Back in 2020, alongside the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, EA released a portion of the source code for Red Alert and the original game. Now, five years later, that code has been "fully recovered" and made public alongside the source code for Renegade and Generals.

"Over the past year I have been working alongside the amazing C&C stakeholders here at EA to restore the Perforce source code archives for the C&C games back to buildable states, which now provides us with the ability to patch these classic games in a deeper way going forward," community veteran Luke "CCHyper" Feenan, who also worked with EA on the release of the Remastered Collection, says in today's announcement. "As a long time modder, it was amazing to finally get a chance to deep dive into the source code for these games and see how they work!"

The full source code for all four games is now available on the EA GitHub page. Feenan notes that "for those of you in the community who know me, you will be familiar with my strong advocacy for video game preservation and my support for the video game open-source community." Indeed, the release of code like this is perhaps the best gesture a major publisher like EA can make toward game preservation.

Remasters - like the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection itself - can help keep a game available to modern audiences, but technology is going to keep marching on, and someday the official versions C&C will almost certainly be left behind again. The release of source code like this gives the community incredible options to keep these games in working shape for years to come.

But game preservation is also about more than just making sure everyday gamers can keep playing old classics. It's also about saving the history of how these games came to be. One of the big efforts of the Video Game History Foundation is preserving "source" - not just code, but the art and other assets used in a game's creation. Source code often offers some of the greatest insights available on a game's development, and it's equally valuable to modders and historians.

For most publishers, the idea of "preservation" starts and ends with reselling old games back to you, which is why I'm so happy to see EA go the extra mile with Command & Conquer here. (If only it'd take that same step with The Sims.) Here's hoping more publishers follow that lead.

Of course, the most immediate benefit of having source available is for modders, and there's more news on the modding front, too. EA is also enabling Steam Workshop support for Renegade, Generals, Tiberium Wars, Red Alert 3, and Tiberian Twilight, allowing you to easily download custom maps. The Mission Editor and World Builder tools have also been updated to let modders directly upload their creations to the Workshop.

Command & Conquer remains a mainstay among the best RTS games.

EA has announced that the source code for Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert will be released alongside the Remastered Collection next month. That's in addition to the new map editor included with the remaster, so expect bigger and better Command & Conquer mods in the near future.

"Today we are proud to announce that alongside the launch of the Remastered Collection, Electronic Arts will be releasing the TiberianDawn.dll and RedAlert.dll and their corresponding source code under the GPL version 3.0 license. This is a key moment for Electronic Arts, the C&C community, and the gaming industry, as we believe this will be one of the first major RTS franchises to open source their source code under the GPL," reads the announcement from EA.

With the Command & Conquer source code out in the open, modders will undoubtedly have a field day making dramatic changes to the games' maps, art style, and gameplay. Producer Jim Vessella gave us an example of just one way the DLL files can be used to engineer custom Command & Conquer experiences. Behold up above the Nuke Tank, which is what Remastered devs imagined would happen if Nods came across a Mammoth Tank.

It wasn't all good news, though. Vessella also announced that despite earlier plans, LAN play isn't coming to the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection at launch. Apparently, the pandemic affected development on that feature to the point where it's been delayed to an unspecified date. Though, with social-distancing guidelines still firmly in place, it might be for the better for now anyway.

You can pre-order the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection from Steam ahead of its June 5 release.

Read about how one Command & Conquer voice actor is reprising her role for the remaster 25 years later.

Command & Conquer Remastered is coming to PC via Steam and Origin June 5, EA has announced. The collection, which includes the first two classic real-time-strategy games and their three expansion packs, will be available for free to Origin Access Premier subscribers.

"We’re taking the classic gameplay that ushered in a new era of the RTS genre and adding the most fan requested features like Skirmish mode for Tiberian Dawn, quality of life control improvements, and full Steam integration with UGC support," said EA Lead Producer Jim Vessella in a press release (via Business Wire).

The collection is available digitally for $20, or you can get a Special Edition physical copy for $60, or the 25th Anniversary Edition for $150. No matter which way you go, the collection includes Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Command & Conquer: Red Alert, three expansion packs: Covert Ops, Counterstrike, and The Aftermath. 

All editions boast 4K resolution and a remastered soundtrack from the series' original composer Frank Klepacki. Other new features include a revamped UI, updated controls, and a new map editor. Both games now include modern multiplayer trappings like custom games, 1v1 quick match, Elo-based matchmaking, leaderboards, replays, "and much more."

It's been a while since I've played a Command & Conquer game, specifically 20 years ago when there was an internet cafe across the street from my childhood home. Sounds like it's time for a good ol' fashioned LAN party.

Enough waxing nostalgic - here are the best upcoming games of 2020 and beyond.

Voice actress Kia Huntzinger recorded her lines for Command & Conquer 25 years ago, but somewhere in that span of time, the tapes were lost. Thus, when EA began developing the remaster, they took the sensible approach and hired Huntzinger to reprise her role. Fortunately, the actress sounds nearly identical to how she used to.

Check out this comparison video of her lines as recorded in 1995 and 2019:

In a developer update, Producer Jim Vessella regales readers with the story of Huntzinger's work on Command & Conquer, via composer Frank Klepacki. Huntzinger was working at Westwood Studios at the time, frequently leaving voicemails and paging the company intercom. 

According to Klepacki's story, Audio Director Paul Mudra found her voice fitting to the role of EVA and Huntzinger eagerly accepted the job. As Westwood was still a young studio at the time, the lines were recorded in a padded closet.

The remaster is being handled by Petroglyph Studio, which was formed by Westwood Studios employees who resigned as EA shut down Westwood Pacific. Needless to say, Huntzinger likely won't be recording her lines in a broom closet this time around.

Command & Conquer: Remastered will include the original game as well as the Red Alert spin-off. EA has chosen to carry over the legacy work for Red Alert's announcer, as the original voice actor, Martin Alper, who was also President of Virgin Interactive at the time, sadly passed away in 2015.

25 years after the original Command & Conquer, here are the 30 best PC games to play right now. 

Electronic Arts has stopped development on the free-to-playCommand & Conquer and disbanded its development studio. A post on the official site's news section revealed that negative response to the game's alpha trial spurred the decision.

"Part of being in a creative team is the understanding that not all of your choices are going to work out. In this case, we shifted the game away from campaign mode and built an economy-based, multiplayer experience," the update read. "Your feedback from the alpha trial is clear: We are not making the game you want to play. That is why, after much difficult deliberation, we have decided to cease production of this version of the game."

EA plans to refund any money players have spent in the game over the next 10 days.

Game Informer contacted EA and confirmed that Victory Games, the studio which has worked on the game since its inception as Command & Conquer: Generals 2, is no more. The publisher will attempt to find other positions within the company for its employees wherever possible.

"We believe that Command & Conquer is a powerful franchise with huge potential and a great history, and we are determined to get the best game made as soon as possible," the post concluded. "To that end, we have already begun looking at a number of alternatives to get the game back on track. We look forward to sharing more news about the franchise as it develops."

Many remember Command & Conquer: Generals fondly--the 2003 RTS rivals Warcraft III for the best three-dimensional strategy game of its time. It took the classic C&C gameplay, with warfare between a mix of foot soldiers and vehicles, and spruced it up with Generals Abilities, godlike powers that could turn the tide of a crucial battle or give your troops an incremental advantage. You can think of Command & Conquer as the spiritual sequel to Generals, infusing that game's best elements with more character and wrapping them all up in a balanced free-to-play package.

The first order of business is picking the General that best suits you. Generals are the larger-than-life military personas that act as your in-game avatar, each with their own combat specialty. Each of the three available factions--EU (European Union), APA (Asian Pacific Alliance), and GLA (Global Liberation Army)--have their own stable of exclusive Generals who enhance your army in a different way. Take Dr. Thrax, for example: a fan-favorite GLA General who's back in action. Thrax brings biochemical weapon expertise to the table, letting you choke out enemy infantry with airborne poison or unleash a full-on Toxin Tank.

C&C is also a far more modern game than its predecessor, particularly in the realm of racial sensitivity. As in, you don't have to worry about feeling uncomfortable when your General feels like a blatant caricature; the Generals in C&C's lineup, while still silly, feel much more like stylized characters than ethnic cartoons. The visuals have also gotten a hefty upgrade, thanks to the power of the Frostbyte engine. It's all looking quite impressive so far, and the closer C&C gets to open beta, the more hyped we are to discover our favorite General.

Check out the following screenshots for additional info and impressions!

EA and Victory Games are bringing back the classic Command & Conquer series to PC gamers everywhere, but not in the way you might expect. The new C&C is going free-to-play, and the developers are promising some big things for the franchise and the return of some fan favorite features. C&C is going back to its roots, and bringing all of the full-scale warfare and destruction that the series is known for.

We took an early look at the game in a recent visit to EA, talked to the developers, and played some of the game for ourselves. Victory Games is taking on a big project here, and it seems to be far more ambitious than anything they've done before. Here's everything you need to know about the next Command & Conquer.

Victory Games is moving EA's premiere real-time strategy series to the free-to-play space. Now, we know what you're thinking. You're wondering if you'll be nickel-and-dimed into spending way more money than you want to purchase armies, expansions, and what have you. But good news: C&C doesn't require you to buy anything to stay competitive.

Players will be able to purchase in-game content for gameplay, customization and convenience modifications, all bought by using earned in-game currency or real-life Benjamins (well, maybe Lincolns--the developers haven't announced price-ranges yet). These items will come in the form of Generals themes for gameplay (we'll explain this later), unit skins for customization, and money and experience bonuses for those who don't have much time on their hands. Plus, other than microtransactions, and being completely free-to-play, C&C's new game model has a few more advantages--but more on that later.

Frostbite has been adapted from the first-person shooter-centric engine used in Battlefield 3. And with it, unit animations, overall visuals, and in-game physics have gotten a noticeable boost. In addition to being able to fully realize highly detailed environments in the upcoming RTS, EA's Frostbite engine allows players to completely destroy buildings and other parts of the environment.

As a result, Frostbite's destructible environments affect gameplay strategy. Being able to blow buildings to smithereens and drive through the rubble drastically changes the strategy of taking over enemy bases. But the gameplay still feels decidedly old school. Tanks and vehicles turn on a dime, making the gameplay incredibly fast-paced with precise, instant unit movements. Unit paths still aren't entirely realistic and there aren't any unit formation options available (yet).

Anyone who has played the old C&C strategy games will feel right at home. You'll start a match, gather resources, build yourself a base, create an army, then go out to demolish the competition with a cavalcade of tanks, troops, and aircraft. The controls are fairly standard for an RTS, but the developers are making an effort to create an interface and mechanics easy enough for beginners to get the hang of. At the same time, there seems to be plenty of complexity with unit upgrades and determining efficient build orders to keep the veterans satisfied.

In addition to sending your units to victory or death, developing your base quickly is a huge part of winning a battle. Standard structures can be upgraded, allowing you to build advanced structures, giving you better units, and more powerful armies. From our playtime with the game, it seemed that the more aggressive player took control of the battle more easily than a player that turtled behind base defenses.

At launch, Command & Conquer will include the factions and gameplay elements of the the Generals universe--meaning the themed Generals will be making a return. Generals allow you to customize your faction with the special themes, like toxic weapons, air force, laser, and nuke, that give you specific powers, units, and structures, which will greatly affect your play style. Even more Generals will be added regularly through the live service, giving you plenty of ways to alter your factions.

The Generals themselves also have a personality that comes with them. In game matches, the Generals will taunt and threaten players as attacks commence. They are also customizable, but the developers haven't gone into exactly how you will be able to personalize your commanders.

