Would you like cheese with your order, sir?
I’m playing the demo of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars right now (and coming down with a nasty cold). It’s… good (the game, that is, not the cold), but there’s definitely something holding me back from really getting me into it. The whole game is very slick and polished in every way, and I get a real kick out of the deliberately cheesy movie sequences between missions, but, as with every C&C franchise game I’ve played so far, it lacks that “tactile” feel that I find so appealing in Blizzard Entertainment’s real-time strategy games. Maybe it’s just because the first RTS I ever played was the original Warcraft, but I’ve always preferred their focus on smaller numbers of tough units as opposed to the continual cranking out of lots of cheap cannon fodder that you get in the C&C games. I feel sort of distanced from the action, if that makes any sense, and the various units don’t really have much personality. In something like Starcraft or Warcraft III, every different type of unit has a completely unique appearance and personality, so you can immediately tell from a distance what everything does. In the C&C games, on the other hand, I often find that everything looks a bit samey. From a distance, a Rifleman Squad looks pretty much the same as a Missile Squad.
Above: Things can get a bit confusing in the heat of the battle
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played so far, and they’ve certainly made big improvements to the interface with this game, for example, in finally implementing right-click movement (or was that in Red Alert 2? I didn’t play that one), but there are a whole lot of little niggles that get in the way. For example, I keep finding that, when you order a Missile Squad to attack an enemy unit that’s far off, they just sort of walk within range of it and then stand there. (Maybe that’s corrected in the full version of the game?) Additionally, the frame rate is annoyingly capped to 30 frames per second, which, in a fast-paced game that relies on precision and rapid action, is really a bit of a bone-headed move. My system copes easily with the game at its highest detail levels, and I would have liked the option to get a bit more fluidity out of it.
Above: FMC = Full Motion Cheese
If I get to the end of the demo and am hungry for more, I might pick up a retail copy, as it’s a not unreasonable £13.98 at Amazon.co.uk. It might also fill a gap for me as I wait ever more impatiently for Starcraft II, but Blizzard is still the strategy gaming king as far as I’m concerned.
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