EPTCommand & Conquer - Page 2
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
You're missing Sole Survivor from your list, which was a really fun competitive game. As for soundtracks, Tiberian Dawn arguably has the best video game song ever composed (with apologies to RA's Hell March and Quake II's Descent into Cerberon): And shoutout to the original C&C commando. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
Generals is actually pretty fun to play, multiplayer-wise. But it completely killed off the deep story aspect of C&C/RA that I really loved. I really hated that direction. The single player makes the game for a lot of us. Regardless of what they could have been, I will simply say that there isn't a multiplayer RTS as good as Starcraft in terms of games that actually lived up to their potential. Single-player wise SC left a lot to be desired but I simply don't think that the underlying C&C formula has the potential to be what Starcraft is for multiplayer. Some of its best elements (squishy squishy tank spam) make for bad multiplayer. I like this guy's C&C skits btw. Here's a generals one I think you might appreciate (albeit the guy is a wee bit whiny for my tastes). | ||
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JWD[9]
364 Posts
Skirmish and multiplayer wise, it also does not belong to C&C. For the very reason you stated, it is in a league of it's own. Has the potential to even , (dare I say it without getting warned on TL?), to rival Broodwar when it comes to engine and design. Only with generals most of the features that balance the game were intended. I am glad it didn't become a major Esport for a reason that has nothing to do with how freakishly good the game is. It's the setting. With all the refugees currently, imagine they leave their war torn country and come to the western world. They see a report about dreamhack on television and have to endure those stereotyped middle eastern accents, the very real war machinery of the USA, thousands of people in the live audience cheering as a virtual village gets burned to the ground by a napalm strike...yeah, blizzard is quite lucky with the setting of SC i think. :D | ||
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Zaros
United Kingdom3692 Posts
But fundamentally I think there was a good competitive game there with interesting mechanics it just needed more support from the maker which never came. | ||
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QuanticHawk
United States32026 Posts
On February 19 2017 12:53 c3rberUs wrote: 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. agreed 100% BW is a far superior competitve RTS, but man I loved RA2 | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
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Comedy
449 Posts
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RoomOfMush
1296 Posts
On February 19 2017 13:55 LegalLord wrote: Frank Klepacki makes pretty boss music that I always enjoy. https://youtube.com/watch?v=iGuuOdD6iY4 Frank Klepacki is THE MAN when it comes to video game soundtracks. I still listen to the old classics like to regular music sometimes. Its just so atmospheric. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
The game itself was a middle-of-the-road RTS with one really nice innovation (the overmap battle) but the soundtrack was really great. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16253 Posts
On February 18 2017 11:29 LegalLord wrote: 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. the thing that really sucked about RA3 was the "comeback meter" that basically rewarded you for losing a giant battle and giving you more energy to use your "Commander Powers". I do not know what the proper algorithm is for filling up the Energy for Commanders power but my army getting stomped by your army should add a giant amount of energy to my commander powers thing. the thing i liked about RA3 was that you were in life and death squabbles from 30 seconds on. The biggest complaint i heard from even minded C&C players was the low # of workers you get at the start of SC2 making the game slow to start. Interesting that with LotV that drastically increased the # of workers. its seems like half the guys that worked on RA3 are now on the current Blizzard RTS team. Frank Klepacki rules. | ||
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ahswtini
Northern Ireland22203 Posts
On February 19 2017 10:52 SlammerIV wrote: 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. cannot agree more with this. the generals zero hour move away from the limitations of a construction yard base building system opened up so many more possibilities in gameplay. sure the story sucked, but i spent probably 2000 hours of my teenage years on this game before i moved briefly to starcraft, and then to dota. zero hour was sadly hugely imbalanced when EA abandoned it, and despite that it was still really fun to play. i was part of the 1.06 community balance patch project, which was pretty successful but perhaps came too late in the game's life | ||
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AdelSC123
France362 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
