Well, here's an informal review of the game. I've spent about two hours playing the single player missions, six hours skirmishing against the computer AI (my fav) and 60-90 minutes playing online.
C&C3 is fairly watered-down compared to it's predecessors (Red Alert, Generals, etc.) in several critical areas. Base building is far less robust than it used to be. The most glaring issue is with base defense, since the most basic component (walls!) is missing. I don't understand why you'd ever ship an RTS that didn't have WALLS. The other base defenses pretty much suck. There is only one anti-aircraft weapon for GDI, a basic AA machine gun, which totally blows. You have to build a solid wall of AA batteries 3-4 deep to have any chance of stopping enemy aircraft from firebombing your base. There is a decent "sonic" defense cannon that can attack ground-based enemy units, but each one requires so much power that you have to build a companion power plant just to keep it running.
Another "dumbed down" aspect of the game is the superweapon implementation. Each of the three armies in C&C3 have their own superweapons, but you can only build one - unlike C&C: Generals where you could build as many as you could afford and provide power for. You can only fire your superweapon once every 8 minutes and they take forever to build, so by the time you get the thing built and drop the serious cash needed to build the thing, you'll probably only get to use it once.
The worst part of the game is the crappy game balance in online play. In Generals, you could easily make a great army that focused on any aspect of your military. You could focus on aircraft, superweapons, tanks, stealthy infantry, or any other component and expect to have a decent chance of surviving. In C&C3, there is only one way to have any chance of winning an online game -
zerg rush! The games are extremely fast paced and rarely last more than 25 minutes (typically 15-20 minutes each). Since base defenses are so ineffective it's impossible to stop an army of basic infantry soldiers from completely swarming your base under. Online games typically consist of seeing who can create the biggest cannon-fodder army first and rush the enemy base under.
Another thing that immediately caught my attention was the difference in ground-unit creation and garrisoning. Instead of creating soldiers one-at-a-time like C&C: Generals, you create squads of soldiers that can be killed of individually or as a group. They always move as on unit though and they garrison buildings as a single unit. What sucks about this is that you're very limited in how you can mix and match units. In Generals I could put two snipers, two missile launchers and a rifleman in an APC and have a pretty decent all-around fighting unit. Now, I can only put a single squad in a car so my APC is sniper-only, missile-only, rifle-only, or whatever.
Another big problem that really sucks for me is the lack of unit upgrade options. For GDI, there are a total of eight upgrades for
everything. Four affect ground units, one affects the power plant, one affects the better airplane, and two affect vehicles. In Generals, there must've been 25-30 upgrades. I realize this isn't Earth 2150 or Supreme Commander with huge, elaborate research trees, but 8 upgrades? That's just ridiculous.
That being said, the game does have some strong positive points. The single-player mission is absolutely amazing and has a ton of fun, well-designed missions. The cheesy in-game videos are awesome and a great throwback to old-school C&C days.
With RTS's, I usually spend more time playing hours-long skirmishes than everything else combined, and I can tell it will be the same way with C&C3. The skirmishes are addictingly fun. I managed to beat the "hard" computer 1-on-1 last night after finishing up a three-hour long multi-session battle. As is typical with C&C, hard means hard! There's also a "
brutal" setting that I might have to try out.
Here are some screenshots, including several from the "hard" battle. You can find the full-sized screenshots
here.
This is my zerg-rush army of Juggernauts. Juggernauts are massive cannons-on-legs that are slow-firing but pack massive firepower. They aren't very fast but once you get them near an enemy's base, it's all over.
Another picture of the same army, just prior to completely obliterating the remnants of my "easy AI" enemy.
This is a screenshot from my "hard AI" enemy game, just prior to the final smashing blow. Here I have 14 fully loaded airbases, each containing four Firehawks, which is the upgraded fighter/bomber for GDI. They only have two planes available for building, which really sucks.
This is a small portion of the defensive line surrounding my initial base. I had to build it across the entire top third of the map, four cannons thick to keep enemy aircraft and ground troops from penetrating. Heh, I said "penetrating."
This is the last component of the uber-army I assembled to wipe out the remnant of the hard AI enemy. I had a total of 74 squads of zone troopers, GDI's ultimate ground soldier.
The after-game stats are pretty sweet. This is a screenshot from the end of the hard AI battle showing the number of units both sides had throughout the battle. He attacked me continuously throughout the game so his army stayed pretty small compared to mine.
This chart shows the number of structures built throughout the game. As you can see, the computer AI beat me senseless right off the bat, but I got the upper hand once I went on the offensive.
Here's another chart showing resources. The purple targets indicate superweapons. I built one and kept it the whole game, whereas the enemy AI kept rebuilding his as I destroyed it.
In short, I wouldn't recommend buying the game if you're primarily looking for an online multiplayer game. If you're like me and you want it for LAN parties and PC skirmishes, feel free to download a copy. Otherwise, wait until it hits the bargain bin. I got mine with a mall gift certificate from Christmas, so I was pretty much set. All in all, it's an alright game, but it definitely has some glaring issues.
-b0b
(...would recommend buying it when it hits the bargain bin.)
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Command and Conquer 3 (Read 17867 times)