Since C&C will be kicking off at launch in the Generals universe, the first three factions shown will be coming from that series as well. Each of the three initial factions is different from the other and use different battle strategies. The Asia Pacific Alliance (APA) is an evolution of the China faction from the original game, and they take on the horde strategy--sending large numbers of low tier units to conquer enemies.

The other two factions are the European Union (EU) and the Global Liberation Army (GLA). The EU is a high-tech faction that's fairly straightforward, relying on heavy tanks and requiring you to build structures within the small radius of their power generators (like the Protoss' Pylons in StarCraft). The GLA is a terrorist group that specializes in toxic weaponry, guerrilla tactics, and customized, black market weapons. Suicide bombers and nuke trucks allow for devastating hit and run attacks, while rocket-bearing, invisible insurgents can engage in surprise attacks from bunkers and bombed out city buildings.

While there won't be a dedicated single-player campaign in C&C at launch, there will be several multiplayer modes ready for players to blow each other up. Not all are competitive. We had a chance to play the new co-op Onslaught mode which is like a two player horde match against one enemy AI faction. Players have to coordinate defenses at their shared base and defend against waves of enemy units, with each wave getting progressively more difficult.

For direct competition, the standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, and domination modes will be available when the game releases, and Victory promises there will be plenty more coming in the future.

To support the greater online community, Victory Games is adding features such as a persistent player profiles, achievements, and other social aspects like clan ladders, Generals challenges, and live maps of ongoing sessions. Clan support, clan ladders, replays, and spectator mode are also all in the pipe. C&C will even take some ideas from Battlefield 3's Battlelog, like the constantly updating friends feeds.

The developers are focused on making the ultimate Command & Conquer hub, a place where you can get everything you want and need when you get the hankering for exploding tanks and building armies. But with every social interaction online, Victory Games will be watching and taking notes on how to improve their game. But what does that mean? Well...

With the move to always-online play, C&C's developers get a few benefits in the form of player feedback. There won't be any C&C expansions to buy; instead, there'll be additional content implemented into the game on a regular basis. Best of all, it will be catered to everything that players are enjoying the most.

The developers will also be constantly monitoring (Big Brother is watching) the actions and feedback from the community. Victory Games is saying that when the game launches it will only be the beginning. More content will be released, gameplay mechanics can be tweaked, and players' voices will be heard. We don't know about you, but a constantly evolving Command & Conquer beast sounds incredibly enticing.

There you have it. Everything there is to know about the upcoming free-to-play Command & Conquer has been laid out before you. So what do you think? Do you have any worries about the new free-to-play model? Are you excited about it? Let us know in the comments below.

Be sure to check out our other articles: PS4 - Everything we know and PS4 games - Every single one announced so far.

EA and developer Phenomic are taking the Command & Conquer series in a completely new direction with Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances. For starters, Tiberium Alliances is a browser-based and free-to-play. Billed as a MMO strategy title, senior producer Martin Lohlein explains that his team is trying to broaden the Command & Conquer experience. “What we’re looking at, is an experience which is spread across the day in small session,” says Lohlein.

Set between Command & Conquer 2 and 3, players will choose between the GDI and NOD factions. After selecting a starting point for your base, you’ll begin to learn the basics of base building through the in-game tutorial. Everything is simple at first. You’ll build some harvesters, watch them gather Crystals and Tiberium for a while – and start building some more advanced structures.

But as you continue playing, the game really picks up. Soon, you’ll be re-arranging the placement of your various buildings to maximize the number of bonuses you’ll receive by keeping certain buildings and units close to each other. You’ll start looking towards building up your army and leveling up your units as you start attacking camps springing up from the Forgotten. As a new player, you won’t have to worry about other players attacking your own base. But after a few days, you’ll start seriously considering how to better your defenses for the inevitable attacks to come.

The clock is always ticking in Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances. In one minute and twenty seconds, I’ll have earned another Command Point, which can be used to attack a nearby camp for some extra resources and a Supply Crate. In the meantime, one of my Tiberium Silos has filled up, which will give me resources to spend on an upgrade I’ve been waiting to purchase to improve my production of Energy – and in ten minutes and forty-three seconds, I should have enough Energy to upgrade my Pitbull vehicle that will do extra damage to buildings, which brings me back to that Command Point I’ve been waiting for. Finally, I can launch my attack against that nearby camp – but once that’s over, I’m certain that all the tickers counting down the time to my next round of resource and bonus collection payoffs will grab my attention. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night!

Before launching an attack, you’ll be able to see your enemy’s base and you’ll have to do your best to place your attacking army units accordingly either to maximize damage to the defender’s army, or the base behind their line of defense, or a mix of both. Once you click to begin your attack, your army presses forward fighting and clashing with enemy defenders or buildings in the base itself.
Spread throughout the world map are Forgotten camps and outposts, which become more heavily fortified with increasingly higher rewards for razing them as you get closer to the center of the map. Eventually, you’ll need to partner up with other players to form alliances to take on these tougher bases and also to protect yourself from attacks from other players.

And this is where balance for different gameplay styles comes into play. If another player destroys your base, you’ll have to relocate your base. It’s not fun to have your base destroyed, but it’s fairly easy to recover from a defeat while you are away. But as the more hardcore players in larger more organized alliances press forward towards the center of the map for the bigger challenges and rewards, more casual players who prefer PvE will find their bases creeping outward, where it’s safer.

Above: Here's a look at combat against a base that belonging to an NPC from the Forgotten faction. Forgotten camps will be more challenging to destroy and will yield more rewards as you push towards the center of the map

At its core, Tiberium Alliances shares a lot of common ground with Facebook games, giving you lots of options to click on and think about while waiting for various timers to cool down. But in spirit, it really does feel like a Command & Conquer game in terms of the look of the units, and amount the amount of depth available to customize your base structure and army.

Phenomic is also working on a Tiberium Alliances mobile app. “We have this mobile front end in early testing at this time,” explains Lohlein. “At the core, it’ll still run in the browser. What we plan to do is do apps which actually handle caching for you. But effectively, the app will also run the game in the browser.”

Tiberium Alliances really does show its strength when played here and there throughout the day in fifteen to twenty minute play sessions – and since we started playing the closed beta, it’s never been far from our minds and almost always open in a browser tab. Trust us it’s incredibly addicting once you get through the tutorial. Or don’t! The game has just entered the open beta stage, so you can head to the official site to try it for yourself right now.

Heres a good example of what a GDI base will look like once you begin. This player has a few harvesters spread across his mineral fields with a few buildings to boost production of Tiberium, Crystals, and Energy.

Heres a look at a GDI base where the player has had more time to develop. You can see that hes now mining all his resources very efficiently, which will help him build up his attacking and defending armies more quickly. More advanced building types will provide more options for both offensive and defensive units as you level them up.

Soon, it'll be time to start thinking about expanding further and starting a second base to ramp up production for your war efforts.

This is your army tab. Here, we see a well-rounded army with nice mix of infantry, ground vehicles, and air forces. Youll need to be a little patient and make it past the early stages of the game to be able to afford an army like this.

Before combat begins, youll be able to look at how your enemy has set up their defenses and buildings at their base (for both NPC and real players). Once you click to begin your attack, your army will march forward. Any units that make it past the defenders line of defense will begin damaging the bases buildings.

The closing weeks of last year saw Command and Conquer reappear as a thing to be considered by players of 2012, with the unveiling of a free-play installment and announcement of a big-budget Generals sequel courtesy of BioWare. If only there were a way to combine “AAA C&C complexity” with “free, browser-based quick-play.” And here is just such a thing (kind of), in the form of the groundbreaking original title squeezed into HTML and Javascript.

As programmer Aditya Ravi Shankar tells it on his humble homepage, Journey to Perfection, he'd successfully created a Breakout clone within HTML and decided he'd like a slightly bigger challenge. Shankar hit upon the idea of rebuilding Westwood's alt-history extravaganza as a browser app. Truth be told, it's still somewhat of a curio, with Shankar himself admitting the “work-in-progress” would benefit from further improvement – but then again, here's this thing that 15 years ago people would upgrade their computers for, and now you can play it in Firefox. Pair it up with Quake, add some Commander Keen, and your browser's really going to be quite the enviable little gaming box by mid-90s standards.

EA isn't kidding around about bringing Command & Conquer back. Beyond giving BioWare, one of it's best studios, creative lead on Command & Conquer: Generals 2, the publisher is also readying a free-to-play MMORTS for launch as well.

It's called Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances, and it's being developed by Phenomic. While this is the C&C series first MMORTS, it's not Phenomic's - the developer handled several other MMOs for EA, including Battleforge and Lord of Ultima. EA is claiming that the game, which takes place in the Tiberium universe (despite EA's claims that C&C4 would be the last game to dabble in that timeline), will be the "first truly portable MMO game with cross-platform accessibility on web browsers and mobile devices," which obviously separates it a good deal from the other games in the franchise. The game will be free, and utilize in-game social and news update feeds to keep players connected to their game, no matter where they are.

“We’re hoping to deliver an experience that will allow our loyal fans to play their favorite franchise anywhere they go, while introducing the exciting world of Tiberium to new players,” said Martin Löhlein, Senior Producer, Phenomic

You can check out the trailer below, or you can visit the game's website to sign up for the beta. So, think this will make the wait for C&C: Generals 2 less excruciating, or more?

Welcome to GamesRadar's daily blast of all things pertaining to the ever-growing field of game music. Each post will introduce new sounds, games, composers and fan-made remixes of gaming's greatest aural achievements.

August 16, 2010

Game: Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Song: Hell March
Composer: Frank Klepacki

Above: Hell March, Red Alert's signature track

Red Alert is the only game I've ever considered paying homage to with a tattoo, so this is a pretty obvious entry for my fanboy ass, but so be it. I'll get to the obscure stuff some other time - first, you must hear Frank Klepackti's kick-ass industrial-electrofunk-metal soundtrack. Above is the game's most well-known song, Hell March, a great track created with a simple idea in mind: "a rock tune to marching boots."

Klepackti has cited Nine Inch Nails as an influence, and you can probably hear it. Funnily, Klepackti's work was awarded Best Soundtrack of 1996 by PC Gamer, beating out Trent Reznor's Quake soundtrack from the same year (Reznor's work was also excellent, but I'll save that for another GMOTD). Oh, and if you're familiar with the pioneering German industrial band KMFDM, I hear a little of their flavor in the tracks too, among other industrial influences.

But Hell March is only the beginning. My favorite track, Roll Out, is an electro/prog rock anthem full of candy-coated synth bass. Who knew tank rushes could be so funky?! And what the hell does "candy-coated synth bass" mean?! I don't know, just listen:

Above: Kraftwerk meets The Alan Parson's Project! (You can't write about music without saying that something met something... it's actually nothing like that)

Surprisingly, you can still buy the whole soundtrack online. All of the songs are great stand-alone listening, but the experience is so much better overlaid with the bling bling bling of freshly acquired ore, the wooshes of rockets, and the lovely news that REINFORCEMENTS HAVE ARRIVED. If you didn't hear those sounds coming from my bedroom in 1996, I was either asleep, at school, or dead.

Aug 16, 2010

One of the best songs from one of the best side-scrolling shooters to grace the Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Game music of the day: BioShock
Welcome to Rapture. Submerse yourself in some of our favorite tracks from the game

In a very unconventional sort of surprise ending, Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, the finale of the Tiberium storyline, abandons the basic mechanics the series is built on (kind of like Highlander 2, but not as insane). In fact, virtually nothing connects C&C4 to its long heritage - gameplay is far more reminiscent of World in Conflict than C&C. If not for Joe Kucan and his shiny, goateed dome reprising the role of paramilitary cult leader Kane, and the faction names Nod and GDI, C&C4 could be an unrelated sci-fi tactical strategy game.

