Command & Conquer 4: In some ways yes, in some ways no
NOTE: I’m going to do something I don’t normally do, and that’s comment on a game without having finished playing it. A big heap of “I may be misinformed” has to come with this, since I’m going to call things out by what I’ve seen so far and predict where they go (or don’t go) later in the game.
So let’s get this out of the way — I can see that there’s a game in here that is fun for what it is, but to me, what it is not is a core C&C game.
Of course I have my own definition of what constitutes a core C&C game. Everyone has their own definition, and it’s changed over the years from lead to lead and project to project. Look at C&C3 to a small extent and Red Alert 3 for a larger one and you’ll see that even then the perception of what makes a C&C game great was changing with each iteration. C&C4 however is such a radical departure from what most people would expect that I know I’m not alone in saying that this is not what I thought we’d get.
So here’s what you do get in C&C4: A very multiplayer-centric melee / skirmish game that involves you and team mates trying to win via a point system (ala Battlefield) by capturing control points and holding them. The longer you hold them, the more points you get. Get to 2500 points first, and you win. I assume you can also win by blowing up a team’s existing supply of crawlers, but this was never a win condition I achieved. Along the way, you get experience that slowly (slowly, no really) gains you levels, which unlocks new units, but only after a match. There has to be upwards of 40 units per faction in the game by the time you’ve unlocked everything. I have to assume that many of these units are very similar damage / stat wise to something on the opposing side, as I don’t see 40+ radically unique units (per side!) having any semblance of balance. Fortunately, at least the units I had access to didn’t have a lot of special abilities you had to micro. If there’s more of those down the road… ugh.
Harvesting is out, but Tiberium is in the game (dropped in care packages from space) as an upgrade device. You can fight over it and either blow it up (the damage was relatively unimpressive from green Tiberium) or move it back to a landing zone and use it to upgrade your units or unlock higher tech levels. So there’s a battle going on over those as well as a battle over the control points. They’re in different locations on the map, so you can’t be everywhere at once. Do you go for points now, or rush tech for better units to make capturing control points easier later?
Then there’s landing zones, where you’re allowed to drop new crawlers if you need one or want to switch types. Again, in different places, so if you’re forced to change-up your crawler, you need a zone you can do it in. The default one is in the far corner of a map, far away from where battles will take place. Crawler’s aren’t fast, so it’s in your best interest to keep a drop zone open in case of emergency or if you need to change up.
So all of that is very clever and all, and it’s a tight design loop of all the systems, but you know what? This feels like a downloadable RTS game, one I’d pay $20 dollars for on Steam.
But wait, there’s Nod and GDI and Kane and dialogue and stuff, Adam! Yes, there is, but I think it’s no longer accessible. I can bet that any new C&C player would have no idea of what was going on within the first five minutes of the C&C4 campaign. I can no longer empathize with the characters or understand what is going on. I can’t even easily tell what GDI or Nod stand for in this new game. There’s not nearly as clear of a delineation as previous games. There’s a LOT of fan service but it’s catering exclusively to hard-core fans. Most of C&C’s casual fans only got to the 10% depth level of C&C’s lore, and that was enough. This game goes to a depth that is commendable, but way too involved with itself to see that it’s alienating everyone that wasn’t hard-core about it to begin with.
Here’s a list of things that made me scratch my head while playing:
- An enemy obelisk hit my basic assault tank over 8 times (with linking bonus!) without destroying it.
- There are structures scattered around the map that infantry can garrison in. I wasn’t playing with infantry, so I blew them up so the enemy couldn’t use them. You know what? They auto-repaired themselves. In a C&C game. A C&C game with engineers. Which – you know – can repair stuff.
- All you have to worry about when building is control points. No resources, no way to cut off an enemy from constantly building crap and throwing it at you. Also, since you can’t cut off tech upgrades once they’re applied, you can’t ever stop mammoth tanks from rolling out once they can build them.
- The units don’t have a lot of individuality / personality, both in visual design and dialogue. Design is all over the place and I have a hard time seeing a consistent theme across factions. Audio is “hip military” type stuff. Maybe the L20 Kodiak has more character?
- Nothing you get early on feels fun and unique or powerful. Generic tank, rocket guy, mini-gunner, etc. You always should have cool stuff to play with immediately, or play with the basic stuff in a cool way.
- Orcas are now the size of a Chinook. Tech got clunkier in the future instead of smaller / sleeker?
- The crawler isn’t really a mobile base. No defenses, not many upgrades. I think we did a much better job at that in U@W.
- Hey, a bottom bar. Way to maintain that C&C franchise identity.
