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Review: Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

by Mike Bantick

Sunday, 06 May 2007

Like an old school friend, C&C returns into our life with a fresh face and a couple of new tricks, but it is the old memories that emerge making this new iteration a guilty, cheesy experience.

Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Xbox 360, Reviewed on PC

Don’t expect a revolution with this C&C title, Tiberium Wars revisits the familiar world that began the RTS genre all those years ago (Yes I know there was Dune 2, but it was C&C that truly popularised Real Time Strategy)

So let’s cover off the familiar. Returning features include opposing forces GDI and their bombastic technology as well as NOD with their emphasis on the devious and sneaky. Returning also, the Full Motion Video, starring actors that slip comfortably into the tongue-in-cheek clips tying the single player campaign together. Especially notable is the return of Joe Kucan as NOD leader Kane.
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Typical C&C game-play also returns this time with a shiny coat of graphical paint. Controlling your little soldiers and tanks, especially through urban environments are a joy that can be distracting enough with details that you could easily forget objectives.

Some concessions have been made to the modern RTS with units earning experience, having a series of alternate commands – such as air transport for infantry. Dynamic objectives will spring into the game play, although the single player missions do sometimes feel too short.

Shortness aside, the missions within C&C TW – unlike its current rival Supreme Commander – are wonderfully inventive and show the experience of the C&C creators have brought to this release.

This time around the folks at Electronic Arts bring us a third force in the form of the alien Scrin bringing some new twists to game-play. After a short time though, veteran players will see through the Scrin’s extraterrestrial looks, sounds and realise the essential elements of both GDI and NOD are here as well. The Scrin still require power stations and the harvesting of Tiberium to build and maintain a force.

The interface has slightly modified but doesn’t divert from the tried and true method first employed by the now defunct Westwood all those years ago.

C&C TW does not push the RTS envelope far, but it does not need to. Fans of the series will not be disappointed and new comers will enjoy the cheesy thrill of commanding a C&C army.
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There is one slightly intangible piece of weirdness with this new iteration of C&C, it is that by utilising today’s graphical technology, in some way we have lost some characterisation. If I compare the Commando of the original with the high animation model of this release, there has been some romance lost. The site of a pixelated cigar being chomped on brought the right level of cheezyness to the C&C universe.
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