How different is it? Instead of harvesting Tiberium resources to build a sturdy base and a diverse army, you deploy a specialized Crawler - a walking, rolling or flying distant relative of C&C’s Mobile Construction Vehicles - in a designated spot on the map, and unfold it to crank out units for free until you hit your unit cap. You then pack up your Crawler, advance (or retreat) to wherever the new front line might be, unpack it again and replenish your forces. If your Crawler is destroyed in battle, you just deploy a new one. So yeah, it’s pretty different.

The pace of combat is constant. Even when you lose every unit you’ve got, it only takes a couple of minutes to go from just your Crawler back up to a full-strength army. No costs are incurred except for build time, so the only incentive to keep units alive is veteran bonuses, earned through combat and from picking up Pac-Man-like power-pellet drops from fallen enemies. Pathfinding is fussy, which is a hassle when trying to ensure that your favorite unit gets the pickup, but I love the visual upgrades (like extra arms on the Nod Avatar walker) when you snag a rare blue powerup.

On that note, the Crawler animations are cool but, on the whole, C&C4 is a graphical step back from C&C: Red Alert 3 - for instance, textures are less detailed, and the weaksauce nuclear missiles look like something Wile E. Coyote might launch at the Road Runner.

What’s most impressive about this game is that with three types of Crawler per faction, there are essentially six distinct armies. And unlike the sub-factions of C&C3: Kane’s Wrath, no overlap exists between the Offense, Defense and Support unit lineups. The choice of which specialization to play is meaningful, since each will force you to adapt your strategies to its strengths. For example, a GDI Support player can’t match a Nod Offensive player’s firepower, but his Orca VTOL craft can easily pick apart an undefended Crawler. If your chosen Crawler isn’t working out, you can always pick another class when you respawn.

Units are in abundant supply - a few are pretty cool, like the giant UFO-ish Nod gunships. But unlike nearly every other RTS, you can’t jump into a skirmish against AI and immediately play with all of your toys, because most of them must be laboriously unlocked with experience points, which are logged on EA’s servers. I get what they’re going for here - the same type of reward system you see in Battlefield 2 or Modern Warfare 2 that unlocks new weapons the more you play - but to hell with that. I want to understand the units available to me and my enemies before I see them in battle, and I don’t want to get stomped by a guy online who’s unlocked GDI’s AT-AT-alike Mastodon walker before me.

Only one capture-point-based mode is available on the dozen multiplayer maps, all of which support up to five-on-five games. But these maps are too small for a fracas of that size to be anything less than a whirling explosion cyclone. Two-on-two or three-on-three matches are just about right for an enjoyable pace.

My favorite multiplayer trick is using the Tiberium pickups as bombs instead of redeeming them for upgrade points. A unit can carry the glowing green chunk into combat and detonate it, causing a Tiberium storm that does massive damage to anything caught inside its radius.

One C&C tradition that remains intact is the signature live-action cutscene briefings. C&C4 takes a slightly different approach - gone are the hammed-up and stunt-casted performances and catsuit-wrapped Battestar Galactica babes. Although it’s a darker, more serious story, it’s not what I’d call great storytelling, and doesn’t reveal the details about Kane’s apparent immortality that we were promised. But thematically, it does do some interesting things that turn the Nod/GDI conflict on its head.

As a single-player experience, C&C4 is a bust. The single branching campaign (the Nod/GDI choice happens a few missions in) is fairly typical, but there are several points where it’s frustratingly unbalanced. I ran up against a Nod Crawler that pumped out units faster than I could kill them. In another mission, a massive GDI gunship flew in mindless circles around the map, its huge cannons obliterating units in one shot. In both cases I eventually won, but only by tediously whittling the target down with a constant stream of suicidal units. Not exactly fun.

When you call in co-op reinforcements by seamlessly inviting another player into your game, the action becomes better balanced, faster-paced (since two Crawlers build units twice as fast as one) and more tactically interesting thanks to the combined options of two classes. It’s still second-fiddle to the competitive multiplayer action, but it’s a good place to start out and learn how the Crawler works - plus you rack up some experience points to unlock some decent units before going into the more interesting multiplayer fray.

A nasty catch to playing C&C4 is having to log into EA’s servers before launching the game, even for single-player. Considering that EA recently shut down servers for the less than two-year-old Mercenaries 2, I’m not enthusiastic about buying a product that depends on active servers to play. The multiplayer battles are good enough fun once you’ve ranked up, but a potentially short-lived service is a dagger dangling over our heads.

PC Gamer scores games on a percentage scale, which is rounded to the closest whole number to determine the GamesRadar score.

PCG Final Verdict: 73%

Mar 16, 2010

Outlandish humor, intentionally cheesy live-acting, and an “anything goes” attitude are all fine trademarks of the Command & Conquer Red Alert series, separating it from other standard real-time strategy games by a thick, barbed-wire wall of silliness. What’s not to love about sending sonic laser-equipped dolphin attack squads, giant Japanese robot mechs, pig-tailed psionic schoolgirls, and armored Soviet war bears charging into battle? Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Commander’s Challenge distills the core gameplay into a standalone, challenge-based expansion that’s light on plot and heavy on the difficulty.

Taking up arms as a commander for FutureTech, a high-tech weapons developer with untoward aims, you’ve recently uncovered the schematics to construct the basic military units and installations of the Red Alert’s main factions (The Soviets, The Allies, and The Empire of the Rising Sun). With this hot intelligence in-hand, your new assignment is to swoop in amidst all the squabbling and chaos between the three factions and “acquire” the technological knowhow to launch FutureTech to the top of the military food chain. This sets you up nicely to dive into a branching series of 50 different missions (divided into main challenges and side challenges) that, when completed satisfactorily, will unlock new badass units for you to throw at opponents.

Commander’s Challenge plays like any other RTS. You’ll start most missions by establishing a base, mining ore resources, and erecting power generation stations as the foundation for your growing army. There are special abilities to research, buildings to upgrade, defenses to lay out, and tons of units to stockpile. Thanks to the plot setup, you can play as any of the three factions for any mission. Though they have many similarities, each has its own quirks to consider strategically and other unique factors that make it enjoyable to hop around between the three from time to time. Scenarios range widely in terms of scope and strategies. Most can be defeated by staying alive long enough to bolster a large force and send it thundering across the screen, leaving lots of bodies and debris in its path. However, reaching critical mass in each stage isn’t easy.

Red Alert 3 on the PC was a force to be reckoned with, but the series’ gameplay is downright unwieldy on consoles. You can do a lot with the controls in Commander’s Challenge, but there’s no substitute for a mouse and a keyboard. Selecting, grouping, and managing large numbers of units in different areas of the map feels imprecise and tricky, often railroading you into the less strategic approach of gathering everyone in one spot and embarking on a destructive rampage en-masse.

Beyond control issues, it’s not always clear how to best use the units and resources at your disposal. The tutorial does a solid (and funny) job of introducing basic and advanced strategies, but moments of confusion are still bound to still crop up in the midst of battle. The lack of checkpoints or inability to save your progress within a mission can make for some frustrating trial and error in some of the tougher levels. Even with its problematic moments, Commander’s Challenge has hours of tough and intense gameplay to offer console owners with a hankering for more Red Alert 3 action.

Sep 28, 2009

See, we always knew that bald guy known only as Kane was a decent fellow. He was just misunderstood, only wanting a better world for the entire human race. Granted, he may be responsible for the deaths of thousands and his insane quest for personal deification and radioactive tiberium crystals is the reason the world has turned into a bleak, green, irradiated wasteland. But forgive and forget? Everyone makes mistakes, after all.

Now Kane’s trying to make amends, which is why he’s approaching the GDI (Global Defence Initiative – C&C’s goodies) with a plan, one that might just save the putrid galactic scab one might call Earth. His plan is simple – an alliance. The GDI and Kane’s Brotherhood of Nod (the baddies) working together to push back the tiberium menace and help get the planet back on its feet.

Introduced in one of those gloriously campy (and now superbly hi-res) movies that the Command & Conquer series is renowned for, Kane holds some strange orb in his hand while he makes the proposition. The GDI guys look a bit nervous, but we know they decide to agree, perhaps after some tough negotiation or maybe just after a curry and a night out on the tiberium cocktails. While we don’t know yet who will actually make an appearance (we know for sure Ric Flair won’t be in it, sadly) the cast are sure to bring life to the story, as they’ve always done.

This meeting takes place 10 years after the events of the previous game. Fast forward another 15 and you’ve got the present day in C&C4 terms. The plan is coming to fruition, the Tiberium Control Network is almost complete and the two factions have been skipping merrily together in tiberium-free fields for a decade and a half. A new golden age for humanity is said to be dawning. So, of course, as is the way of things in game land, things go terribly, terribly wrong. We don’t know how they go wrong, nor would we tell you if we did, because it would spoil the story. But it does and the GDI and Nod are back at each others’ throats once again, the fate of mankind in the balance once more.

One of the things Jim Vessella, producer on the C&C4 project, was eager to stress was the notion of appealing to both hardcore and new users. A common enough refrain, of course, and one that is hardly easy to attain. To be fair to him, it does seem like the game could be significantly different to its predecessors, although not in a “shit, they’ve ruined it!” kind of way. There’s definitely more of a “hmm, that sounds interesting” vibe to the project at the moment. How much you agree with that statement depends on the following passages, so let’s get cracking.

Essentially C&C4 is the same game as all the others. You build a base with a mobile MCV (called a Crawler in this one – well, ish... we’ll get back to this a little later) and set about churning out a big army of tanks, infantry, engineers and other instruments of mechanised destruction. You can do this as either the GDI or the Brotherhood of Nod, each with their own distinct units.

The first place C&C4 differs from its ancestors is that you have to choose a class, which basically means choosing between Offence, Defence and Support unit load-outs. Each one has its own specific roster with unique roles to play. For example, using Defence gives you heavy turrets to deploy, but very little in the way of quick, incisive attack troops with which to gain ground; offence does the opposite; and Support gives you the option to properly utilise aircraft, artillery and transports. You must pick one of these before starting a game, so it’ll be important to think about what you plan to do or what your preferred style is.

This is absolutely essential to what EA Los Angeles are planning for C&C4, specifically when you consider that you can’t actually be defeated. This doesn’t mean that your units are invincible – far from it – but if your Crawler (or the equivalent depending on which class you’ve chosen – the Crawler is used for the GDI’s Offence class) is destroyed, it isn’t the end of the world. You’ll then get the chance to respawn as either the same class or a different one. How well this idea will work can only be divined from a proper play test, of course, but it has the potential to make irritating build-and-rush tactics less of a pain in the backside.

While we’re still sure that quick-fingered and quick-rushing gameplay will be essential to mastering the game, Vessella stresses the effort the development team are putting in to shift the balance of power towards a middle ground, where people who don’t even know what a hotkey is could have a chance of putting up a good fight.

The respawns, which could be unlimited or regulated by the chosen difficulty level, will also go some way to helping players alleviate the frustration of sudden rush deaths. Vessella believes that C&C4 will be more layered strategically than previous games in the series, with longer missions than in Red Alert 3 and more changing up of tactics because of the extra mobility provided by the Offence and Support classes.

Finally, we come to probably the biggest change to the C&C formula – persistent XP. Killing units, destroying structures and completing objectives all earn you experience, which allows you to unlock new units to use later on in the campaign. However, this can also be earned in the skirmish and multiplayer modes. We think this could be rife for abuse -players perhaps setting up easy win games in the skirmish mode and just grinding experience. Vessella recognises this, but doesn’t believe it’ll be a problem. In fact, it will be a definite bonus for inexperienced players who can “buff” themselves with practice in the other modes, bringing better units to the difficult campaign mission they previously failed to crack.