- I’m amazed that right-click scrolling survived intact. I wish that SC2 and HoN had this option. It’s completely superior to edge scrolling and arrow keys.
- Hey, my wife is crying again.
- When you design an escort mission, having the unit(s) you’re escorting blaze along a waypoint path while barely waiting for the units that are supposed to defend them is a very flawed design. This was easily remedied in previous C&C games (have the escorts guard the player’s units, thereby following them) so I have to assume that this new C&C engine isn’t as fully featured as the old one on the design side.
- How to win most of the time: Hit Q twice (haha QQ) and click on the thing you want to kill. Make sure your build queue is maxed and you have stuff in the hopper just waiting for command points. The differences in damage and weaknesses are so smoothed out that you’re better off with brute force than building, micro-managing, and attacking with the perfect counter unit. It’s like a 15% damage difference at most, or at least it seems that way.
- Unit selection and logic appears to have taken a step backwards. Rarely can I get units to do what I want unless I QQ (heh). Band-box and right-click a target and half of them just stand there and do nothing, especially if some of them are already in range of the target.
- I jump in to check things out in skirmish and… I can build 4 units. Total. WOW. Let’s switch crawlers, and… wow 3 units… and a turret. Epic. Ok, so I’ll level up. It can’t be that hard, right? After the first game and getting some achievements, I get around 1000 XP for next level. Game after that… 300 maybe, with another 1000+ to go. I’m not a fan of this.
- During solo play (every mode actually), you earn XP. While playing I’ll get text that tells me I’ve gained an achievement, leveled, etc. I can see the XP bar at the bottom of the screen moving along. Oh, but if you fail the mission you lose all the XP you gained. That’s just stupid. You either always let the user keep their XP (the right thing to do in this kind of game) or you don’t reward any XP until after the mission is complete, when you can clearly say win / loss. A mission that I learn by death in doesn’t become more fun when all my XP that helped with my learning is stripped from me and I have to do it over, especially if I had to do specific things within a level to earn some of those achievements.
- I have to always be on-line, where XP gain can be validated, yet I can’t keep the paltry amount I earn in solo if I fail? Was someone really that paranoid that people might break the XP system and “grind” on solo play to gain levels? You know what? I paid for the game. Let me have my fun as I want to have it.
- There are so many units that I have no idea what to use for what and why. They all blend together, and the weapon semantics and classes don’t help me. Again, maybe there’s more unique ones at the very high end, but even my titans once I unlocked them were just meh this time around.
- It’s difficult to get information on enemy units. Idling the mouse over them doesn’t produce an info pop-up. Hard-selecting them and going to a spot on the UI does, but it’s too much work in a fast-paced game.
- So wait, Tiberium is dropped from orbit, and then I collect it and bring it back to my landing area / zone… and where does it go? Back up into space? The design mechanic of the upgrade system works, but fictionally makes no sense. I don’t even have to bring the Tiberium to my crawler, any controlled landing zone will do.
- Solo play balance: Civilians with firebombs shouldn’t be tougher than a tank to take out. Embrace expectations, don’t fly in the face of them.
I had a theory that this game didn’t start out as a core C&C title. After talking to various folks, turns out I’m not completely off base with that assumption, which explains a lot.
I applaud the EA folk for actually trying something new, but I don’t think that messing around with the finale in a franchise and story that’s 15 years in the making was the right moment to get experimental. You know what’s funny? If they’d taken everything they cut from this game and made that into a game, we’d be much closer to a classic C&C than what was produced.
I don’t personally see C&C4 as a core C&C game. But, if you treat it as a stand-alone multiplayer-centric game and have a group of friends you can play regularly with, go for it.
26 comments
You know what’s the funny thing?
When I played the UAW demo, I thought the same thing of the damage system.
Yes, C&C4 could use some better damage, and the crawlers need more respect too, and yes, I don’t like it that this game is a core C&C game, since it really shouldn’t be.
But what it does right, it does well, I’ll say that without doubt.
I’m surprised, for someone who’s from the company that started the franchise, I thought you’d have a lot more rage in you for the company that shut you down closing the story like this.
Adam: I had a lot more ire when I first started playing, but that was because things were just so different from what I expected.
Great article, my man! It’s always refreshing to see critical thinkers in this retarded age of morons with no balls!
I agree, this is my thoughts exactly. The first night I played it I nearly became ill. So I opened up Visual Studio 2008 and did a little Windows Cosplay.
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/4716/cnc4hater.png
Enjoy
Hey Adam, cool write up.
A few points;
I totally agree on the achievement based design. It is flawed and needs to be fixed. Both in the area of losing XP if lost and in the fact that it takes time to get to level 20 and gain everything there is.
