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.
Generals is easily the best C&C game, and I'm still a little bit bitter regarding how badly EA mismanaged that game and its community.
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):
Sole Survivor is one of those things I try to forget. It was part of Westwood's push into the completely wrong direction on where to develop their gameplay. They should have been working on making a truly great C&C3 instead of wasting time on expensive failures.
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).
Oh yeah, generals. It is so weird. It kinda does not belong to C&C for me. Strange that you liked it's campaign. If you wanna talk 0 replay value, that is where to find it. It felt like randomly stringed together demos for the capabilities of the map editor.
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
I grew up playing C&C so it is close to my heart, I think the biggest potential esport wise was C&C3 & Kane's Wrath they had the leg up with WCG and Battlecast Primetime. C&C 3 had great graphics and 3 factions that I would say were reasonably balanced they just needed some tweaks and bug fixing, Kane's Wrath added the sub factions and that complicated things unfortunately EA stopped giving a fuck and after 2 patches completely abandoned all support for it leaving major bugs and balance issues.
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.
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
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.
One Klepacki work I really thought was neat was his work in Star Wars: Empire at War (for Petroglyph, the Westwood breakaway group). It's Klepacki's take on John Williams' compositions, with a few of his own original additions. A nice mix, to be sure.
The game itself was a middle-of-the-road RTS with one really nice innovation (the overmap battle) but the soundtrack was really great.
RA2 had the longest lasting and most sustained competitive community and it was still rolling along in China 2 years ago. i think C&C Generals is #2 in terms of sustainability, loyalty and cult following.
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.
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
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.
SC1/Brood War and SC2 missions felt really delicately put together. RA3 seemed like a series of disjointed plot points slammed together. The co-op idea was a good one though.
I wasn't much of a fan of the Starcraft campaign. It wasn't exactly poorly thought out, but I think I'm just no fan of Blizzard storytelling. That simply isn't Blizzard's strong suit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I loved Generals and Zero Hour, and I put many hours into playing through the vanilla versions as well as tons of various mods that were made for the game. That said, I do agree with the idea that giving it the C&C prefix was a mistake. Its plot had absolutely no connection to the overall storyline of the previous C&C games, which were all still arguably connected in the same universe back then (with the cancelled Renegade 2 trying to bridge the gap between RA2 and Tiberian Dawn). On top of that, the gameplay mechanics of course veered far away from the traditional MCV+sidebar UI+resource fields mechanics that were prominent in the past four games. The closest thing it had in common to the other C&C games was the modern-ish era combat with tons of tanks and some experimental weapons.
So in the end we got this fun game that inherited the C&C title without inheriting any of its lore or traditional gameplay mechanics.
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.
I felt like RA was basically Dawn with a better set of cinematics and storytelling, fewer glitchy features (can't send multiple units to a repair depot), better planned missions, and just in general felt smoother while playing. Tanya was much better than the commando for one.
Empire at War was a game everybody loved to mod. Probably because it had such great cinematics and potential for galactic conquest campaigns. Thrawn's Revenge was a cool one. Another one I really liked was Republic at War.
I've played all of the Red Alert Series, Warcraft 3, Stacraft BW and Starcraft 2, and all of the SupCom (didn't know where to get the original TA).
Apart from that, I felt like the boom of RTS during the nineties and 2000s maked certain technology and concepts lost. Honorable mentions(which I played) includes Homeworld (completely 3D and realistic resource gathering) and Earth 21xx (multi layered map and tunnels, ammunition management) series.
In comparison Red Alert and command and conquer seemed to have really simple logistics, starcraft is somewhere in the middle, where as TA/Supcom is all about managing logistics on a huge scale. In Earth 21xx series every unit has a fuel/ ammo meter and you have to manage by building depots and that restricted how you maneuver. Of course if I'm just enjoying the silliness and explosions from RA2 I would not want to worry about if my troops run out of fuel.
From what I remember the Core Contingency missions were much better. I spent the vast majority of my time in skirmish games though. Also, I didn't have a stable internet connection sufficient for playing online games until about 2007. The first game I ever played more than a few rounds of online was StarCraft 2, during the beta.
It's just as Odowan says, the game is all about logistics and resource-gathering. It's about ripping down a forest and looting corpses. From everything I've heard it doesn't have the balance to be competitively interesting but I have to admit I did find the concept interesting. Every unit is just so damn unwieldly that the units that aren't particularly buggy are highly useful, even if they don't hit very hard (e.g. Flash). Especially with the ships.
I just got through Mission 7, the harbor defense one. Damn, that one is so annoying. Well, at least just the last part with the 5 warlord group. Everything kept dying if I approached it, and the only way that was beatable was by abusing the AI until they divided themselves and opened their warlords to getting sniped and/or walked on land where I had enough spammy units to kill it.
i never felt the need to approach anything with ships use radar and click the red dots on the minimap, ships have insane range and the only movement you have to worry about is to evade return fire use fast ships if they're out of radar range
this reminds me of warzone 2100, criminally underrated game with interesting long range mechanics
I suppose the real problem is how goddamn inefficient everything is. I could do so much more with the cash equivalent of a Crus in Flash/Rocko/Jethro units, assuming a land approach is possible. All the units behave really stupidly (an odd complaint for a Brood War player, but IMO it's worse here) and it seems like the best units are just those that suffer least from these random inefficiencies.