One thing we’re aware of that leaves a sour taste is that C&C4 needs a constant internet connection. EA say it’s down to players’ progress needing to be tracked at all times. So it’s not DRM… sort of. It seems to us that C&C4 could be the game that brings back players bored of the same old mechanic used since, effectively, 1995. While not reinventing the wheel, EA Los Angeles have definitely gone beyond the minute token changes we so often associate with big name releases from established franchises.

Whether these alterations work or not is a matter for you yourself, depending on your love/loathing of the base-building RTS mechanic, but what we’re certain of is that, for the first time since the late ’90s, we're really looking forward to playing Command & Conquer. That’s definitely saying something.

An interview with Jim Vessella, Producer, EA LA

You’re making some distinct changes to Command & Conquer 4’s gameplay. Will the hardcore approve?

We think the hardcore players will like the progression system. In terms of being a completionist, I’m kind of that way in games and I like to get everything and unlock everything, we’re going to have certain challenges in there that are really tough that hardcore players can really go after.

In terms of strategic depth, we’re not removing it – we’re opening it up. The Crawler you can kind of go anywhere with, whereas in the old C&C it was all about your build order, which is fun for a lot of people who find the perfect order and just execute that time and time again – see how fast you can get, how fast you can build those power plants up – but it does become predictable, so I think with C&C4 it’s going to be a more evolving experience. People are going to find great strategies, but the Crawler can really vary it up, pulling a fast one on the enemy.

We’re hoping the hardcore player can find a home in C&C4 and be able to really enjoy some of the new things we’re trying, but it is a different game, for sure.

How about the modding community? Are they being catered to?

We’re not disclosing too much about C&C4’s mod support. We’re glad that people have actively been taking the Red Alert 3 mod kit and trying some cool things with that. Right now we’re trying to get the launch nailed down and focus on that, but it’s always a really tough trade-off trying to support the mods, SDK and toolkits while doing the launch as well. Often, as you’ve seen in the past, we’ll sometimes release the tools a little bit after we’ve launched the game and we’ve polished them up so they can be used by our fans.

We don’t have an exact plan, so I don’t have any specific details on when modding is available or how it’s going to work, especially in C&C4 as everything ties into the player progression. We’re going to have to do a little bit of research on that and also kind of ask the community how they think it should work.

The C&C series is famous for having big-name celebrities in its cutscenes. So will Ric Flair be appearing anywhere?

I can categorically say that Ric Flair won’t be back! We’re not unveiling the cast just yet, but we’re obviously delighted to have Joe Kucan back as Kane.

He’s been with the franchise longer than anyone, right from the game’s beginning, so it’s great having him here for what’s going to be the finale of the Tiberium Saga.

Will the Scrin be playable?

We’re going to start out with Nod and GDI and see how the fans react.

How about the Forgotten – humans who’ve been mutated by exposure to tiberium?

They were prominent in Tiberian Sun and we’re going to have a few units in there that can be recruited to your cause. We can go a bit crazy with them as they’ve been affected by tiberium, plus they’ve got a kind of cool little fiction as they’ve been cast away in society, so they’ve got their own agenda and background that we can use in little side stories.

So yeah, we’re going to have more units in terms of the Forgotten than we’ve had in our previous games, which can be recruited by both the GDI and Nod.

Will there be any exploit-ish tactics, like piling Engineers into an APC and unloading them in the middle of the enemy base and capturing everything instantly?

The structures that we currently have can’t be captured by engineers as they’re like fire bases. You can resurrect the husks (vast mega-units that lie dormant on the battlefield), capture tech structures, and so on.

That being said though, we do have some really powerful units – like the commandos – who can do devastating damage to structures, so you could load commandos into an APC and some of our high-end infantry units and drive that into an enemy base.

Actually, the Nod APC burrows, harking back to Tiberian Sun. We’ll see how the fans react to that one, as they can sneak into an enemy base, pop out and spew out all their guys, causing this big firework show inside the base.

Are there any units that can detect burrowing or stealthed vehicles?

The engineers can do that. As long as you have those guys scattered about in your army, you can detect stealth. We also have a few structures that do it too, so there’s a definite counterbalance to the burrowing. But if you get caught off guard, Nod can really take advantage of you.

Sep 18, 2009

Sadly, Red Alert 3 is the latest console RTS to be hamstrung by fiddly controls. It’s a crying shame, because if any strategy series could solve the problem of real-time management using a DualShock and a sharp military mind, you’d bet on the genre-defining Command and Conquer.

However, the problem isn’t – unlike many others – that these controls don’t cover enough commands to allow you to effectively manage your troops: it’s that they’re forced to work with too many possible options. Each unit has at least one secondary attack, two different types of movement, and four stances. You’re asked to make the most of all these while building new troops and structures, managing a co-commander, and calling in special weapons attacks. It’s far too confusing – even after hours of practice.

Another major problem is that it’s tough to keep track of all your troops. There are shortcuts you can access through the Command menu, and units can be grouped for ease of use, but managing them all at once is virtually impossible when there are skirmishes all over the map. What compounds the problem is that all your units seem to have a reckless disregard for personal safety. Ask them to travel to a point on the map, or attack a certain target, and they’ll often take the most dangerous path and end up dead or crippled by the time they arrive.

One big promise EA made about this delayed PS3 version (the PC and 360 versions having already been out since 2008) is that the visuals have been upgraded to make the most of PS3’s hardware. Doesn’t look that way to us. If anything this version looks more colourful – bordering on lurid – but the level of detail in the units and environments seems poor next to the likes of EndWar. Although the cartoon-like visuals fit in with Red Alert’s tongue-in-cheek approach to modern warfare, it feels like EA has gone a bit too crazy with the colour palette. Oh, and the talking pink tanks in the two-hour tutorial: just all kinds of wrong.

Luckily Red Alert’s FMV cut-scenes and cheesy plot threads are present and correct. Before each mission, you’re talked at by the likes of Tim Curry, Jonathan Pryce and George Takei dressed up as faction leaders. Then you’re handed over to your faction’s busty field support (Gemma Atkinson, Kelly Hu or Ivana Milicevic) for a more detailed and aesthetically pleasing mission briefing. The acting in each of these cut-scenes is deliciously hammy – both intentionally and unintentionally depending on who’s facing the camera at the time – and there’s a fun, B-movie feel to the whole game.

Co-op is a saving grace. Every main mission in the campaign can be tackled with a friend on or offline, and with a buddy on-side it makes things so much easier. Instead of managing your co-commander, you can simply bark instructions to your friend, and coordinate your forces more effectively. You can split duties between offensive and defensive, or between ground and naval forces.

With a little paring back and simplification, Red Alert 3 could have been up there with EndWar as a solid console RTS. As it turns out the game only really comes into its own when your superiors are flashing their winning smiles and ample cleavages at you, and in co-op, where there are two of you on hand to wrangle the controls into submission.

Apr 1, 2009

See if you can guess which RTS we’re talking about here: “Your units’ pathfinding abilities are somewhat erratic, they’ll frequently stand around watching a friendly structure get destroyed, and controlling large numbers of them is awkward.” Correct! It was the one you said. And all of them. So we’re used to this stuff. We occasionally conducted shrill, incredulous and rather one-sided conversations with some of our less cooperative soldiers in Red Alert 3, but it didn’t spoil the game for us. We loved it.

It spoils Uprising, a non-costly standalone episode of new single-player campaigns and game modes. There’s a small speck of spittle on our screen as we write this, and the number of heated, profane rows we’ve had with 50-pixel computer game characters in the last few hours is enough that we don’t even recall which was so exasperating as to trigger an actual ejection of saliva mid-vituperation. It’s not something we’re proud of.

There are two reasons Uprising causes particularly acute levels of impotent nerd rage. The first is the missions. They suck conspicuously. Red Alert 3’s campaign had a few duds too, but its prevailing philosophy was that when it took away your tools (like the ability to build a base) it would give you something cool to play with instead (like the KING OF ALL ROBOTS). Uprising’s philosophy is that when it takes away your tools (which almost every mission does), it gives the enemy something cool to violate you with (which they do vigorously). When the few units it does let you use start to behave unexpectedly, it’s pretty much Game Over.

The first Soviet mission, which for some reason must be completed to unlock any of the other faction campaigns, is a perfect example. It starts you with a limited number of the most boring unit in the game, and ends with you facing new Allied artillery pieces that can wipe out your entire force before you ever even see them. When your objective instructions are clear, it’s Simon Says: you just have to do what you’re told when you’re told to do it. When they’re not, it’s Simon Wordlessly Incinerates Everyone You’ve Ever Known, Pausing To Flick A Smoldering Cigarrete Onto Their Blackened Bones Before Turning Away In Disgust.

In addition to a mini-campaign for each faction, Uprising also adds the Commander’s Challenge mode: a global campaign in which you choose which mission and which faction to play. The idea is to unlock new units by defeating a commander who uses them, which sounds nice until you consider the obvious implications. As well as giving each of your opponents a cool toy you can’t use, it means you start with no interesting units whatsoever. For mission after mission after mission, it’s tank rush, tank rush, tank rush.

The second reason that Uprising makes us thrash like a petulant schoolboy is that we still love Red Alert. You don’t curse if you don’t care, and we cursed prolifically. We want our Mecha Tengus to follow our VX Choppers properly when we set them all a target because, and we don’t say this often enough, we freaking love Mecha Tengus. We love the new units too: the Soviet Mortar Bikes are swift, flexible and fun, the Empire’s Giga Fortress is a floating head of hilariously fatal deathbeams, and the jetpacking Allied Cryo-Legionnaires talk like a Schwarzeneggian Mr. Freeze.

Interestingly, an old unit is the star of Uprising: psychic Japanese schoolgirl maniac Yuriko Omega. There’s a special prequel campaign in which you play as her alone, with four hotkeys to her special abilities in place of the usual interface. It works at first: this is a genuinely new way to play, and her Telekinesis ability is wonderful to hurl enemies around with. But by the campaign’s conclusion, trying to avoid every unnecessary hitpoint of damage to survive becomes a tiresomely fussy task.

Like the rest of Uprising, the Yuriko campaign is single-player only. And bizarrely, that extends even to the skirmish mode: you can play against the AI, but there’s no Versus mode or multiplayer of any kind. It’s a particular shame because Skirmish is the best way to play: the new units up the kerplosion ante significantly. It proves what should have been obvious: a good game is best when you don’t script it, gimp it or over-restrict it.

The file that runs when you start Uprising is ‘ra3ep1.exe’, which suggests Electronic Arts LA are planning more. If so, we hope they accept that their interface and AI simply aren’t good enough to let the player’s success hinge on a handful of units. And we hope they create something that lets us flex our tactical creativity a little more than this.

Apr 1, 2009

After getting early word that EA is releasing a Red Alert 3 expansion with four new campaigns (each with three to four missions), we called Senior Producer Amer Ajami and demanded answers to our burning questions.

PCG: Which of Red Alert 3’s three endings does Uprising assume really happened?

Amer Ajami: Uprising continues the timeline according to the Allies’ particular version of the game’s events. Truth be told, we tried flipping a coin, but we realized we still liked the idea of the Soviets being the underdogs, and the Empire of the Rising Sun losing the chip off their collective shoulder. The stories of Uprising are told in the aftermath of the RA3 war, with the Soviet Union reeling from the crushing defeat of its scheming leaders, and the Empire of the Rising Sun struggling to regain its honor and identity. The Allies will have their own new problems to deal with, too.