However, admittedly for most players it takes very little time, and from then on, the unit assortment is great.
Economy is needed. At least some form of it.
Crawlers do have defenses or actual weapons. When you upgrade them.
As for the storyline.
I disagree with you there.
It was indeed fan service, but it was necessarily so, IMO.
Why? Because if you keep reintroducing everything like you did with TS and they did with C&C3, you just end up with an endless loop of been there done that.
Maybe a “Previously on C&C…” video as a prologue in game is not uncalled for, but reintroducing everything would have been… meh.
In a fourth game you can’t even make an Amnesiac character doing some discovering for the first few missions stick. It’s too… convenient.
So, I’m thinking, the just go ahead and go on with the story is a good option in this case. Especially so close to C&C3 and KW.
There are still many questions left unanswered, though…
——————————————————
What I personally would have done, to keep it, as you define it, a Core C&C game, is make Nod have Crawlers and GDI retain bases. Keeping with the theme of Nod for progress, GDI for stagnation.
Might have even fit the story with the TCN – GDI bases guarding them, Kane aligned Nod units patrolling.
Adam: I think a “previously on…” would have helped immeasurably, even if it was just clips from the old games. Yes, I agree that re-introducing everything is tedious, but unlike a TV show that you see from week to week, going a year or more and being expected to remember everything is challenging, especially in the wake of a lot more competition for your gaming memory!
About your first note, might you consider posting an addendum if you do finish playing it? Although I expect that it probably wouldn’t be all that different from your current article.
Did you mean to say it is as valuable as a $20 downloadable game due to lack of content, or because the game is only good enough to warrant a $20 price tag? A moderator for EA’s Forum want to know.
Adam: I mean that it felt like the game was engineered to provide a very tightly designed multiplayer experience first and foremost, with a campaign added to it afterward and forced to work around the mechanics that were in place. It does not feel like a game that grew up with both being developed at the same time.
[...] can read more by clicking here. It certainly is interesting finding out what the old Westwood guys think of the latest Command [...]
Great article man. As a fan of the series that started my gaming career back in 1995, i was totally and utterly disgusted with C&C 4. Id rather them rehash the same old formula then give us experimental dog crap with a 50$ price tag. On a whole i believe EALA has totally destroyed C&C and i know for a fact over 75% of the hard-core fans agree with me. The only people who like this game are new entries because of how casual it is, or some select old fans who dont want to face reality and see how much a steaming pile of crap the game actually is. I guess they need to justify their crappy purchase somehow.
Well iam more of the core C&C player.
I have to say and iam putting this very mildly this wasnt the time to implement the new ways of C&C play. since this was the epic last battle.
Pretty much of a letdown all the way.
Then as the man said the XP is good for battlefield games etc. not online rts games.. not really fair for the starters. they can not do much against the more xp players in there.
then the single player.. i hate the UNIT CAP. 4 or 5 units and its done? wtf?….. why not like in SC2… i can live with that unit cap.
Ok.. now back the mr originality…
not really it has been done before…
So its not that original. and i did play alot of those rts games. and i have to admit this is the worsed in his kind.
I have a feeling EA tries to get RTS to the KIDDO platform like X-BOX and PS3. and a normal RTS game wont work on a Console. this is like a last way to get it to the xbox without the kids feeling back not able to click as fast the the pc gamers.
Then the tiberium crystal.. lol really couldnt they make something beter up then that?
If you dont like the harvest and protecting your harvester and attacking your enemy thing.. why did you play C&C series in the first place?
Ofcourse i agree everyone with the offline play should be avaible for everyone in singleplayer.
So you can play it forever and ever.
not so friendly for your gamebuyers who actually have to support new idea’s etc..
This actually might backfire and let people go back to piracy.
I seen alot of trash comming out from EA, but this takes it all.
For the real fans of the old school play stay far far away from C&C4.. if you really are new to the c&c universe… i might think you can like it.. if you dont look at the graphics etc. and story line. most play might be getting out of multiplayer that is about it.
I use the C&C4 DVD to put my cold beer on.
have a nice one people.
I too have been a C&C fan since the start. Heck, I still have my Dune2 on 6 floppies hiding somewhere.Just found your site through a rant thread over at the C&C boards.
At your write up…that sad thing is, nearly 90% of the things you state, I know I personally said on their internal forums during the testing phase.
At your site. Great reads all over. Just pretty much read through all your stuff today to get caught up. Agree with A LOT of them. Hope to read more in the future.
