Overall: Command and Conquer, one of the games that started RTS (real time strategy) for me. I've loved each installment of the game series as it has went along. However, Tiberium Wars has left me feeling, well....wounded and bleeding on the battlefield.
The storyline goes that you are in the middle of yet another struggle between GDI and NOD for either global peace or global domination. Tiberium has spread over the globe and is cl@!%#*!ified into one of 3 zones. Red - uninhabitable as Tiberium has completely taken over this area. Yellow - barely habitable but controlled by NOD. Blue - Tiberium is kept under a tight reign here and GDI rules the roost.
As you play through the initial few GDI missions, you unlock the NOD missions. After playing through to the end of either, you are faced with yet a 3rd confrontant in this battle for Tiberium - aliens. After completing both GDI and NOD missions, you unlock 4 missions to play as the aliens themselves.
Honestly, there were several missions which left me wanting to place the game into a skeet shooter and yell "PULL!". The sheer difficulty of some of the missions was absolutly absurd and in some cases, one mistake in planning costs you the entire mission forcing you to start over from scratch. No joke or exaggeration.
Too many times, I was forced into nothing more than an all out tank rush ("Mammoth tank @!%#*!embled") to stop the hordes from invading. I've never enjoyed tank rushing as it takes no skill or strategy to build up x amount of x tank and just mow down the opposition :(
Read on if you would like to learn more on my ratings. Basically, the only reason I gave it a 7.0 overall is because it is C&C and there are some missions which make up for the idioic ones :-/ Gameplay: Gameplay is your typical C&C style. Build bases, build armies, squash the enemy(s) With new styles of troops and buildings, nothing much is new in this area. As with each new installment of C&C, there are new types of weapons, etc to add to your arsenal.
Some of the missions were absolutely fun and I enjoyed every minute of them. Some however, left me in such a state of complete frustration that one time I actually looked for cheat codes so I could end the bloody thing! However, much to my disappointment, I could find none that would have helped :( So I read through some walkthrus and came to a startling discovery. The people writing the walkthrus had the EXACT same issues with these particular missions that I did. They also came to the exact same conclusion, mess up one time and it's mission over. Might as well start all over again. Thus the level of frustration.
Some missions place you right in the thick of battle with hardly any troops and/or buildings to defend yourself with. Others are so bold as to place you in an area with 3 (yes, count 'em 3) different bases around you and you are supposed to a) build up your base b) build up your base defenses c) build up your army to ultimately take out your enemies. However, because all 3 bases are on the same side, they are all coming after you at once and they only give you a few minutes before the onslaught begins.
There are bonuses in each mission which if carried out to the letter, will result in ribbons. IMO, some of these bonus objectives were absolutely impossible and I didn't even bother trying for them. To me, the difficulty of the game (and I played each mission on medium) was just insane on some missions. Again, other reviewers agree, in some of the NOD missions you have well over 2x the amount of difficulty in completing the exact same mission as when you were on GDI side - just a warning, frustration ahead.
One of the other problems I have with this game is the enemy (insert NOD, GDI or alien here) can be fighting each other. But as soon as they see your base, they BOTH come after you. For some reason, they decide that they no longer want to wipe each other off the face of the map but decide to team up as buds and come after you. IMO, the computer AI here was "knowing" a bit more than it actually should have. Thus these reasons for my low score on gameplay. Graphics: Visually the game is nice looking. A decent amount of attention paid to detail, so def no complaints here. In an RTS though, you are not really paying a whole lot of attention to details and how "breathtaking" scenery, etc should be. You are more focused on seeing your enemy drawn and quartered before you.
My one big drawback to the visual was the video cutscenes. In some places, the acting was good ... in some, it was plain ugly. Billy Dee Williams acted more like a professional wrestler in some scenes than he did a high ranking official of GDI. "Can you smmmeellll....what the Rock.....is cookin'?"
While the video cutscenes were a nice addition, I expected more out of seasoned actors and felt that some of the "unknowns" did a better job than some of the "veterans" o.0 Sound: New command options available. Sound in this game was very typical for a C&C RTS. Nothing to really write home about. I did enjoy playing as the commando simply because of the snide comments made, but to this day I still have yet to find a commando that made me LOL as much as the original commando. "Got a present for ya","That was left handed" :)
Other than that, the background music, etc are kinda lost in the battle. Again, like the detail on visual scenery, you are not paying much attention to the background because you are too focused on repairing your bases from the constant barrage of attacks. Suggestions: Can we say re-al-is-tic? Didn't think so. My main beef was when I was playing a mission against NOD or the aliens, the game played as x and I had x as my starting forces/buildings. However, when it was reversed and I was NOD or the Aliens vs GDI/NOD, it was nothing like what I was up against. If you are going to reverse the roles, then make sure to reverse the difficulty to be the same....not 2-3x harder.
If this is the way of C&C games, then I might have to gracefully /bow out :-(
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