Are any of the game mechanics (such as the new harvesters) being tweaked or revised?

The core mechanics of Uprising are going to be largely similar to those of the base game. We’re happy with how easy it is for players to set up a base and get an economy rolling in, and want to keep the spotlight on intense, fast-paced tactical battles. We’ve got several powerful new units available to each faction, some of which can serve as the cornerstone of new build orders and overarching strategies.

We’ve placed an increased importance on some of the secondary structures in the game to allow players more lateral teching options. Apart from that, we’ve made lots of tweaks to the returning units and interface; many of these changes have already been patched into Red Alert 3. It’s important to us to support our community with ongoing updates, so they know they’ll be getting a lot of value for their money from our new releases.

What types of new units can we expect to see in Uprising?

We’ve added 11 new units, ranging from low-tier infantry to third-tier heavy-hitting behemoths. We wanted to create toys that our audience would find fun and engaging, but more importantly, we wanted units to fill some gaps in the tech trees of all three existing factions. For example, the new Archer Maiden addresses the Empire of the Rising Sun’s relatively insufficient anti-aircraft weaponry in their early game.

The Cryo Legionnaire is a spin on RA2’s Chrono Legionnaire (a unit that many fans of that game wanted to see in RA3). He’s effective at freezing both groups of infantry and individual vehicles. Once frozen, the Cryo’s victims face certain death at the hands (or feet, actually) of his secondary stomp ability. He’s also one of the most micro-intensive units we’ve created. We’ve also given Yuriko (who, not coincidentally, is one of our favorite units from RA3) a suite of new abilities. There are story considerations that we don’t want to give away just yet, but suffice it to say that she has received a significant buff and a campaign of her own.

Will there be new gameplay modes?

We’re introducing the new Commander’s Challenge mode, which is a lengthy series of unique, themed scenarios. Each of these has its own special rules or conditions, limiting access to your units. As you complete each scenario, you’ll unlock new forces to add to the mix. This is proving to be an addictive and fun means of structuring our gameplay, so we’ll be excited to see how players take to it.

Why go with a stand-alone game rather than a traditional expansion pack? Does this mean Uprising will cost more?

It’s quite simple, really. We want to give as many gamers as possible the opportunity to play. And no, that certainly doesn’t mean that Uprising will cost more. In fact, the downloadable version of Uprising will be priced at around $20 for roughly 30 hours of gameplay (including the campaigns and Commander’s Challenge).

Reinforcements have arrived: Three new super-units

Soviets
Stalin’s steamroller, The Grinder, enjoys crushing enemy vehicles (including tier three crushers like the Apocalypse Tank) and structures. Rollin’ over opponents doesn’t slow The Grinder down, and it’s also fully amphibious.

Allies
Behold, the Future Tank X-1: the “boss” unit of the FutureTech themed sub-faction in the Allied campaign. Its heavy armor excels against all ground units, but particularly slow ground units that cannot evade its primary attack.

Empire of the Rising Sun
The largest vehicle in RA3, this Giga-Fortress can transform into a flying siege platform, switching out its weapons system to favor siege cannons in the process. It’s also able to blast the coastline with its rocket launcher and cannon turrets. When transforming from water to sky and back, it will crush any stationary units in its way.

Feb 10, 2009

High above a laser-crossed battlefield, a 700 kilo Brown Bear wearing a metal hat floats gently toward Earth, four paws dangling limply from his parachute harness. It%26rsquo;s hard not to like this game. Red Alert%26rsquo;s always been a hardcore strategy series, but a deeply silly one. Twelve years later, and on a different platform, it%26rsquo;s still both those things.

The plot is that Tim Curry has gone back in time to kill Einstein, in order to prevent the US from achieving military supremacy through nuclear weapons. Curry plays the Soviet Premier, but the scheme also benefits Japan, and so the three superpowers battle it out in this brand new timeline. They%26rsquo;re impressively different: the Allies rely on deception, with tanks that disguise themselves as rocks, the Soviets field Tesla-powered force, and the Japanese Empire use flexibility to compensate for their lack of an airforce. Each faction has their own campaign, and each campaign is designed for co-op play. That%26rsquo;s unprecedented and a profoundly good thing. If you play alone, an AI commander takes charge of half the friendly forces.

Co-op is excellent, but Red Alert 3 doesn%26rsquo;t quite pull off the coup it could have. Too many missions place you and your co-commander miles apart, and give you no reason to cross paths %26ndash; essentially then, you end up playing single-player games in tandem.

The bigger problem is that there%26rsquo;s still no slick way to control a game this complex on a 360 pad %26ndash; it%26rsquo;s like trying to have a conversation via a translator. Technically there%26rsquo;s nothing you can%26rsquo;t say, and it doesn%26rsquo;t take much longer to say it, but some of the immediacy is lost, it%26rsquo;s needlessly circuitous, and the whole thing just feels uncomfortable.

Each unit in Red Alert 3 has a special ability, and selecting which of them should use it and when is fiddly. But on PC the fiddliness is the fun %26ndash; a mouse is designed for fiddling. A controller isn%26rsquo;t, and using it for this just isn%26rsquo;t satisfying, even once you get quick at it. That%26rsquo;s its only major issue. The campaigns are glorious trash, hilariously hammed up in the cutscenes by an expertly chosen geekgasm cast. And the units are inspired: psionic dolphins, human cannonballs, dogs in cars, and yes, parachuting bears. It might not feel at home on 360, but it%26rsquo;s still hard not to like Red Alert 3.

Nov 11, 2008

Port ho! Or, more in keeping with the military chatter of your units, “We haff PC port in our sights!” It’s EA’s second shot at squeezing the PC title onto the 360, this time an expansion pack that focuses on everyone’s favourite baldy megalomaniac as he claws his way back to power. But while Kane’s search for tide-turning tech satisfies the ‘conquer’ quota, commanding is another issue. Apologies for the broken record routine, but the Xbox 360 pad is no substitute for the mouse and keyboard, at least when it comes to playing PC games, which this is. EA’s system of control revolves around a series of command dials, each tab dropping to a further level of strategy for whatever element of the battlefield it commands. For base management it’s a success. You spot a new threat and you’re never more than three clicks away from putting into motion a retaliation plan.

Actually enacting the plan? Not so good. As slick as pumping out units may be, actually selecting them involves all manner of finger gymnastics and the kind of button combo memory that would give Rain Man the willies. The ability to group units into squad tabs on the dial is a neat attempt at hotkeys, but piecing together each squad will lose you countless minutes – not good in an RTS as quick paced as C&C.

While it all fundamentally works, the gist is: on-the-fly tactical decisions are off the table. Each battle has two layers of strategy – how do you beat GDI, and how do you beat the controls. It loses a great deal of fluidity in the process, the tough campaign missions in particular are a grueling exercise in learning by rote. EA need to take a page out of EndWar’s book – reinvent the control scheme for 360 – or Civ Revolution’s – reinvent the gameplay for 360. As it is, Kane’s Wrath, like its predecessor, is a stubborn mule stuck in its PC ways. And yet when the game is throwing around its patented brand of silliness it feels like a perfect fit. The mad live action mission briefings (particularly Joe Kucan hamming it up a treat with kitchen foil wrapped around his mug) and some inventive new unit types are almost worth facing the controls for. Almost, but not quite.

Jul 1, 2008

Despite dismissing reports earlier this morning, EA has confirmed that the PlayStation 3 version of Red Alert 3 has been put on hold.

An EA spokesperson told us that, "development of the PlayStation 3 version of Red Alert 3 is on hold" and that "EA LA was focusing resources on developing for the PC and Xbox 360, for release this Autumn."

The rumours were sparked earlier this week when a walkthrough trailer for the game only listed the title as coming to Xbox 360 and PC. But EA dismissed it as "rumour and speculation" this morning.

No previous EA RTS game (Battle for Middle-Earth, C&C3) has made it beyond PC and Xbox 360.

Red Alert 3 is the first game in the sub-series since Yuri's Revenge in 2001.

Courtesy of CVG.

Jun 5, 2008

We've typed it a thousand times - doing complete justice to the real-time strategy genre on a console is damn near impossible. Just look at what we wrote about the original Command & Conquer 3 in our otherwise favorablereview: "[The game] still hasn't hit on a satisfactory alternative to mouse and keyboard control ... the [developers] have had the better part of a year to come up with a better control scheme and, to be blunt, they just haven't delivered."

Fortunately, the folks behind Command & Conquer 3 are well aware of this problem - this difficulty in translation - and they haven't stopped working to correct it since the game shipped. Now, with the expansion Kane's Wrath, they have a second chance at perfection.

How? Well, we could attempt to describe the new radial "command stick" and how its use of muscle memory makes playing the game a faster and simpler experience. We could try to put into text how helpful things like "true force fire" and "reverse unit movement" really are to a 360 commander. We could go on for paragraphs about the power of issuing orders to your base even when you're entire screens away.

We could... but we figure the game's Lead Producer, Jim Vessella, could explain everything far better. Here he is, explaining why Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath (which releases as a $40 standalone product on June 23) is a deeper, and more importantly, friendlier RTS experience than the original.

May 22, 2008

A quality computer game has many important prerequisites: great gameplay, a terrific story, really immersive atmosphere, etc. The Command and Conquer games are superb RTS experiences but remain relatively unique among other modern games in that they put a lot of effort into their full motion videos, or FMVs. A good game tells a story, but a great game immerses you in its cinematic presentation. But how do these live-action cut scenes hold up against Hollywood? This week, I look at Command and Conquer: Kane’s Wrath and judge its FMV sequences as I would a full-length movie. I’m not expecting Oscar caliber performances, but this has got to be better than a typical Sci-Fi channel movie-of-the-week. Right?

The first video opens with Kane stumbling into his command center like a cyborg on a bender recently returned home (Look what you kids did to my house! Get off my lawn!). He gives a speech about how the Brotherhood of Nod has been broken but will rise again, and an incarnation of this speech will occur every three missions or so. For those of you playing along, take a shot every time he says “Ascension.”

We’re introduced shortly thereafter to the charismatic leader of the Black Hand, played by Carl Lumbly. You might know him from the show Alias and as the voice of the Martian Manhunter from the Justice League animated series. Thankfully, these emotionally demanding roles have prepared him admirably to play the most depressive space marine ever.

Soon, you must capture him and he’s confronted by Kane. The mild scolding that follows would be more appropriate if Lumbly took the family car out for a joyride rather than inciting insurrection. As punishment, Carl Lumbly is made to watch a fake newscast of himself. His look of utter horror isn’t due to Kane’s surprise return, but to watching himself parade around like a doofus in black plastic shoulder pads.

The second chapter introduces the player to Nod’s Abbess, played by the lovely Natasha Henstridge (now forever known as the “poor man’s Tricia Helfer.”) It’s embarrassing enough for this once high-profile actress to be slumming in a computer game, but Natasha, you’re slumming in a computer game’s expansion pack.

From the get go, her character addresses you with the annoying tone of a jealous lover (we wish?). Henstridge’s thespian prowess is put to the test as her character arc sharply transitions her from awkward and confused to shrill and confused to dead and (spoiler alert!) confused. Her passive-aggressive evil nun shtick does have its moments though. Sometimes during briefings she tells you to succeed because for some reason Kane believes in you. Thanks for the pep-talk there, Cruella.

Personally, I liked Natasha Henstridge in The Whole Nine Yards so I feel bad ragging on her here. But in Kane’s Wrath she and Carl Lumbly try to outdo each other for exasperated expressions: “Why am I here?” “Why is this bald man yelling at me?” “Didn’t I have a career once?” Henstridge and Lumbly recite the lines, but only Joseph Kucan seems to have any clue what they mean. Granted, Kucan’s been in the FMV game longer and he’s got his creepy-yet-personable-evil-genius-face down pat. But c’mon, these other guys are actual actors.