But it wasn't C&C. It was a game that had the C&C title but was a generic war game with a well-considered, but ultimately derivative, set of features taken from other games. Like I could definitely see that it took inspiration from Starcraft, which is a fine thing to do (Starcraft is a great game) but it also failed to establish its own identity. In terms of a C&C game that actually made for decent competitive play, C&C3 and RA2 had the best luck. They had some semblance of balance and could be played competitively. I had fun with them. They were never made well enough to survive as well as Brood War did, though. It's a shame because they absolutely had that potential. I like the MCV/heavy resource gatherer scenario. While in Starcraft the two are combined and weak, in C&C/RA they aren't weak, but they are bulky and slow, and ore miners have to wander out of the safety of the base. Though I do like the crane in C&C3, which was absolutely a fantastic addition for more versatile base building powers. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16253 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
LotV did a better job on that, but the entire campaign felt like a gigantic exercise in shark jumping. Especially the epilogue. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16253 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On February 19 2017 05:37 TaShadan wrote: You never tried TA? Well you might not like the original but check out this awesome standalone mod! http://www.moddb.com/mods/total-annihilation-zero Minor update here: I actually decided to buy myself a copy of TA ($5, why not) and played a few missions. Nothing much, just the first three missions of the ARM campaign. Dunno what to think of it, really. Interesting take on the gameplay with an ever-active commander unit doing all sorts of things. Remarkably simplistic combat system. No cutscenes; a story told entirely through text and audio. Campaign missions are really short and straightforward even though there's a lot of them. Haven't made up my mind about it, but it certainly did catch enough of my interest for me to continue at this point. | ||
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eviltomahawk
United States11133 Posts
On February 19 2017 02:30 LegalLord wrote: 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 played it regularly way back in like 2007. I really enjoyed it, but I was sorely lacking for cheap, decent FPS games back then. It has been a while since I've last played it though. I liked it better than the regular C&C Renegade, and it's a shame that more FPS games don't adopt similar RTS mechanics. Starcraft: Ghost's multiplayer might've been really interesting for that, but at least we have Planetside 2 to possibly scratch that itch (though I haven't played it yet). I'm surprised that you found RA1 to be that much more refined than Tiberian Dawn. Both were fairly identical with game mechanics, with RA1 managing to expand on that with naval combat, a larger scale, and some other interesting new mechanics like shroud generators and spies. I personally enjoyed the Tiberian Dawn story more since it had a lot of underlying themes that were interesting commentary on the 90's. RA1's story was mostly just a straight Cold War scenario, and most of the future C&C games delved too much into the sci-fi realm with their plots and settings. Tiberian Dawn hit just the right notes for contemporary commentary. Also, while Empire at War may have not been the most stellar RTS in some areas, I would suggest trying out the Thrawn's Revenge mod if you ever want to get back into it. It adds a huge breadth of content from the EU, increases the scale of space battles, and manages to still feel refined and optimized. | ||
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ahswtini
Northern Ireland22203 Posts
On February 21 2017 01:14 LegalLord wrote: My problem with Generals is this. In terms of multiplayer, it's fun. Though I myself wasn't interested in multiplayer when it was alive, I could absolutely see that it had the potential for multiplayer success. But it wasn't C&C. It was a game that had the C&C title but was a generic war game with a well-considered, but ultimately derivative, set of features taken from other games. Like I could definitely see that it took inspiration from Starcraft, which is a fine thing to do (Starcraft is a great game) but it also failed to establish its own identity. In terms of a C&C game that actually made for decent competitive play, C&C3 and RA2 had the best luck. They had some semblance of balance and could be played competitively. I had fun with them. They were never made well enough to survive as well as Brood War did, though. It's a shame because they absolutely had that potential. I like the MCV/heavy resource gatherer scenario. While in Starcraft the two are combined and weak, in C&C/RA they aren't weak, but they are bulky and slow, and ore miners have to wander out of the safety of the base. Though I do like the crane in C&C3, which was absolutely a fantastic addition for more versatile base building powers. honestly, i heard the argument that "generals wasnt true c&c because of no MCV" all the time, and i think it's bullshit. | ||
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