Game genre: Strategy
Rating (Aust): M - Mature
Rate the game: 3
When I first saw the trailers of C and C 4 it looked like a winner and I immediately pre-ordered one, but the reality is very different. The first trailers looked very promising, showing new units, new gameplay and a brand new construction and deployment system, these changes were a surprise at first glance but intruging, but when you look deeper it really is quite shallow. I will list my negatives below
1. Too different.
The crawler system pretty much virtually destroyed the old fashioned MCV system used in almost all earlier C and C games apart from Generals (but unlike C and C 4 the system Generals used was very balanced, even preferable.
2. One of the bigger critisms: The new resource and unit purchasing mechanic. This is quite large and is split into several points.
a) In older games you could tell if a tank of this faction was better than a tank of this faction, but here MBTs and APCs of different factions have identical costs, which makes you question if the factions units have any distinct advantages against their counterparts.
b) The resource gathering system has been completely destroyed.
In lots of strategy games there usually is some king of currency. e.g. Minerals and Gas in Starcraft, Mass and Energy in Supreme Commander, Requisistion in Warhammer 40 000, Credits in almost every other C and C game. In this you are issued with Command Points (CP) which acts as your population cap and money together. But you don't need to capture or obtain ANYTHING to increase it. You essentially can get units for free, and as long as you keep losing units you can get a few more. Don't worry about losing 4 Mastodons which cost 12 CP apiece, just wait a few minutes and you will have another 4 Mastodons. In other games without income your enemy can't build anything, so you go for their supply operations (I call this 'bleeding them dry', but in C and C 4 you can't lose blood.
P.S. Lose your crawler (all in one base), just get another one! That is really irritating to see waste all your hard work to destroy a crawler just to see fall out of the sky, or burrow out of the ground.
3. Leveling mechanic.
This new system is very poor, in this you can get new units depending on the amount of games you have played, on multiplayer do not be surprised to verse players with level 20 Mastodons and Kodiaks while you have Hunters and Orcas (level 1). This mechanism is really on balanced and appears to be intended for multiplayer because in campaign mode you can often get top-tier units which are just lying around.
4. Shallow campaign.
a) Too short.
The campaign for GDI was a pitiful 9 missions (including 3 tutorials). This did not give you much time to play with your new toys and made it really out of its depth.
b) Who you are working with.
Yes, we don't always get to be the good guys but that doesn't seem a very good excuse to be working with GDI extremists (in the GDI campaign), whose leader is a colonel hell-bent on killing Kane, to the point she kills your 'wife' and GDI comrades.
c) Shallow cutscenes and characters
Command and Conquer cutscenes were never completely in-depth (except Generals, those cutscenes were cool!), but Tiberian Twilight takes this to a level lower than ever before. Why do they add in EVERY sequel a new cast of characters! Apart from Kane. The actors and actresses are only READING there lines, not actually impersonating their aliases, apart from Kane, but hes got his own problems. Kane has always been a bit 'nutty', but inthis installment hes even nuttier than before, always talking about his 'ascension'.
5. Weapon damage mechanic and weapons
a) The damage weapons do in this has been horribly tampered with, it takes like 50 shots with a laser cannon to destroy a light vehicle. In other strategy games a weapon that can destroy heavy targets would be able to destroy lighter ones, except if its approached by many of them then its at a disadvantage. In this a weapon thats 'good' against heavy will basically do little more than a scratch against light. This should be way more realistic.
b) In pre- game trailers I saw a 'unit profile' of a Sandstorm, which is a rocket volley launcher. In the trailer it showed it firing a salvoe of some 16 missiles, although it has a significant reload time. In the game the Sandstorm fires just 4 missiles when it looks like it can fire 5 times that. Also the massive missile turrets GDI defense have looks like they can fire like 32 - 64 missiles, yep, it can only fire a measly 4, when missile turrets that look like they can fire 8 can actually only fire a puny 2 missiles.
I hope that this significantly long review provides a good insight into Command and Conquer 4, if you have $80 I advise you buy Starcraft II, comparing it to C and C 4 is like comparing laser surgical equipment to a hammer and chisel.
----reviewed by john f.s.
Ed - Thank-you John for this incredibly useful review. We really appreciate the time you took. I hope the vendors of the game read it...webgurl
