Command And Conquer 4

Yup. I finally got down to actually trying that monstrosity. And I don't mean it in a good way, as much as I like some monsters. Command and Conquer 4 is what appears to be a rather poor attempt at reimagining the gameplay of the C&C series. Simply put, Tiberium Twilight makes me sad. I'm officially calling it the equivalent of Twilight (the movie) in the C&C series.

Ok good things first, because the rest is just upsetting. I find it awesome that the designers decided to try to reimagine the RTS gameplay, with a mobile base and different unit paths depending on the player's current class. In fact, they made a clear effort to emulate Relic's capture point centric gameplay. Overall, the high concept had quite some potential.

Now the bad. Which is practically everything else. Command and Conquer has always been about tech tree climbing and massed armies. In fact, it's what sets the franchise apart from the other RTS with population caps and hence limited squads engaging in combat. Nobody will ever forget the tank rushes and their equivalents. What came out of the mix was combat that felt pointless. In lieu of resource gathering, there was the forced gathering of tiberium crystals on the map for upgrades while moving small squads of troops that just didn't feel particularly differentiated (they were, btw) and really no sense of omgsomeone'sstealingmygold.

The campaign was unpardonably tepid, and the game was clearly made for multiplayer...which the C&C franchise wasn't really optimal for. The missions in 4 were even worse than in 3, failing to deliver the sort of FMV goodness that made the early games in the series. After hearing about what happened to Red Alert as well...I'm just sad.