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Monday 14 January, 2008
ENTRY #1
SUMMARY
Command and Conquer 3 is a RTS (real time strategy) game in which the player commands an army against an opposing force in a series of missions. The gameplay takes place on a map, often shrouded in a fog of war, and consists of building and commanding infantry, vehicle, and aerial units from a battle base in order to destroy the enemy or capture key structures. An important process in order to complete missions is to harvest Tiberium, which when processed is converted into money necessary to build units or structures. C&C3 also has online multiplayer, although I will not go into that portion in this review.
GAMEPLAY
At the outset of the game, the player gets to decide which global military power to side with, the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) or the Brotherhood of Nod (NOD). The GDI represents a global military, who's goal is to stop the spread of Tiberium around the world for the good of the people. NOD represented a fanatic faction ruled by a maniacal yet charismatic leader, who uses terrorist like methods in order to spread Tiberium and help the poor and impoverished. In a sense, the player has the choice to play the good guys (GDI), who have advanced technology and better defenses, or the bad guys (NOD) who wreak havoc with exotic weaponry and offensive terrorist attacks.
The story combined with the well done cutscenes motivated me to continue progressing in the game. The game employs real life actors to produce entertaining cutscenes before every mission. These cutscenes put a lot of pressure on me in order to complete the mission, and often created a heightened sense of realism into the game. Plus, when all hell broke loose, the cutscenes provided a very entertaining show.
As far as the actual gameplay itself, commanding units comes with a bit of a learning curve. The tutorial helped an RTS rookie like me a lot, but covered a lot of material very fast, which was hard to remember. Basically, you use the mouse to drag boxes around units to select them, and right click on a patch of ground or an enemy to have them attack or move to the position. In missions with base building, you start out with a main building, and build basic structures in order to unlock more advanced structures and units. In the initial few missions, most of the advanced units and buildings are locked, and so I was motivated to continue playing to command the better units. One cool gameplay element was the garrisoning of infantry units inside buildings, which protected them from harm. The otherwise defenseless infantry were able to cause serious damage over time from inside buildings, and only units with flamethrowers or grenades had the ability to kill units inside buildings.
One thing Command and Conquer did very well was specifying the mission objectives by putting boxes around the buildings that needed to be captured or destroyed. Every mission, I was aware what needed to be accomplished and never got stuck at a dead end unaware of what to do.
ENTRY #2
GAMEPLAY
As the game progresses, the difficulty and complexity of the game goes up. With more units and technologies available, it was hard to decide what to do in what order. Missions would often give me little time to set up my base and build units before sending hordes of enemies to destroy me. I did enjoy the later part of the game much more than the earlier missions however, because it gave me more freedom in how I could complete the mission. In the early stages, most of the missions did not let you build your base from scratch, or they would restrict the best buildings. In the later missions, I had almost everything at my disposal, and enjoyed building up a massive army of tanks to obliterate enemy bases.
Although the difficulty level did increase, the increased challenge forced me to change my tactics and to be more efficient and effective. Also, losing multiple times allowed me to experiment different units too see their strengths and weaknesses. Missions that were not fun were ones that restricted my ability to build, while demanding me to do extremely difficult tasks using a small task force. Beating these missions often came down to trial and error, aka memorizing from which direction enemies would advance.
Later in the game, super weapons became available, adding another pressing element to the game. These super weapons, such as the GDI Ion Cannon and the NOD Nuclear Missile, are capable of obliterating any units or buildings in a large radius that are visable. They take time to use and build, but cause a massive amount of destruction in an amazing looking explosion. These super weapons added a whole new element to the game, as making a direct hit to the center of an enemy base will almost always result in its defeat. With the ability to capture enemy superweapons, and the threat of an enemy superweapon attack, the player is given even more battle.
DESIGN
Command and Conquer is clearly a well designed game. Mission objectives are clearly stated and labeled on the map. Their are primary objectives vital to the mission, and bonus objectives which give the player a better score and potentially reveal more of the C&C3 backstory. I never had trouble figuring out what I had to do, and the bonus objectives often helped me in completing the primary objectives.
As far as map layout, their were a large variety of structures and terrains. Some maps took place in cities, with civilian buildings which could garrison infantry units. Other maps had rivers, gaps, or mountains, which required jetpacks or aerial units to traverse. The units and buildings were simple enough to understand, and were not so numerous that they became overwhelming. Each unit's advantages (strong vs air, strong vs infantry, etc.) could be displayed if you put the mouse over the unit as well.
While the player was provided with an initial Tiberium field, there would often be another field in the center of the map equidistant from both bases, which would provoke a conflict to secure the vital resource once one's original Tiberium field runs dry. Later in the game, the player is presented with a moral conflict. Use of a certain Tiberium bomb would make destroying the enemy easy, yet the GDI commander warns you not to use it because it would set off a chain reaction killing millions of innocents. Whether you use it or not does not effect the outcome of the mission, but using the bomb provokes a bitter ending cutscene, while withholding it produces a joyous one.
C&C's design flaws are few. The music, while fitting, never really stood out or stayed with me after the game. Commanding certain types of infantry was a troublesome, because they were hard to manage in comparison with vehicles. Despite a number based grouping system, it was hard to select all of the units you wanted to select when you had a large army at your base. Overall, C&C is a solid RTS which I throughly enjoyed and will continue to play until I have completed every single player mission I can.
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