diversity / ideas. Personally I liked the "dark" theme of the tiberian series and Tiberian Sun had even some nice cinematics though the gameplay was just too slow.
When comparing RA1 and C&C1 I would pick C&C1 as the better because the factions where more diverse. Where GDI had the rough power, NOD had more of the tricky units that matched their theme pretty well. In RA1 the Soviets had all the fun... unless it was a water map where you could do some cruiser fun, but the land/air units of Allies where plain boring and weak.
On February 18 2017 16:31 Korakys wrote: Playing C&C on a friends computer when I was 9-10 years old was a major formative experience for me. From that point on I was a computer nerd (back when such a label was usually derogatory). By the time I convinced my parents to buy a computer Red Alert was out and I played that game to death. Later I moved on to Total Annihilation and that became my favourite for years. I bought the whole C&C series in a bundle for like $5 a months ago, I think I'll load up Counterstrike soon, which I never got to play at the time.
I also agree that when Red Alert was trying to be more series was more enjoyable than when they were trying to be silly.
I think the C&C series, the Total Annihilation series (TA, TA:Kingdoms, Sup Com, Sup Com 2 and Planetary Annihilation) and the 'Craft series (WarCraft 1-3 and StarCraft 1 & 2) are the triple cores of the RTS genre, back when it was thee premiere genre in PC gaming.
I think you are missing the Age of series. Although i never enjoyed age in singleplayer.
The first night I ever stayed awake all night was with C&C1. My dad just let me stay up. I was 8. We sat next to each other and played through the campaigns. There was a Nod mission where the easiest way to win, was to crawl with your base over the whole map, in order to build turrets to counter the gdi turrets. In one of the last gdi missions (there was more than one last gdi mission(you could choose)), if you took too long, the game just bugs. The Nod would fly in soo many troops with their airfield that the game did not know where to put them anymore and things got interresting. :D You could also build antiair to shoot down the planes that brought in new vehicles, defacto disabling a Nod factory.
Tiberian Sun is my personal favourite. I was sad when they removed the terrain deformations in ra2. In Tiberian Sun, you could lock up your base against 7 hard ai with Nod artillery and go to sleep, in order so see how high the unit kill counter can count. The next morning you always find your base on top of a hill, since the artillery shots just carve out a whole valley around it. Replay value was through the roof (what are you talking about LegalLord???), with the random map generator for skirmishes, something I've only seen Aoe do well beforehand.
RA3 still looks prettier than Sc2 today, it is a shame that the formation tool (hold and draw left and right klick to order units to move to a place and into a formation) spreads the units too wide to be useful.
By 1996, Westwood Studios had approximately 1.5 terabytes of magnetic storage and a rendering farm composed of 50 Pentium 90 computers with 128 cumulative megabytes of RAM, capable of rendering 3000-4000 frames per night, at its disposal.
cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Westwood_Studios
Also, I used to think about what I would like to add to Tiberian Sun gameplay wise. It was very saddening to read that the developers had planed most of it themselfes, but EA forced them to a rushed release, almost destroying a masterpiece of videogame history.
I never played Total Annihilation. Maybe I should have but it looks like it isn't my cup of tea. Starcraft I obviously really liked, Warcraft was fun too. AoE I played but didn't enjoy.
The reason I say that Tiberian Sun has mediocre replay value... well I should probably qualify that statement. Maybe it's not entirely true considering I've replayed it a lot. But it always feels like a chore to play. Don't know what it is - clunky mechanics, the unnecessarily dark scenery, less support for tank spamming (for Nod at least), random tiberium vine creep, etc. - but it just didn't do what I wanted it to do. I really liked artillery (but juggernauts were stupid) and banshees. Banshees alone were amazing. The mechanics/scenery just killed what should have been an even better game for me.
Big problem with RA1 to put it simply was just that Tesla Coils were just too OP. The Allies may have had better AA and less power dependency but that doesn't mean shit when Soviets also have all the best aircraft and power dependency never played too much into it. But I really liked how they did the story in RA1 and how they introduced elements like Tanya, Tesla tech, secondary superweapons, spies, etc.
Never felt like any of the early games had any real multiplayer potential. But they're so much fun to play through.
Dunno, I like Renegade. Played the singleplayer as well as the multiplayer (which was great) back in the day. Generals + expansion were rather good as well. Everything after that more or less sucked. I remember watching RA3 matches with commentary every week but that was EA's lackluster attempt to build something off of it.
Speaking of C&C FPS, has anyone here ever played Red Alert: A Path Beyond? It was a mod on Renegade with RA units. Was kind of fun, as a gimmick at least.
I loved Tiberian Sun so much back then when it came out and still do. Everything in that game is a total mystery. The games mechanics alone are still incredible with the destructable terrain and the bullets hitting objects on their trajectory even though the game is in 2D. And then come the natural hazards like exploding blue tiberium, the waste monsters, the harvesters filled with money on a suicide mission, etc. It has a unique feel to it.
On February 19 2017 00:50 LegalLord wrote: I never played Total Annihilation. Maybe I should have but it looks like it isn't my cup of tea. Starcraft I obviously really liked, Warcraft was fun too. AoE I played but didn't enjoy.
The reason I say that Tiberian Sun has mediocre replay value... well I should probably qualify that statement. Maybe it's not entirely true considering I've replayed it a lot. But it always feels like a chore to play. Don't know what it is - clunky mechanics, the unnecessarily dark scenery, less support for tank spamming (for Nod at least), random tiberium vine creep, etc. - but it just didn't do what I wanted it to do. I really liked artillery (but juggernauts were stupid) and banshees. Banshees alone were amazing. The mechanics/scenery just killed what should have been an even better game for me.
Big problem with RA1 to put it simply was just that Tesla Coils were just too OP. The Allies may have had better AA and less power dependency but that doesn't mean shit when Soviets also have all the best aircraft and power dependency never played too much into it. But I really liked how they did the story in RA1 and how they introduced elements like Tanya, Tesla tech, secondary superweapons, spies, etc.
Never felt like any of the early games had any real multiplayer potential. But they're so much fun to play through.
Hmm, I personally disagree heavily with this assessment of the C&C games, In my opinion Generals was the best game of them all, I cannot really think of an RTS game which matches that game in terms of fast paced multiplayer, excellent campaigns from an aesthetic and gameplay level if perhaps not a story perspective. Generals did things that no RTS game I have ever played achieved, a modern based rts where infantry and tanks had specific roles, air units actually had real flight characteristics unlike the hover planes of StarCraft and every other RTS. Basically Generals is such an underrated game, I really do not understand why Generals is so criminally misunderstood, it always seems to be an afterthought when C&C is mentioned.
The other games are good as well, I find the first two to be too dated, I did not really enjoy the RA1 campaign, from what I remember I personally found the missions to be boring(just my opinion). The multiplayer was fine for those games but I never felt they had the same micro potential and diversity of Generals.
RA2 was a fantastic campaign, but again, the multiplayer was a bit lacking in my opinion, the majority of games revolved around tank spam, the way units moved and fought took away from fun micro in my opinion.
C&C 3 and especially KW was another gem in the C&C series, quite solid multiplayer.
I only played Red Alert 2/Yuri's Revenge out of all of these but the soundtrack had a big hand on the type of music I enjoy even to this day. The game itself was pretty fun even if I never had any experience playing it online. If Westwood designed the Red Alert series (and didn't get owned years later) to be competitive in addition to it's imaginative design (I don't want to say gimmicky), I think it would have gained a following not unlike StarCraft, Quake and CS.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/75HGBk9.jpg)
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