- Nov 16, 2006
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Just completed a campaign playthrough of C&C3: Tiberium Wars, one of the last great "base building" era RTS games, before everything went full MOBA or "tactical squad based combat".
The C&C games have always held a special place in my heart because unlike Blizzard's excellent entries into the genre, the games felt more geared toward emergent gameplay than hyper balanced competitive play. The ability to garrison units in neutral structures, steal enemy structures, resource fields that harm infantry units, flying units that actually *fly* instead of being hovering ground units that ignore terrain, the ability to power down or sell structures, superweapons... all things that are difficult to balance for but make for deeply satisfying strategy and tactics when you exploit them in your favor, and reinforce the setting and story of the game.
The campaigns consist of 17 missions for each GDI and Nod, and a "secret" 4 mission campaign for the Scrin. I found GDI's campaign to be fairly straightforward and the least entertaining of the bunch, while Nod's campaign was full of campy goodness and it shows that even the developers had fun with it. The Scrin campaign was just the right length and didn't overstay its welcome. The story telling is interesting as well; rather than progressing linearly in time from one campaign to the next, each campaign occurs concurrently with the others, simply telling the same story from different perspectives (basically, Kane plays everyone).
The production values are all top notch; the game still looks great, sound design and music is excellent, and nowadays the game will run on a potato.
Its a fun throwback to an older time but be warned of the following if you plan on playing through the campaign (which is excellent): in the effort to balance MP, Patch 1.09 broke the balance for the campaign by changing costs and effectiveness of different units. As a result, the campaign doesn't follow a slow ramp up in difficulty but instead varies wildly with some of the most difficult missions in each 17 mission campaign can be in the middle of the campaign with weird difficulty spikes (for example the final Scrin mission, the last mission in the entire game, was so staggeringly easy that I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop but then the game ended). Don't hesitate to pull up a post patch walkthrough if you run into a wall, like some puzzle games the path to the answer becomes obvious after you know what the answer is.
It is still a lot of fun and very rewarding to complete the campaigns. Missions are broken up with full motion video cutscenes featuring the who's who of the early 2000's SCI-Fi channel cast, and the story is relatively engaging.
All in all, very worth $5 if you're looking to scratch that old school RTS itch. I also have Kane's Wrath (which i've read is the height of the series) and C&C4 (which I've read is hot garbage) in my library as well, and I'll get around to them after spending some time in other genres.
What are your thoughts and memories of the once great C&C series, Tiberium Wars and others included?
The C&C games have always held a special place in my heart because unlike Blizzard's excellent entries into the genre, the games felt more geared toward emergent gameplay than hyper balanced competitive play. The ability to garrison units in neutral structures, steal enemy structures, resource fields that harm infantry units, flying units that actually *fly* instead of being hovering ground units that ignore terrain, the ability to power down or sell structures, superweapons... all things that are difficult to balance for but make for deeply satisfying strategy and tactics when you exploit them in your favor, and reinforce the setting and story of the game.
The campaigns consist of 17 missions for each GDI and Nod, and a "secret" 4 mission campaign for the Scrin. I found GDI's campaign to be fairly straightforward and the least entertaining of the bunch, while Nod's campaign was full of campy goodness and it shows that even the developers had fun with it. The Scrin campaign was just the right length and didn't overstay its welcome. The story telling is interesting as well; rather than progressing linearly in time from one campaign to the next, each campaign occurs concurrently with the others, simply telling the same story from different perspectives (basically, Kane plays everyone).
The production values are all top notch; the game still looks great, sound design and music is excellent, and nowadays the game will run on a potato.
Its a fun throwback to an older time but be warned of the following if you plan on playing through the campaign (which is excellent): in the effort to balance MP, Patch 1.09 broke the balance for the campaign by changing costs and effectiveness of different units. As a result, the campaign doesn't follow a slow ramp up in difficulty but instead varies wildly with some of the most difficult missions in each 17 mission campaign can be in the middle of the campaign with weird difficulty spikes (for example the final Scrin mission, the last mission in the entire game, was so staggeringly easy that I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop but then the game ended). Don't hesitate to pull up a post patch walkthrough if you run into a wall, like some puzzle games the path to the answer becomes obvious after you know what the answer is.
It is still a lot of fun and very rewarding to complete the campaigns. Missions are broken up with full motion video cutscenes featuring the who's who of the early 2000's SCI-Fi channel cast, and the story is relatively engaging.
All in all, very worth $5 if you're looking to scratch that old school RTS itch. I also have Kane's Wrath (which i've read is the height of the series) and C&C4 (which I've read is hot garbage) in my library as well, and I'll get around to them after spending some time in other genres.
What are your thoughts and memories of the once great C&C series, Tiberium Wars and others included?
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