Oh the C&C franchise.  It’s hard to believe that my first experience with C&C was well over 10 years ago now (I started with C&C Red Alert, actually.  So 14 years, give or take).  You could say I’ve been a long time fan, and I wont pretend for a minute that I haven’t bought every game, even after Westwood went belly up and was absorbed by EA.  I’ll never forget my LAN sessions of RA1 with friends, or my afternoons spent destroying Nod stealth tanks with my sonic ones (For the record?  Tiberium Sun was the best of all the games.)  Needless to say that when I heard that they changed the formula for C&C4, I was very skeptical.

For those unfamiliar with the franchise, C&C is one of the grandpapies of the RTS genre (In fact, the original developer Westwood redefined modern RTS games with Dune 2) and was the straight up competitor to Blizzard’s Warcraft and Starcraft series.  The standard formula for an RTS (That Westwood established) is as follows:

- Each player is given a starting location/base with a limited supply of funds.

- Players are tasked at the start to create and sustain an economy as well as begin construction of forces.

- The game revolves around the expansion of each player, which leads to conflict over resources.  This generally creates a game of look-in-two-directions-at-once, where players are forced to not only watch their forward expansions, but be able to spot and react to attacks on their back positions.

- The overall objective is either the destruction of all enemy forces or of all enemy buildings (barring custom scenarios and campaigns).

The general rule of thumb in an RTS is “He who controls the spice, controls the universe” (Baron Vladmir Harkonnen, Dune).  That is to say, if you get the commanding lead in resources, you should have a commanding lead in production, and a commanding lead of the game.

Well, EA Los Angeles decided to take this standard formula and throw it out the window.  In it’s place is a system built on controlling various towers on a map, where each point generates points and first to cap points wins.  Furthermore, the idea of building up a base and gathering resources has been completely scrapped.  Instead, each player is given a mobile base and limited power/supply slots to work with.  Each unit/building takes up various amounts of one kind of slot, and the player regains that slot when the unit dies, the building is destroyed, or the building is sold.  There are three style of MCV, Support, Offense, and Defense, each with it’s own set of units which always conform to a game play style.  If a player uses their MCV, they are able to respawn in one of the drop points that their team controls. This new style of unit management, in addition with the new game mode and hour time limit cap, creates an frantic and action filled multiplayer that tasks players to learn their role and know how to interact with their team.

Sound good so far?  Well it is, but the game does suffer from a few major drawbacks.  The first thing any veteran will notice when they first start the game is the distinct lack of units and seemingly no way to fix that.  However, as it turns out this is a design choice by EALA.  The ability to earn more units comes with the earning of “ranks” (Think CoD4:MW2).  Each unit kill nets you a small amount of experience, and each rank nets you new units and unit upgrades.  This creates a serious issue when you start as you will be limited to only basic units to begin with.  Worse, until many hours have been put in upgrading one’s rank, the factions feel interchangeable and superficial.  Furthermore, gone are the days of GDI vs GDI and Nod vs Nod.  Due to the gameplay’s need for defined teams, there is no longer any mixing of factions per team.  Additionally, the single player is. . . less than inspiring.  Consisting of two paths (both cannon) that the player can walk to help various sides of the conflict, the story is bland and the removal of one of the greatest villains in gaming is disappointing (Hmmm, I guess I should have spoiler’d that).  However, the addition of a more integrated co-op campaign is appreciated.

Easily the worst part of the game is the DRM.  Requiring a constant internet connection means you can’t play this game when visiting those relatives you hate who don’t have internet (or at least wont share with you, you dirty gamer! You’ll clog their precious internet tubes!!!!).

In conclusion, C&C4 is all about the multiplayer, though you’ll find yourself being forced to play the single player to really enjoy the multiplayer.  The game definitely isn’t for everyone, and hard core fans of the series are going to feel gipped by the style change. If you can, get a friend to buy C&C4 too so you can go through the game on co-op.  While the game leaves the nostalgia at home, it makes up for it with a frantic and fast multiplayer that will keep you coming back for more.

Overall: 7.5/10

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