Maybe my mistake is trying to take these videos seriously – a feat I find nearly impossible. Re-watching them with much lowered expectations might let me enjoy the campiness for what it is. The highlight to me is the hectic and poorly-orchestrated death scene that concludes Chapter 2. The scene actually reminds me of the glorious ending of Plan 9 from Outer Space, the mother of all B movies. I think that’s the highest compliment I can pay it.

Got a favorite computer game with awesome/bad FMV’s? Send an e-mail to Pip the Intern atcholt@futureus.comand I’ll review them.

May 7, 2008

At the beginning of Red Alert 3, the situation is dire for the Soviets - the Allies have driven back their forces to Moscow and the leadership is cowering behind the gates of the Kremlin. In a crazed act of desperation, the Soviets head to the basement where they have been working on a time machine which they plan to use to go back in time and get rid of Einstein - the man most responsible for the technological achievements that have led to the Allies’ victories. And also, let us not forget, the man who traveled back in time to kill Hitler in the first game so that this whole Red-centric timeline could happen anyway.

This notwithstanding, the Soviets erase Einstein and come back to the present day where it looks like the experiment has been a great success - the Allies have retreated and the Red Menace has returned to its former glory. However, almost immediately, klaxons begin blaring and the Russians are again under attack, except this time from a superpower their time meddling has spawned upon the world stage: the technological cult of the Empire of the Rising Sun. A sickening feeling hits the Soviet commanders’ stomachs as they realise that they’ve created a new enemy for themselves, and the new war begins...

This is the first time in a Red Alert game that there’s been a full-fledged third faction (the Yuri’s Revenge expansion had a sub-faction), and each of the three campaigns will have eight to ten missions, with the Japanese Rising Sun currently aimed at being unlockable when you’ve completed the Allied or the Soviet campaign. “It’s really important to us that we don’t just build one faction, then cut and paste those units into another faction,” says executive producer Chris Corry. “Each will feel very different from a capability standpoint. Japan has the most dramatically different building mechanic with an emphasis on higher technology weapons, so it’ll feel and play uniquely.”

The RA3 team isn’t revealing much about the new faction just yet, but we eked out a chunk of stuff about their design and gameplay style. The Empire of the Rising Sun will be the most sci-fi faction, drawing from Japanese influences like samurai warriors, anime, ninjas and military history. We saw concept art displaying beautiful dragonfly-type ships, as well as techno-updates of military uniforms from WWII, ninja dudes with futuristic weaponry, units packed with attachments looking like Shinto gates and huge intricately-designed robots, all splashed with those distinctive red-and-white national colors.

“The Sea Wing is a submarine unit that can shoot out of water and be used as an aircraft - the only unit in the game that can do that,” says Chris. “Japan is probably the strongest in the water. Many of their units deploy into a different unit, so there’s lots of, er, transformation.” Robots in disguise? Oh yes.

Another major addition is fully-integrated naval combat, which has been a tough challenge for the development team, aware that countless RTS games in the past have torpedoed the idea. Red Alert 3 cleverly achieves naval gameplay by what they describe as “blurring the shorelines”, basically making it much easier for players to get their units in and out of the water. Many of the units are now amphibious and all you have to do to utilise this ability is click where you want to move - the unit will automatically do a contextual transformation from land-based to ocean-based and vice versa. However, amphibious units are not as powerful as a dedicated land or sea unit, so the skill in combat comes in deciding which direction you want to go - flexibility or maximum firepower.

Your mobile construction yard is also amphibious, allowing you to build your base in the ocean, resulting in major ramifications for gameplay. If, for example, you only build land units and storm off to kill your opponent, you might find they’ve built their HQ out at sea, rendering your army a useless waste of money.

EA LA hopes this will encourage players to play more with the aircraft, which will be the only units able to locate and strike at targets on both land and in the ocean with equal power. Amphibious units can strike at ocean-based targets of course, but they’re not as powerful as aircraft.

Cleverly, there are significant resources out at sea, so even if you don’t build an ocean base, it’s wise to have a naval presence or you’re basically handing your opponent an enormous bag of money with “Please kill me!” written on in bold crayon. What’s more, all this messing about on boats has led to EA LA giving the water a new graphics engine so it ripples, shimmers and splashes like the real stuff.

After the revelations of the naval combat, Chris drops another bombshell: while previous RTS games have included special co-op missions, Red Alert 3 will include a finely crafted story-driven campaign that you can play in both single-player and online co-op. “Every single mission has been designed with you and a teammate in mind. But we obviously don’t want to leave people out if they haven’t any online friends, so you can also enlist the help of an AI co-commander.”

Every faction has three commanders, each with a unique play style and personality, played by an actor who will appear in video clips and voice-overs. So if you’re starting a Campaign mission with a co-commander who prefers tanks and heavy armor, you’ll probably approach how you go through that mission differently than if the co-commander you signed up was an expert in the air force. A monitor in the top-left of the screen allows you to see the AI’s state, with four orders available: attack or defend a unit or location, stop or help me. If you don’t give the co-commander guidance, the AI will do its own thing, depending on the situation and its personality.

The system poses challenges when playing with a friend (of the communication variety) but this is easily solved with VoIP, and it’s worth the effort. The co-commander includes other advantages such as sharingline of sight, being able to put units in friendly transports, using an ally’s airfields and repair abilities, and even building units and giving them to your ally. “However, we’re not allowing you to give money directly, which causes balance problems,” explains producer Amer Ajami. “If your buddy is under attack, it’s more fun to send units rather than money, as there’s physical gameplay tied to them - they might get ambushed by the enemy on the way to the rendezvous, for example.”

But if you leave the AI co-commander to his own devices, will he just complete the missions for you? “No, that wouldn’t be much fun!” says Chris. “We have to make sure that the AI is competent enough, as you’ll always compare it with human players, but also that the experience is always satisfying. I feel that the AI in C&C3 was the very best in the business, and the early indications for RA3 are very good.”

Other aspects of the gameplay are being finely tuned up until the game’s late 2008 launch. EA LA wants fast, fluid fun, but they felt that the wide-open economy of C&C3 (allowing you to generate units very quickly) made for a game that was perhaps too fast - in fact the 1.09 patch gated the economy and slowed the action down, which is the direction they’re going for in their next offering. Games will still be quick, but instead of matched multiplayer games lasting 10 minutes, RA3 will have matches of between 20-30 minutes.

Apparently Corry is attempting to head off the traditional “rush-fest” of other C&C games: “We don’t want to lose that feeling of being under pressure, but we’re going to dial that back a notch. If you try to rush early on, you probably won’t be successful. Gamers have got more sophisticated and we want to inject more depth - the combat chain isn’t just rock, paper, scissors, so there’s more nuance to which units are effective against other units.”

As a result, Red Alert 3 will have fewer units that have multiple capabilities, with most being dedicated units that do one thing very well. So, a large force of one type of unit won’t be wildly successful now; a response to the Mammoth ‘tank spam’ from C&C3, which was popular with gamers because the super-vehicle could crush infantry, destroy vehicles and shoot down aircraft. Also, every unit now has a primary and secondary ability; a very clear cut, binary rule that’s easy to grasp but adds complexity to gameplay. Plus, Red Alert 3 will be adopting the tried-and-trusted RTS staple of building on grids, to avoid any issues of choke-points or units getting stuck behind badly-placed buildings.

We got to see a mission that began with an absolutely gorgeous scene of a Cuban shoreline; deep blue water lapped the beach while a few disparate Soviet units were just visible at the edges of the fog of war. A Mirage Tank under the command of Major Giles was chronosphered (matter-transported) to the island, while our group of four amphibious Assault Destroyers from a Caribbean base nearby rolled up on the beach, immediately sprouting tank treads. The Mirage Tank then disguised itself as a Soviet Apocalypse Tank and covered the entire force in a cloaking shield, as we moved inland to check out the area. Ensuring we carefully remained hidden under the Mirage umbrella in this stealth portion of the mission, we witnessed various Soviet activities including an Akula Sub and a hilarious Bullfrog Transport. Similar to the Flak Track, the Bullfrog is an amphibious vehicle that doubles as a troop transport, blasting infantry units (in this case armoured bears) into battle using a man-cannon, before seeing them float to the ground using parachutes.

The incompetent animals failed to sniff us out, and we continued our reconnaissance mission, edging past a regiment of bubble-helmet-wearing Tesla Troopers, busily powering up Tesla Coils in anticipation of an attack. Major Giles suddenly spotted a group of real Apocalypse Tanks and joined the end of the line, as they eventually led us past saluting soldiers to a secret Soviet base. “Fire at will!” cried Giles, as we decloaked and began blasting the base to smithereens, the buildings collapsing with spectacular pyrotechnic explosions and real-time physics. Showing off what the team is describing as RA3’s visceral ‘footprint of destruction’ that transforms idyllic environments into war-ravaged hell-holes.

Unfortunately, this was a trap, and an FMV featuring a stereotypical Soviet commanderrrrr (roll those Rs) informed us that ‘Operation Grandslam’ was now in action, as a nearby sports stadium opened up to reveal a Kirov Airship carrying a 50 megaton bomb! A new objective of stopping the deadly zeppelin was given to us, and because we hadn’t the time to build up a force to take it down, our co-commander was called in to help simply by us clicking on the attack button and placing a beacon on the Kirov. Apollo Fighters were launched by Major Giles and the airship was destroyed, leaving the AI commander to blast the stadium.

On the ground, producer Amer spawned four Soviet Conscripts and two Allied Peacekeeper infantry units to demonstrate the primary and secondary weapon concept of RA3. The Conscripts’ primary AK-47 weapon tore into the two Peacekeepers, who were quickly dispatched, as their shotguns were unable to match the machine gun’s longer range of fire. Two new Peacekeepers were created, this time utilizing their secondary weapon - a riot shield - allowing them to get up-close to the Conscripts so they could unleash lethal shotgun blasts. To counter, a new battalion of Conscripts appeared, firing their secondary weapon of Molotov cocktails, which then burned the riot shields and left the Peacekeepers open to a deadly spray of AK-47 gunfire. The Conscripts’ flaming projectiles were then countered by some nearby German shepherds who unleashed an amplified bark secondary weapon that stunned the Soviet quartet and allowed the dogs time to run up and bite them to death.

In addition to this balanced RTS gameplay, we were struck by the detailed animation (the dogs stop and scratch themselves when resting, for example) and the hilarious unit voices, which were very much a feature of RA2. “We’ve put together a personality page for every unit in the game, where we have a bit of art to depict their style, plus a description of how they sound,” says Chris. “For Commander Kirov, for example, we have a picture of a big gluttonous crime boss, and this personality all flows into the dialogue.”

Amer next took the battle into the ocean, first packing up his construction yard and redeploying it on the water, away from the enemy’s tanks. Three Allied Hydrofoil ground-to-air boats were launched towards the enemy’s new Kirov, which had just emerged from a nearby football stadium. Soviet Stingray vessels were protecting the waters, and it took a fleet of Allied Assault Destroyers to sink them, leaving the Hydrofoils clear to blast the airship out of the sky and pepper the stadium with rockets.

Finally, the third launch facility was attacked by six Guardian Tanks, a vehicle with a cannon and a secondary laser rangefinder that can be used to paint enemies and give nearby units an extra damage boost. The base was strongly defended by two Russian Apocalypse Tanks that soon decimated our forces with their dual cannons and a mean magnetic harpoon that drags captured units into a metal grinder mounted on the front of the vehicle.