Adam, I agree with you on every aspect being a C&C player since the first game I couldnt be arsed to buy this game, it is totally ruined. There is lack of vision and the business model for PC games coming out every year with a new RTS game just doesnt work for the RTS Genre.
You ever think the old C&C team can come up with something new, something equal to the old C&C but can compete eSport wise with a game like Starcraft?
The old C&C games really had that style and feeling that is could be realistic. We need an rts game that brings back the NATO setting back in the 90′s.
Well written post! Hope to hear from you
Adam: C&C games were different than the ‘craft games. I’d say the ‘craft games (and especially StarCraft) were always more tightly balanced than the C&C games, with Generals as the best exception. This isn’t a bad thing however. The C&C games were always more outrageous and broke out of the box more than the ‘craft games do. I love ‘craft for how intellectual and tactical the game can be, and how I always got the impression that no offense was un-counterable. I love the C&C series for the crazy over-the-top moments, outrageous turn-arounds, and random wild factor of things like crates.
Thank you, Adam, for speaking out against this abomination of a C&C game.
And no, I don’t even think the story appeals to hardcore fans. Hardcore fans like myself, who have been following the series from the beginning with you, would notice the sheer amount of story plot holes and inconsistencies the game offers.
#1. Why does the purpose of the tacitus change in every game? Firestorm: giant storage of data. C&C3: points to the coming of the Scrin. C&C4: unlocks the door to the portal.
#2. Where’s Legion? In Kane’s Wrath we learned that Legion was related to CABAL, and was fused with the tacitus. And he doesn’t even get a mention in this game.
#3. There’s a huge vacuum of detail – we know nothing about the Tiberium Control Network and how it works. We just know Tiberium starts disappearing at the end.
#4. Why didn’t Kane make himself one of the implants? Why did he make *you*, the Commander, his body double, if you were the last implant and extremely vulnerable, and he was unkillable (last cutscene)?
#5. Where did the portal lead Kane and his followers? Who or what is Kane? It was pretty clear in Tiberian Sun that he was a terraforming agent of some kind, but in C&C4 he’s just ET wanting to go home.
#6. The separatist movement was pretty lame – Kane is Nod, and Nod is Kane. He was held in very high esteem in Tiberian Dawn, and then worshiped by his followers in Renegade, Tiberian Sun, and C&C3. The separatist in KW made some sense, because Kane was hidden at that point, but a non-hidden-Kane giant separatist team is a bit unreal.
The wife scenes were terrible. Just utterly terrible.
And don’t even get me started on the gameplay.
Hey Fobby, what’s your email?
Please email me at cypher@planetcnc.com
Hopefully in a few years time, C&C 4 will go the way of Sole Survivor.
Adam: Hey, I did do one really nice map for Sole Survivor! “Painted Desert”… featuring the same character I have a tattoo of!
[...] [...]
I’m with Fobby on the fan service… I can forgive the bland multiplay – but I will *never* forgive the utter failure of a single player story. It resolves none of the enormous inertia of unanswered questions from over 15 years of games and creates too many new conundrums in it’s own story.
-gben
As a big Command and Conquer fan i agree with what was written here, i’ve got to say that this Fourth and Final Chapter is a complete desillusion and a big slap to all the CnC fans out there… it’s one of those things you ask yourself what were they thinking!?
I’ve got to admit i had a bad feeling about CnC 3 TW (since EA was creating it and they have that nasty reputation of ruining games, no wonder why…)but in the end they did a good job, the game turned out to be awsome, the gameplay was the same old style and the cinematics were cool(Specially the Scrin Campaing ones). When they announced Command and Conquer 4(when i saw the debut trailer), saying it was the ending of the Saga i got to say i was eager and excited to have it(still thinking they wouldn’t screw up because of the good job they did on the 3rd one), but then i started seeing previews and people talking about a big change of gameplay i started to lose all the hopes. I played the Beta to try it and i got to say that was a disappointment. Anyways I was still thinking of buying the game just for the Campaign atleast but was still undecised if i was gonna do it or not (seeing it now not worth spend 50€ just for that). I then asked a friend of mine to borrow me the game, he warned me that the Campaign wasn’t that good, well turns out he was right i got to Mission 4 from Nod and got sick of the game right on the spot, the escort objective was a total utter joke, and the AI always had more advanced units than you? Seriously what were they thinking, looks unfair for someone that just started playing the game in wich leveling is a damn nightmare and if you lose the mission all XP goes bye bye. Since i quitted it i saw all the cutscenes on youtube, and boy… Epic Ending? More like epic fail more questions arose and most of them remained unanswered like Kane’s real Origins, his real agenda with Ascension but no… he just enter the portal with you dieing in both faction Finales and it ends with an Open Ending… Epic right?
