Command and Conquer 4 - Dissappointing.Follow

I preface this with the usual game oppinions expressed by the individual do not necessarily represent the views of the allakhazam staff, blah blah blah.

I have been a command and conquer fan for the entire history of the series. I actually bought renegades. I cried when Westwood got bought by EA. I consider the origional Red Alert to be the best strategy game ever. Period.

And, I unfortunatly hate Command And Conquer 4.

I wanted to like it, I really, really did. 3 Had issues, heck, red alert 3 had issues, but they were playable and close to what I was expecting. I even enjoyed the generals series once I got used to it, though it was always and remains buggy as hell. But what they did is to literally rip the heart and soul out of the game and replace it with that of the warhammer Dawn of War series, which I did not particularily enjoy, except with all the innovative features removed.

let us list exactly what is wrong with the game:
1. Buggy as hell. Under windows 7, you will likely experiance multiple crashes due to the embedded DRM ****. For example, under 64 bit, the initial game launcher will likely crash on you before you can enter the game, unless you quickly press the enter key. And when i say "you" I mean anyone attempting to play the present game on windows 7 64 bit. Sure, some people aren't crashing, but most of them are and it is really annoying.

2. The missions in campaign couldn't possibly be more depressing if they tried. You start with the world semi-ok, and you apperently just recovering from a war. SpoilerYou apperently have an irritating wife, who gets killed on mission 3 regardless of what you do. This serves no real point except to further a minor plot point. Namely that regardless of what GDI path you pick, you are apperently working for a douchebag. The guy that does Kane is usually pretty good. This time he was, not... Baically at every turn, your reward for doing a good job is a poorly acted (even by command and conquer's standards) depressing cutscene. Lucky for you there are only 7 per side, as opposed to the previous games 20 or so.

3. I play command and conquer because I want to build a cool base, build a ******** of tanks, and **** off other people by destroying their resource collectors. In c&c4, I can build cool tanks OR I can build a cool base. I dont get to build both. And resource collection? You basically get a set points pool that says how many units you can have. Ever. you can't increase it in game. you can't say "you know what? this time I want 5 billion tanks on both sides, that would be fun, and my computer can handle it. Crank that **** up!" And harvesting basically only serves to unlock pieces of your tech tree. Which you cannot automate via making a "harvester". Nooo... you have to micromanage collect and deliver each and every time. Which you have to do on average of 30 times per game.

4. Of course, even if you do collect the harvest thingies, Unless you have already played the game through several times to completion, you don't get to access most of your base equipmnet. becuase its locked out, and tied to your account so you can't even cheat code it or anythign just to play with the new toys. Want to build a mammoth tank in the campaign? You can't!

Arrgh. Just argh.

I never cared much for the combat style of Command and conquer. I liked the setting, and I found many of the unit concepts to be cool, but the whole requirement of building my base next to my existing base and infantry which seemed to take forever to kill each other didn't wow me. It probably didn't help that I'm terrible at RTS games.

Sounds like you might wan tot give Supreme commander a try if you haven't already; Supreme Commander 2 should be/is out soon. A friend of mine who is big into RTS games enjoyed it a lot.

I've played Supreme commander and it's expansion, but not 2 yet. They were fun, and I enjoyed them. Command and conquer always had this nostalgia for me I guess.

I played (and loved) all C&C games until Red Alert 3. Despite the familiar actors, the story just didn't grab me and I found myself grinding to get through the missions.

I've actually been looking for a decent RTS game lately. The last C&C game I played was Yuri's Revenge. Any recommendations? Preferably a few years old since my gaming rig is down and this machine only has an 8800GTX.

Star Craft

Seriously... Starcraft was a great game but... just no; too old.


If you didnt like the hero thing in WC3 dont even bother with DoW2 then hehe.

Try out sins of the solar empire. Its got some diplomacy and trading similar to civ, but imo is more focused on combat. Cool research trees too. Also should be pretty cheap and space sims always seem to run pretty well on most machines.


Edited, Apr 6th 2010 12:34pm by KTurner

look for a bargain bin copy of homeworld II as well if sins of a solar empire sounds interesting. Best RTS ever!

The game doesn't end when they die, but they're a much much bigger part of the game than Tanya ever was.