Command and Conquer 4 Review

Peace Through power

“Tiberium. The key to limitless wealth and power. The first shards fell to Earth in 1995, and many believed it would change humanity forever. It did.

The Tiberium Wars nearly reduced civilization to ashes. Behind every atrocity stood one man: Kane, the self-proclaimed messiah of the fanatical Brotherhood of Nod. His ambition to control Tiberium was only checked by the Global Defense Initiative (GDI), a military organization sworn to uphold the ideals of freedom, peace, and security. But Tiberium was a trap. It rapidly spread across the world, more virulent and deadly than any plague. By 2062, GDI scientists estimated that Earth would be uninhabitable in less than a decade.

Then Kane resurfaced… and offered a truce.

Fifteen years later, the GDI/NOD alliance remains intact. Their joint project, the Tiberium Control Network (TCN), halted the slide towards extinction and now safely harnesses the toxic mineral to help rebuild Earths devastated ecosystem. As the TCN nears completion, humanity appears to be on the brink of a new Golden Age.

But many on both sides eagerly wait for the day when Kane betrays the GDI. And some aren’t waiting anymore.”

Factions:

Global Defense Initiative

We all know GDI as the good guys, seemingly the only force, ex UN military wing, that could deal with NOD. They’ve put up a great fight against evil, even called in Kane as being KIA on a few occasions. This will all change now since Kane has declared peace.

The Brotherhood of Nod

Rumored to be an ancient cult, The Brotherhood of Nod revolves completely around the will of Kane, their leader, who wishes to ‘elevate’ humanity. They are sly, dirty, sneaky and resort to any tactics to accomplish a goal. With their new open relationship with their former enemies, worshippers are also open to new leadership.

The Forgotten

The Forgotten are basically unfortunates who have been poisoned by Tiberium. They do not have a central governance and seem to be banded in groups. They are however a threat to the TCN and anyone who comes in contact with them. They mostly distrust humans, but loyalty can be bought.

Game play:

Ok so now that you’ve got some background into the game, I can start talking about the game play. I’ve been a Command and Conquer fan since the very first title, and since then have played them all to completion. The series has always been a hit, they even have Hollywood stars featuring in their cut scene videos. Something very few other titles do.

We can all remember starting off without construction vehicles, building a harvester and getting him going on a nice field of shiny looking Tiberium. From then on its a matter of balancing resource and arms production to eventually out power the enemy. This is something that’s held true for all Red Alert titles, except for this one…

Upon start of the game, you are requested to select either an Offensive, Defensive, or Support MCV. This MCV will build only certain units and building relating to that class. In order to upgrade, you will need to collect the blue and red Tiberium crystals lying around the map. MCV’s are fully mobile when packed up. By using a unit, he can instantly collect the red ones, but has to return a green one back to base. 1 green crystal gives you 1 upgrade point, a red crystal gives you 5. With these upgrade points you can increase unit ability as well as increase the building technology for new units etc. There is no more harvesting of Tiberium blooms, instead there are TCNs which can be captured around the map. You also have a control point limit which forms your unit limit. You usually start with 50 CP’s but this can be increased by capturing additional control points. Maybe if I had played further than the first few levels I would better understand this.

So once you’ve gotten your head around the fact that you do not need to harvest income anymore, you can start concentrating on actual unit play. Being constricted to a few units, with each unit having a greater than 1 CP usage, you find yourself with only a handful of soldiers/vehicles to play with. Once you’ve maxed you CP limit, you can start hunting for enemies. Downed enemies often drop power up boxes which can increase the rank of the unit, each unit can get to rank 3 which is a star, similar to previous games, fully ranked units will repair slowly and have greater damage. There are also new Blue power-ups which can give a mech 2 extra arms on top of his current 2, total of 4 weapons. I really like this idea. The units themselves build really quickly, so it’s possible to replace a full army within a minute or so to quickly replenish your forces.

Now because you’ve chosen one type of MCV, you can exchange it for another. So you can select the Defense MCV, build up some defenses, get some units into those defenses, then decommission that MCV and select a new one, perhaps Offensive or Supportive. You can then deploy those and build additional units and tech. A very interesting way of playing the game I have to admit.

Now all of that being said, I’m disappointed with this title. Maybe it’s because I’m too versed in previous titles to feel comfortable playing this one. I don’t like the fact that you can’t control your resource intake, I loved harvesting Tiberium. I also don’t like the fact that there is a basic CP limit and the fact that you need to select different MCV classes to obtain different objectives. This may interest some, but if you are an old school strategy gamer such as myself, you like to control your whole army right in front of you at any point in time. This game doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t feel like a true strategy game, even when playing multiplayer – it’s just not the same, requires quite a bit of getting used to.

Cosmetics

For a game of 2010, I feel the GFX is a letdown. Yes the terrain seems somewhat detailed, but also resembles something that the computer could have generated with a random algorithm. The explosion effects of the units are not bad, the fog of war is well done, resembles a heat illusion. When you select a unit, it looks like a cut out piece of paper stuck to the terrain, there is no depth in the detail of the units which causes a horrible 2D effect. You cannot zoom out far enough even on the highest resolution, so what you see in game can’t be increased on bigger monitors. A little disappointing but I guess this helps with multiplayer fairness.

All in all, I give this game my personal rating of 6/10. If you aren’t currently playing any multiplayer games, and would prefer to battle out a strategic single player game, then this could work for you, albeit maybe only for a little while.

Ian ‘Surv0’ Kidd