In the end it doesn’t matter… I could rant all day how this game lacks all the old CnC Spirit that was inbued in its predecessors but it’s not worth it. For me Command and Conquer Series died in Kane’s Wrath.
I do not get the campaign ending (for both factions) and some missions, In both endings you die which is stupid and for some reason GDI is bent on helping NOD if u are on GDI campaign, but if you are on NOD in the last mission all of a sudden GDI is against you… What? Also in one of the last Nod missions it is called bleed out now this confuses me. On the mission briefing it says you are dieing from bleeding but in the mission kane is dieing from bleeding, the at the end it is you dieing again. I have finished both GDI and NOD campaigns highest lvl GDI and high lvl NOD and it was a BIG disappointment, i kept playing cos i was telling myself it would get better but it did not… also graphics? BAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I commented directly into a few posts.
I will do a follow up article on RTS in general in this day and age, so stay tuned.
what you guys should do in petroglyph is wait till the raitings drop so much that they will sell the title back to you after ruining it to the ground so flawlessly then you can finish it off how it is supposed to be done
You’ve said basically everything I was feeling after playing. Many aspects felt phoned in, such as that kooky looking, waypoint-following missile the plot-indifferent wife has to deal with.
Generals I balked at, but in the end, I admit I played a lot of Zero Hour because of the robust gameplay. C&C3 felt pretty great until the most recent patches that harm base expansion. RA3 is fantastic with just the right amount of micro, and seems to have something for every play style.
C&C3/RA3 expansions both brought really enjoyable alternative play, risks that paid off. But all C&C4 seems to do is take risks, with very little payoff. I’m pushing myself through it since it’s The Final Chapter and all, but I feel uncomfortable having to push myself. It’s just grindy, and I don’t refer simply to the XP system.
I was so disappointed by C&C4, and I considered myself quite a big fan. My very first game was Dune II on my dad’s PC. I have all the Westwood C&C’s lined up on my closet, I admit, Generals and Zero Hour made it up there too. But at least they were still fun, and not messing with a storyline that was carefully crafted over many years, only to be bent out of shape and having the whole mystique thing go over the top.
I’ve modded for TS (FS), RA2 (YR) and Generals (ZH). I always felt that those titles still were ‘C&C’, but C&C4 indeed feels like it’s the negation of everything that made a game ‘C&C’. Ever since TS the atmosphere seemed to be leaking from the Tiberian storyline.
@Misha: If you’re looking for realism and C&C, there’s quite a good mod (Total Conversion, actually) for Generals: Zero Hour, called Cold War Crisis.
[...] are, its quite a few. Check out this for more details Ex-Westwoodian Adam Isgreen reviews C&C4 Obscured View Command & Conquer 4: In some ways yes, in some ways no __________________ Why worry about snakes in the garden, when there's spiders in your [...]
It’s so disappointing to see the downfall of one of the greatest RTS franchises in gaming history happen like this. I agree with just about everything you said Adam, especially the points about player experience and the fact that an Obelisk isn’t something to be feared anymore.
I just hope that EA have enough sense to release a modding SDK that people can use to salvage something out of this abomination.
Hello,
If you could spare some of your time to read this it would be much appreciated.
I am one of the writers, designers for Command and Conquer: Tiberium Eclipse. It is a mod on the CnC3 engine, but a brief one. We are redoing CnC4 based on the community, how they wanted it, implementing our own ideas and using some followups to original westwood concepts. I am particularly interested where would westwood have taken the series and would like to use as many ideas as I can in the story and the base design aswell. We are hard at work on new models, but we are bringing back old ones, classic ones too. Rewriting the campaign story and executing it well is a hard task and since we are dumping most of CnC4 ideas, and trying to get back on the original storyline, I would like to ask a few questions. We really want to know what Westwood planned more briefly, if you could spare some time to give us some information about what plans were for things like: the unknown tiberium strain or the invincibility of Kane, also the comming of Scrin, mutant return, CABAL ect. However, we are doing a lot of things differently, but implementing what was planned would give the series a send off it deserves. Thank you for your time, I hope you will reply to this.
Sincerely, Victor a.k.a Nomad
@Victor: Adam already explained a lot of that stuff during his time at Petroglyph. Here’s a good starting point:
http://www.petroglyphgames.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6182&start=0&p=93353#entry93353
Or here regarding red Tiberium:
http://www.petroglyphgames.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5331&st=0&p=79528#entry79528
I’ve collected many of such posts – contact me, if you want to know more.