Daniel Mak

Command and Conquer 4

I’ve pretty much played all the command and conquer series released to date except for the Firestorm expansion from Tiberium Suns. The original, Tiberium Sun, Tiberium War + Kanes Wrath, Generals + Zero Hour, Red Alerts 1 + Aftermath, 2 + Yuri’s Revenge and 3 + Uprising and even the FPS Renegade.

I picked up this game on my way home from school without bother reading the reviews on it, which was probably a bad mistake. But since it’s a Command and Conquer series, I’ll let it slide.

Command and Conquer 4 is suppose to be the last series in the Tiberium saga or at lease last series to feature Kane as the key character and I must say the game is not what I was expecting. It’s completely different from all the other command and conquer series, and not in a good way. I’m used to Command and Conquer series being collecting resources to build up your base and built up your army to wipe out the other army before they have a chance to wipe you out. Now, you no longer need to collect resources instead you are given a limited amount of “command points” where you can build your units from a all in one construction unit which can deploy and un-deploy whenever you want. The only resource remotely tied to Tiberium is collecting a tiberium crystal that spawns at a certain interval and you must use one of your units to deliver it to your deploy zone to receive upgrade points.

Command and Conquer 4 also has new features such as the achievement system, and a level system. You gain experience in battler, winning or losing grants experience. The higher the level the more units you get to use. Therefore you cannot start a game with access to every unit, which can mean if a low level player faces a high level player, they will have a tougher chance to winning.

The most annoying thing I can see in this game is the need to be connected on the internet at all times to play the game, Even if you only plan to play the single player portion of the game, it requires an active connection otherwise it wont let you play. Which means whenever I go to a wireless-free zone, I can’t play C&C4. I hear alot of people saying that is fine, because they are used to being online all the time to play their games from apps such as Steam. But Steam still allows offline play when an internet is not present. Command and Conquer completely eliminates that from the picture.

Overall, I think this is possibly one of the worse final ending to such an awesome storyline in history. I can’t say I am surprised as EA has a habit of taking all but the good things and turning it into crap for the users. It’s like they could careless how we think about their game since they know people would still buy their game. The game is a disappointment and I sort of wish that I’d have read the reviews before jumping the gun to buy the game.