Command and Conquer was that game, back in the day. There was once a time where a single RTS could stand astride the entire genre. Unfortunately, the cut-scenes were awful, the story shallow, the DRM enraging, the single-player campaign lacking, and the unit lock-out mechanic can rub players the wrong way. There are decent gameplay mechanics, acceptable graphics and good multi-player options. So how does the whole thing hang together? Not that well, really. Nothing to ruin the game here, but nothing to write home about, either. There is a real sense of urgency to each engagement, with flashes of color and rapid movement drawing the player's attention into the action. They are busy in an exciting way with missiles and lasers all over. The graphics are good: informative and colorful. At least until the Crawler itself is destroyed. Your Crawler can pump out units as long as it has spare command points and dead units return their command points to the spare pool, so you will never be hamstrung by the loss of a limited resource. Now that there are no fixed resources that need to be harvested and no unit production buildings to be built there are no barriers to non-stop combat. This would be a good thing to fix in the future, so players could arrange matches between sides of equal strength.Īnother nod to more FPS-style play is the constant action. It can be a downer, though, when you come up across a more experienced player who has unlocked more powerful units than you have. Much like, say, Team Fortress 2, different player styles can be accommodated by the different unit types. Of course, this extends to competitive multi-player. Do you like to fiddle with the special powers while your buddy likes to blow things up? Start a co-op game where you can be Support and he can be Offense. How does this help on-line play? Well, now not only is cooperative play available, but the players can choose different specialties. Need to defend a base you just took? Lose the old offensive Crawler and have a new defensive one delivered. Need to defend a base? Pick a defensive Crawler and hunker down with tough units. Need to assault a base? Pick an offensive Crawler and build for firepower. The type of Crawler the player builds determines what sorts of units can be built. Both sides (GDI and Nod) produce three types of Crawlers – offensive, defensive and support. The aforementioned unit types are what make on-line play excel. For solo players it means a short, poorly thought-out, haphazardly-balanced campaign. The game blurs the boundaries between solo and multi-player play in an FPS-like way. Single-player and multi-player experience points count the same, so your solo adventures can help you unlock more powerful units for use online and vice versa. Of course, who knows what else EA is watching?Otherwise, the online experience is well-done. The game keeps track of your experience points and stores them on-line, so the uplink is being used. If your connection drops, your game is ended. You must be connected to the internet to play the game. That's not the biggest issue with who really owns the game. The frustration comes in when you realize that there are all these neat units, but you can't use them because the designer doesn't want you to. C&C4 forces the player to really appreciate those 1st level grunts before moving on to the fancy stuff. RTS games often become a race to get the the best units, which are then used exclusively through the rest of the game and in multi-player. It enables the player to ease into the system by limiting the number and powers of the units at the beginning of the game.

This is an interesting, yet frustrating mechanic.

Command and conquer 4