Five Minute Rant: Command & Conquer 4

This is something I’ve been wanting to try for a while, so I may as well get it started. Just type blindly on about anything for five minutes, and only remove/change typos and put what I’ve written into paragraphs.

This rant is on Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight

I’ve been a fan of Command & Conquer from as far back as Tiberian Sun. That was when my Dad got it for me as a present, and then got me the expansion pack (Firestorm) too. After a while I had C&C: The First Decade, Tiberium Wars and Kane’s Wrath. But this new version, Tiberian Twilight, appears to be Electronic Arts going against everything that has worked in the C&C world, just to see if they can find a new market for either the next sequel (despite how they said there wouldn’t be another one), or for a new franchise.

First off is the resource management. Or rather, there is none. What is a Command & Conquer game (that isn’t Renegade) when there is no resource gathering? No Tiberium to harvest, none at all; we have to capture tiberium spikes. This feels like such a rip off from the Dawn of War franchise that it’s not even funny. I already have DoW, it’s expansion packs and it’s sequel. Why would I want to buy this when the mechanics are similar? Hell, there isn’t even a real base for you to look after anymore. It’s a goddamn crawler, a la Fist of Nod in Firestorm. Why the hell have they turned their back on what the games were about? They’re going to lose their core audience before they even start playing the game, despite the fact that this is supposed to be Kane’s grand finale.

Onto the DRM. You have to stay connected to the Internet all the time to be able to play this game. What the fuck?! I’m not going to waste my bandwidth to allow C&C4 to ping EA’s servers every few minutes, and kick me out of my game whenever it can’t be reached. What will happen when their server goes down, or they decide to turn it off? Will I be able to play at all? Most likely not, even though EA have said that they will implement a permanent solution when the game’s retail cycle is done. Ubisoft have started doing this as well, and it’s equally pathetic that they think this will stop people from being able to play a pirated copy of the game. All it will mean is that the people that do the cracking will be all the more determined to try and get it done as soon as possible, to further enhance their own reputation, as well as give a big two fingers to EA for doing this.

The game is supposed to be serious this time, as well. What the hell happened to all the Tiberian games being serious? Red Alert is meant to be camp, that is the niche that they carved out since RA1. The Tiberian games were supposed to be deadly serious, as they were the original mainstay of the Command & Conquer franchise. Hell, the first Red Alert was meant to be an add-on pack for Tiberian Dawn. I just can’t understand why they think they were in any right to attempt at making the Tiberian games funny; this is why I wish Westwood still had control over their property.