GameSpy: Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight Review (original) (raw)
By Eric Neigher | Mar 16, 2010
C&C4 tries hard to reinvent itself, but it's got a long way to go before the Patent Office will be interested.
"We've captured Node 1."
"The enemy has Node 2."
"We've captured Node 2."
"The enemy has Node 1."
Keep reading the above four lines over and over for 45 minutes and you'll have a good idea of how a Command & Conquer 4 match plays out.
Okay, details. First thing you need to know is that EA Los Angeles (EALA) has taken the long-running real-time strategy series in a completely new direction: The base-building, resource-harvesting, tank-rushing model -- once the hallmark for RTS worldwide -- is totally dropped here. C&C4 replaces the venerable gather-and-build system with a little piece of just about every other significant RTS of the last few years; the majority of the gameplay is now rather unabashedly ripped off of Massive Entertainment's World in Conflict, while the capture-and-hold scoring system is somewhat more abashedly ripped off from Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, and the new UI (no more sidebar interface) is re-purposed from EA's own C&C: Generals series.
'Course, none of this is, per se, a bad thing -- each of the above titles was deservedly successful, and you can't fault EALA for taking a risk on a reboot; the tried-and-true gameplay model of previous iterations has fallen out with the smart set, of late. So, if you're going back to the drawing board, you ought to look at what's worked elsewhere. The problem is, none of the features EALA's shoehorned into C&C4 stand alone as a reason for the success of its respective title -- World in Conflict, for example, worked because it operated on a much larger scale than C&C4 does. Sewing together all these disparate features into an RTS Frankenstein and hoping for synergy wasn't the world's best plan.
So, forget harvesters; here's how a game shakes out now: You choose a faction (Nod or GDI are the only options this time -- the out-of-this-world Scrin aren't playable), then you choose a "type" of mobile base (called a crawler) from which to produce all your units. Both sides' crawlers can be Offense (tanks, walkers, etc.), Defense (infantry, turrets, etc.), or Support (air units, ally-assist units, etc.), and you can switch to a different type of crawler anytime during a match. As in World in Conflict, all units are free: You can produce as many as you want, whenever you want, up to a limit set by the mission. If a unit dies, it can be replaced by one or more units equal to its value, but you can never breach the maximum limit.
Because more powerful units take up more cap space than less powerful ones, it's almost impossible for one side to gain a qualitative advantage over the other. You can spam small stuff (usually the most effective method) or hold out for the big bashers, but your opponent will always have the same relative strength. This makes for little risk in losing units; if your enemy builds units you're weak against, simply scuttle all your dudes and retool to get units they're weak against, and then they'll do the same, etc. In other words, straight fights in C&C4 play a lot like a boxing match between two guys with iron jaws and teensy weensy hands. You and your opponent can pound away at each other till you're both spent like an addict's last dollar, but nobody's knocking anybody out.