Thursday, March 25, 2010

Game Review - Command & Conquer 4 Tiberian Twilight

Come to think of it command and conquer series has been around for 14 years. Or Perhaps 15 years, since it came out at 1995. The very first C&C series consists of 2 CDs. Back then 2 CDs game is really huge size, since our harddisk is only 420 MB, is lesser than today pendrive. Most of the PC that time is 486-DX2 66. Of course the clock speed is getting faster and faster. After that C&C progress with tiberian sun, tiberium wars and last final episode C&C tiberian twilight. As metioned by EA, they will sum up everything and tell about origin of Kane and also who is kane? But I guess is really a great disappointment that non of these being told.

C&C4 stories continue with Kane using one of the implanted cyborg previously was name LEGION to active the Scrin tower. As player remember the tacitus which is recovered by Kane in the last mission on Kane Wrath is some how fused with the (player) in C&C4 as commander. The story is nothing great and interesting. It is like extended the story from C&C3 where he walks into SCRIN tower and the screen turns white. But this time with more detailed and elaboration on how he activated the tower. This time, the player ( command) character has a wife. If you play GDI the wife died in early mission. For NOD some how she survives.

Gameplay: 6/10
I think the gameplay is totally different from previous C&C, now is more mobile, no resource gathering, everything is depends on the command point you have. Good or bad. But for C&C player i think is a really annoying gameplay. But for strategy player who play Warhammer 40k I think is not too bad, and I should say the game play is quite easy. Any how there is not much strategy that can involve here (singleplay).

You have offensive, defensive and support class. Defensive class has building like towers and all sort of stuff. You have ion canon too. But who will build such structure and camp around when you only have the limit of 60 commands point ? or lesser. Is not 60 units, but 60 command points that each engineers will consume 3. Basically the title should not be called command and conquer, since you can't have massive armies and units, and you cannot even have camping tactics like in C&C generals? Is just like RPG, you try to make units level ups and become heroes. But the problems in C&C4 doesn't have any hero unit? Compare to Warhammer 40k dawn of wars 2, this game is just too less features. It has many units, but then even tier 2 and tier 1 units are sufficient to deal out damage why bother for tier 3?

Basically you build up varies of units that can deal damage to heavy, light and medium armors and get a few engineers (for offensive class). For me I used offensive always, and have my crawler walk together. with the engineer around, you can use your crawler to tank and fix it up later. More or less is really like RPG, got to be so tactical.

Storyline:2/10?

What can I say about C&C 4? basically it just the drill down detailed of having LEGION (player/command) to activate the Scrin Portal. Can't they just put this campaign mission into C&C 4? and they have to make it into 9 super short missions for each side? They should have concluded this in Kane's wrath when lastly he combines Tacitus and LEGION. But EA just wanna drag on to make C&C4. and said all of Kane information will be reveal? What is there to be revealed? Everything is almost the same, but just player is given a wife LOL. I can even write up a better story ? huh? And there is not much background development for each of the characters. None.. If this is RPG, the character development should be intense. damn this is worse than Supreme commander 2

Graphics:5/10
What can I say? This is almost like Tiberium wars. or Red alert 3. Things just not too realistic. Whenever reaper get shot by mastadon (Mammoth tank MK2 railgun) it just jumps up and down then died. I am not sure whether is my PC problem or other reason. But I can play it smoother than Supreme commander 2. No big deal. Graphics just entry level nothing great I should say.

Sound:5/10
The music and everything is just so average, I can barely remember how it is sounds after finishing all the campaign in less than 1 day for both sides. where is hell march?

AI: 5/10
AI is quite brainless, since there is not much strategy you can employ with 60 commands points, the most is they are sending mostly 5 units against your group of units. And those units are just giving you experience points for you to level up your Units. Other than that I got nothing to say. Old AI is much more powerful.

Units:8/10
Yea it features more than 60 units, with different classes and different units. If EA is going to make this a tactical game I guess it will be really good. The reason is simple, just get some idea from final fantasy tactics and also shattered galaxy. Incorporated point and tech trees and make leveling up worth. And also make individual units leveling system more profound and allows greater customizability in every units based on general (command's) level and also job specialization such as offend, support, defend, stealth, assassin, rush, turtle, high tech and so on! And also allow level up to have stats point for general to distribute into different stats such as technological level (higher unlock better weapon , armor, features of each units), class point (unlock better units and higher class), customization point ( unlock more powerful customization).

Overall:5.2/10

I am really upset with EA and C&C4. C&C started so good by westwood studio, I really didn't expect it will have such a bad ending that Kane just step inside the Scrin Portal and that is! Ascension is REAL!. And whatever is it, perhaps they will make another good C&C good in RPG or tactical style. Other than that, if you wanna know the story of C&C4 , just go to youtube.com and search for tiberian twilight. Everything is there, and the story sucks big time. Player is awakened, and get implanted with tacitus and I assumed you are legion, and then you just go through series of stupid battle in either kill Kane or help Kane to get into portal but killing gideon and capturing TCN. Sigh.. GDI mission is so stupid because GDI has been trying to kill Kane since C&C1, but failed big time. Even in point blank C&C tiberian sun, Kane was stabbed by never died. cause Cabal clone him again LOL!. What a great story. sigh.. Seriously the storyline in tiberian sun is even better than C&C4.










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