So, our commander was given clearance to use a Time Bomb, which was chronosphered into the base. “If you’re playing against another person in multiplayer, you can chrono the bomb back to the enemy like a hot potato,” adds Amer. “Whoever has it when that clock hits zero is the loser.” This is demonstrated when the bomb displays a smiley face with the words ‘Have A Nice Day!’ before unleashing a massive explosion, that in this case flattened the Soviet stronghold and won the mission for the Allies.

While we only witnessed the Cuban mission, Red Alert 3 also has missions in locations including San Diego, Cape Cod, Amsterdam, Heidelberg, Easter Island, Mount Fuji and Santa Monica, the latter so that Chris and Amer can “assault their home.” There are also plans for a public beta of the game over the summer (with keys given away free in the forthcoming Kane’s Wrath C&C3 expansion), so that EA LA can hopefully avoid any bugs and server problems when the game launches later this year.

EA LA have certainly delivered on the checklist of must-haves for the next Red Alert 3. Now all they have to do is deliver the game.

Mar 20, 2008

With Command & Conquer 3 expansion pack Kane's Wrath out in a scant few weeks, we thought it'd be a perfect time to pin down the devs and quiz them on this newest C&C outing. Y'know, with important questions like what's new, how well it works on a 360 pad and whether Kane could biff GDI big-cheese General Jack Granger.

So we got hold of Jim Vessella, associate producer for C&C Kane's Wrath, and prised the answers out of him using ruthless techniques like, well, email. Here's what he told us...

Why do you think Kane is such a popular character?

How could he not be? Ever since his introduction he’s become a legend in our universe and we give a lot of credit to Joe Kucan and the tremendous job he does as Kane.

What influences or decisions led to the creation of Global Conquest mode?

It definitely has some of its roots in the War of the Ring mode in Battle for Middle Earth 2, but it’s a major improvement over what players may have seen in the past.First off, the world is no longer sliced up into territories, thus players have much more freedom as to where they construct bases and position their Strike Forces.

Bases can be upgraded and enhanced, increasing their economic benefit and unlocking an arsenal of Global Conquest specific support powers.Strike Forces are completely customizable, allowing players to create that perfect combination for each situation.Each faction also has both exclusive and alternate victory conditions, which adds for even more replayability to the feature. We’re hoping players will find the Global Conquest Mode a great addition to Kane’s Wrath.

How has the experience of working with Xbox 360 influenced the team's approach to RTS development?

We’ve always had a core belief to make our games as accessible as possible, and developing for the Xbox 360 has only furthered our goal in this area.When developing new units and gameplay systems, we also now consider how easy or difficult it will be to control those objects with the console interface.

To that end, we couldn’t be more excited about the radial interface.The new system allows for players to easily control their build queues, powers, and abilities by simply guiding the left-analog stick.Players can now manage unlimited production queues from anywhere on the map, so no more scrolling around the battlefield searching for that second or third War Factory.

You’ll be amazed by the increase in speed and accessibility, and overall it allows players to focus on the battlefield action instead of managing their base.We’re hoping to implement a similar system for Red Alert 3, and we’re looking forward to getting fan feedback from Kane’s Wrath.

What are the benefits of working with a console controller, compared to a PC keyboard?

Our primary goal, on both platforms, is to make the controls as accessible and intuitive as possible.The best part about the console for us is being able to introduce new gamers to the genre.

The green light to us is when a newcomer RTS gamer can sit down and have a great time with the game, without being hampered or frustrated by the controls. We’ve seen this on several occasions during our testing, and we hope every console gamer has the same experience when they play Kane’s Wrath.

How will Command & Conquer's traditional stylestand up to innovative RTS games like EndWar?

Command & Conquer has always been known for fast, fluid and fun gameplay. We continue to translate that feeling to the console, which creates a visceral and action packed experience. Command & Conquer also extends beyond the gameplay with unique live-action storytelling. We’re confident the C&C RTS formula has a home on consoles.

How will the new sub-factions fit into the gameplay?

The sub-factions will bring additional depth and diversity to the game, with each sub-faction feeling unique from both a gameplay and fiction perspective.In order to differentiate the sub-factions, each comes with their own exclusive or modified units, along with unique upgrades and powers.

All these adjustments are meant to cater to a specific play-style, allowing our fans to really find an army that’s best for them. Additionally, the single player campaign will allow you to play against each one of the subfactions, thus creating a unique gameplay experience with nearly every mission. We’ve also brought in community testers to help balance and tune the sub-factions, so you can expect some awesome strategies and combinations in multiplayer.

Is there any way Kane could make an appearance in Command & Conquer: Tiberium?

That’s something you’ll have to ask the Tiberium team!

If you could set a C&C game in any period of history, what would it be?

I think the range of C&C games spanning from Red Alert to Generals to Tiberium really proves this formula can be used in any time period. As long as we stay true to our roots in terms of the gameplay, I think you can make an argument that anything would work!

So, finally, the biggie. Who would win in a bare knuckle fist fight between General Jack Granger and Kane?

I think Michael Ironside has been in a few more on-stage fistfights than Joe. That being said, we know Kane always has a trick up his side and he doesn’t mind fighting dirty.

Six new sub-factions - with modified and exclusive units - will also join the Nod, GDI, and Scrin in Kane’s Wrath, bringing the army count to a total of nine. “A lot of the core stuff is the same,” explained Lead Producer, Jim Vassella. “So you might get the basic infantry or basic vehicles. But then, as you build up the tech tree it branches out. So for the Black Hand – which is a great example; it’s one of our Nod sub-factions – we take away aircraft from them. They don’t get any aircraft. They don’t get any stealth. But to substitute for that, they get some special fire upgrades. They have units that buff each other as they get near each other, and so you kind of get a twist on the formula,” continued Vassella when asked about how sub-factions will differ from the game’s three core armies.

Sub-factions who take over enemy units with mind controlling powers and ones that specialize in futuristic weaponry that focuses on splash damage were also cited as examples of how these not-quite-new armies might add a lot of flavor to C&C’s core factions through specialization.

PC Red Alerts
The PC version of Kane’s Wrath is scheduled to release on Mar 24. While no demo will be released, anyone who picks up a copywill receive a key, which grantsaccess to the multiplayer beta for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3.

C&Cfans would also do well tokeep their eyes peeled fortheApril issue of PC Gamer.It hits stands on Mar 4 and will feature detailed reports onRed Alert 3.

360 Goodies
Like the developers of the 360 version of Supreme Commander, EA’s been trying to figure out how to tweak the controls to make RTS titles more accessible on consoles. Kane’s Wrath’s answer to the problem is the Radial Interface.

Instead of using the thumbstick to laboriously mimic the movement of the mouse, you can bring up a circular menu by pulling on the right trigger at any time. From here, you can quickly select units, queue build orders and fire off commands.

For PC gamers who instinctively assign groups of units and buildings to ‘ctrl’ groups, this new fangled approach to controlling RTS’ with a controller looks like it may be just as frustrating. But as more high profile RTS’ start working towards a more standardized control scheme like the Radial Interface, we may see a new generation of RTS fans who were introduced to the genre with games like C&C 3 and Supreme Commander on the 360 instead of titles like Dune II or StarCraft on the PC. Boy do we feel old.

It’d be great if owners of C&C 3 for the 360 could take advantage of the new Radial Interface through a downloadable update. While that won’t be happening anytime soon, there are lots of extra goodies in store for 360 owners.

Kane’s Challenge is a new mode exclusive to the 360 version, which will pit the player against the computer in various skirmish battles. Also, unlike the PC version, Kane’s Wrath is a stand-alone expansion, meaning that you won’t need the original C&C 3 to play it. In fact, Kane’s Wrath will also ship with all the units, maps, and updates from C&C 3.

The PC version of Kane’s Wrath is scheduled to release on Mar 24 while the 360 version has a tentative release date slated for sometime this summer. In the meantime,click herefor the latest screenshots from Kane’s Wrath and check back for more news on the latest expansion to the C&C universe.

Feb 18, 2008

Besides winning the award for the country most likely to be confused with Slovenia on a map, Hungary is home toPC Guru, which looks ready to deliver all the dirt on Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 to its Hungarian-speaking readers in their next issue.

But before you waste your time visiting Babel Fish to find out that you can’t get any useful details on Red Alert 3 in broken English, you can take solace in the fact that our friends at PC Gamer will be unleashing exclusive new details on the game to satisfy all your C&C curiosities in their next issue.

The nextPC Gamerissue will hit stands on Mar 4. In the meantime,click herefor a sneak peak at their next cover, which features the shortest shorts we’ve ever seen on any RTS unit - ever.

Feb 12, 2008

Dec 12, 2007

EA has confirmed that the Command & Conquer series is merging with the first-person shooter genre in a new title called Tiberium.

The publisher was short on details, but it did tell us that the game is penciled in for a late 2008 release. Official images aren't expected until early next year, but there are scans already doing the round as additional details have appeared in Game Informer magazine.

The game will be a squad-based shooter set 11 years on from the third Tiberium war. It’s been described as Battlefield meets GRAW meets Rainbow Six: Vegas. Players strap on combat boots as Ricardo Vega, a GDI field commander who has come out of retirement.

Game Informer adds that the Scrin faction of Command & Conquer 3 will turn up as enemies in Tiberium - presumably along with Nod - and that as Vega, you'll be able to command infantry squads and vehicles and be able to call in air strikes.

It's not the first time that the Command & Conquer series has merged with the first-person shooter genre of course. But hopefully this will turn out better than Command & Conquer: Renegade.

Courtesy of CVG.

Oct 3, 2007

13 games from veteran RTS series Command & Conquer are being squeezed into a new PC compilation pack.

Command & Conquer Saga, as the pack is called, includes the recently released C&C 3: Tiberium Wars and indeed more GDI and Nod warfare than you can shake Kane's goatee at.

To date, the Saga pack has only been confirmed for North America with an October release at $49.99. Still waiting on EA for any word on European release plans.

Command & Conquer Saga contains the following titles:

• Command %26amp; Conquer (Aug. 1995)
• Command %26amp; Conquer The Covert Operations (April 1996)
• Command %26amp; Conquer Red Alert (Oct 1996)
• Command %26amp; Conquer Red Alert Counterstrike (Mar. 1997)
• Command %26amp; Conquer Red Alert The Aftermath (Sept. 1997)
• Command %26amp; Conquer Tiberian Sun (Aug 1999)
• Command %26amp; Conquer Tiberian Sun Firestorm (Feb. 2000)
• Command %26amp; Conquer Red Alert 2 (Oct. 2000)
• Command %26amp; Conquer Red Alert Yuri's Revenge (Oct. 2001)
• Command %26amp; Conquer Renegade (Feb. 2002)
• Command %26amp; Conquer Generals (Feb. 2003)
• Command %26amp; Conquer Generals Zero Hour (Sept. 2003)
• Command %26amp; Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars (Mar 2007)

Courtesy of CVG.

Sept 10, 2007

In spring 2008 Command & Conquer 3 will be the proud daddy of its first expansion - Kane's Wrath.

A new trailer from the expansion features just under a minute of gameplay footage. Check it out down below.

Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath will release simultaneously on PC and Xbox 360, and focuses on the rise of Kane and Nod while "following the second Tiberium war, taking the player also through the third Tiberium war and beyond in the storyline," producer Jim Vessella explains.

One of the expansion's main features is a global domination game mode that Vessella's described as “Risk on steroids,” and naturally new units and structures and other typical expansion content is included.

Courtesy of CVG.

In spring 2008 Command & Conquer 3 will be the proud daddy of its first expansion - Kane's Wrath.

A new trailer from the expansion features just under a minute of gameplay footage. Check it out down below.

Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath will release simultaneously on PC and Xbox 360, and focuses on the rise of Kane and Nod while "following the second Tiberium war, taking the player also through the third Tiberium war and beyond in the storyline," producer Jim Vessella explains.

One of the expansion's main features is a global domination game mode that Vessella's described as “Risk on steroids,” and naturally new units and structures and other typical expansion content is included.

Courtesy of CVG.

EA has spilled first details on the first expansion pack for Command & Conquer 3 in episode one of its Battlecast Prime Time show focusing on the RTS.

The expansion's called Kane's Wrath and is due out in 2008 and will release simultaneously on PC and Xbox 360.

Producer Jim Vessella had this to say (with his words interspersed with gameplay footage):

"As the title suggests, Kane's Wrath is all about Kane and the rise of Nod following the second Tiberium war, taking the player also through the third Tiberium war and beyond in the storyline."

"The game and campaign will feature our high definition cinematics once again and of course feature Joe Kucan reprising his role as Kane. And we'll also be introducing a few new characters for him to mingle with."

"One of the core features of this game is the global domination meta-game. Imagine a game like Risk but on steroids, supporting the C&C fiction with Ion Cannons, nukes, Mammoth tanks as you move your armies around the entire world. When armies collide, you'll jump down into that fast and fluid C&C gameplay that you know and love."

"When you come out, those units and armies will persist, allowing for a longer more global campaign."

"And if it is new units and faction content you desire, we're not going to disappoint. We'll have new units, upgrades, powers and structures for each of the core factions and each faction will also have two sub-factions. These sub-factions will also come with their own modified units, unique powers and upgrades and each one will cater to a specific play style allowing players to really find the side that's best for them."

Vessella added that Kane's Wrath will feature 24 new multiplayer maps, and that the Xbox 360 version will also sport the Radial Interface, which allows players to manage their base from anywhere on the map.

Check out the Battlecast Prime Time show for yourselfhere.

August 15, 2007

It’s been a dozen years since the Global Defense Initiative and The Brotherhood of NOD started battling for control of the world, and the forces of evil still won’t go down. Armed with a shiny head and an all black wardrobe - that screams "I'm the bad guy" - the malevolent psychopath Kane is on the rise again. But the Scrin, a new alien faction, threatens both sides with metal bugs of death.

That’s Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars' story in a nutshell. For all the hype about the geektastic cast for the campaign movies (Michael Ironside, Tricia Helfer, Billy Dee Williams, etc.) the epic tale still boils down to mission after mission where you run around doing what you are told. It's never clear if the hammy acting is because the esteemed players are taking the material too seriously or not seriously enough. No matter; if you love cheesy full motion videos, this story is for you.

Above: He won't be selling the smooth taste of Colt 45, but Billy Dee strikes back as GDI Director, Redmond Boyle

It's a good thing that the underlying game is much better than the hokey script these guys are reading from. The franchise has always carved its own path through the real time strategy world, and there is never any doubt that this is a C&C game.

Right off the bat, you'll notice how fast the game plays. Even at the default setting, there is little time for planning what you will build next or in which direction you will expand. Get a build order memorized and go, go, go; this is one of the most frantic real time-strategies in recent years.

This is good, in a way, since it means you’ll get to the action quickly. The three factions (terroristic NOD, vanilla GDI and extra-planetary Scrin) are similar enough to make it easy to move from playing one to the next, but different enough to offer something new. The units and buildings on each side serve similar functions, but every now and then one will have a special power that’ll make you stop and go, "Huh. So that's what that guy does." Hang-gliding stealth commandos, mind controlling alien beasties, giant cannons on legs; each of these units has a counter and a counterpart in the enemy camp.

In many ways, Command & Conquer 3 is defiantly old-fashioned. Sure, there are attempts to keep up with the Joneses by piling on superpowers- over a half dozen for each faction- and micromanaging of specialty units. But this is a game about marshalling the right combo of forces to match whatever is waiting on the other side of the map and little else. Territorial control is crucial, from seizing rich Tiberium mines to occupying and clearing urban areas. Once someone gains the upper hand in the economic arena, it can be very difficult to unseat them as the advantage snowballs and the superweapons are brought online. Defenses can be very powerful in numbers, but skirmishes emphasize rushing out light infantry, engineers and harvesters until you have a lead you can exploit.

PC gamers have been hammering it for weeks, but on Friday Xbox 360 owners will finally get their grubby mitts on EA's third, long-awaited Command & Conquer installment.

If EA chatter is anything to go by, Xbox 360 might not be the end of C&C3's console campaign either: "We haven't officially confirmed anything, but I don't see why it's not feasible," Senior Producer Mike Glosecki said of a PS3 version, in an interview with Gameplayer. "The controls are practically the same."

Although trickier, a Wii version with motion controls obviously brings up a lot more exciting possibilities for the RTS legend - and it looks like EA is pondering as well. "There isn't as much under the hood," says Glosecki, "so it obviously won't look as good. But as far as control goes, I don't see why it can't be done."

As for the future of the 360 version, Glosecki promises new multiplayer maps on Xbox Live Marketplace "over the coming months."

Look for more on C&C3 Xbox 360 coverage over the next few days running up to the release.

May 9, 2007

Use this Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars cheat on PC to get extra starting credits in Skirmish, then find out how to unlock various campaign rewards.

Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars cheats

Extra Starting Credits In Skirmish on PC

In the "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars\Profiles\ProfileName" folder, you'll find a file called "skrimish.ini." Make a backup of it, then open it and change "10000" to however many credits you want to start with.

Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars tips

Alternate Ending

On the final level.

The "Bad" Ending - Use Boyle's Liquid Tiberium Bomb
The "Good" Ending - Don't use Boyle's Liquid Tiberium Bomb

Strategy For Most GDI Missions with Mammoth tanks in them

To win most GDI missions you will need to build mammoth tanks. Once you have done that upgrade them with the railgun upgrade, (which you can get in techcenters) and you are done. Now you have a tank with formidable armor, a railgun to kill infantry and and its main cannon to decimate vehicles.

Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars achievements

GDI Bronze(20)-Finish GDI /w bronze medal and bonus ribbon
Nod Bronze(20)-Finish Nod /w bronze medal and bonus ribbon
Alien bronze(20)-Finish Alien /w bronze medal and bonus ribbon
GDI Silver(25)-Finish GDI /w silver medal and bonus ribbon
Nod Silver(25)-Finish Nod /w silver medal and bonus ribbon
Alien Silver(25)-Finish Alien /w silver medal and bonus ribbon
McNell Legacy(100)-Finish GDI /w gold medal and bonus ribbon
You Can't Kill the Messiah(100)-Finish Nod /w gold medal and bonus ribbon
GAME OVER!(100)-Finish Alien /w gold medal and bonus ribbon
Something To Write Home About(220)-Complete all 3 campeigns
Dr. Moeblus Award(20)-Gather 100,000 in MP games
Rookie No More(20)-Complete boot camp
No LIfe(100)-Play MP for 100 hours
Nod Unleashed(5)-Complete the GDI TOW: Washington D.C.
Simon Says, You LOSE(0)[negative award]-lose a single player game 3 times in a row
The Golden Rule(0)[negative award]-lose 5 MP games in a row
Mister NO it all(0)[negative award]-skipping boot camp suggestion from SP
Losing Face(0)[negative award]-lose to someone ranked 20 below you in a MP ranked game
GDI Campaign(80)-GDI campaign finished
Nod Campaign(80)-Nod campaign finished
Welcome to 2047(20)-Press the A button 2047 times, the year the game takes place. Must be done in single map{SP/skirmish only, not MP}
The truth(20)-Completing both GDI and Nod campaigns.

Unlockables

Unlock all alien moves - get the "Something to write home about," acheivement
Alien campaign unlocked - Get the "The truth," Secret acheivement
Nod Campaign unlocked - get the "nod unleashed," acheivement
Unlock all GDI Movies - Get the "GDI Campaign," acheivement
Unlock all Nod Movies - Get the "Nod Campaign," acheivement

Unlock Scrin Campaign

Beat both the GDI and Nod campaigns to unlock the Scrin campaign.

Now is a very good time to be a fan of real time strategy. With top tier titles hitting the market faster than our hard drives can keep up with them, we've entered a golden age for the RTS genre. But no matter how deep Supreme Commander, or how authentic Company of Heroes, one franchise has the potential to overshadow all newcomers in name alone... Command & Conquer.

Earlier this week, while attending the launch party for Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars on PC, we managed to corner three of the creative minds behind this highly anticipated sequel. With the game less than a week away, we wanted to know everything.

Why return to the classic "Tiberium universe" now? What's different, and what's the same, about GDI and Nod? Does one side represent the USA and one side terrorists? What's the story behind the new, extraterrestrial third faction? How do you cast retro live-action cutscenes? No, seriously... Lando Calrissian and Sawyer? And, finally, what does separate this old-school series from its shiny new competitors?

For a peek at what they had to say, as well as brand new gameplay footage, check out the video below. For the full interview, with more comprehensive answers, head to thenext page tab.

Now is a very good time to be a fan of real time strategy. With top tier titles hitting the market faster than our hard drives can keep up with them, we've entered a golden age for the RTS genre. But no matter how deep Supreme Commander, or how authentic Company of Heroes, one franchise has the potential to overshadow all newcomers in name alone... Command & Conquer.

Earlier this week, while attending the launch party for Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars on PC, we managed to corner three of the creative minds behind this highly anticipated sequel. With the game less than a week away, we wanted to know everything.

Why return to the classic "Tiberium universe" now? What's different, and what's the same, about GDI and Nod? Does one side represent the USA and one side terrorists? What's the story behind the new, extraterrestrial third faction? How do you cast retro live-action cutscenes? No, seriously... Lando Calrissian and Sawyer? And, finally, what does separate this old-school series from its shiny new competitors?

For a peek at what they had to say, as well as brand new gameplay footage, check out the video below. For the full interview, with more comprehensive answers, head to thenext page tab.

GamesRadar: Why should we be excited about Command & Conquer 3?

Mike Verdu, Executive Producer: It's been a long time since the last Command & Conquer game was released. Generals was four years ago; the last game in the Tiberium universe was seven years ago.

C&C 3 is really an updated classic. We've done our best to take what is timeless and cool about the franchise, from Tiberian Sun all the way back to the original Command & Conquer, and update it with innovative features expected in a current RTS. Three generations of C&C fans worked on this game and, for us, it's been a labor of love.

Jason Bender, Lead Designer: Some of our team goes back to working on Red Alert 2. Of course, we have people from Westwood. We're big fans, so we wanted to make sure that we weren't taking Command & Conquer off to someplace that would seem really unfamiliar. We took it right back to Tiberium - we went with Mammoth Tanks, Orcas, all that stuff. And then tried to give you all the updated gameplay you'd expect out of a modern C&C.

Chris Corry, Senior Development Director: It's a new C&C and it's the same C&C. It's got that classic fast, furious and fun action, but at the same time, it's got a lot of great new features like BattleCast.

GamesRadar: What is C&C? For people who are unfamiliar with the franchise, can you give us a quick overview?

MV: Command & Conquer is set in a dark future where an alien crystal called Tiberium is slowly consuming the Earth. This crystal appeared in the 1990s and then started spreading. It's a resource you can harvest and solves the Earth's energy problems, but it's also an ecological catastrophe. It's changing the climate and mutating into a self-replicating organism.

It's divided humanity into two factions - Global Defense Initiative (like NATO or the United Nations of today) fighting against a stateless superpower called The Brotherhood of Nod and led by an enigmatic guy named Kane. Kane believes that Tiberium is the future of humanity, that it is the catalyst for the next stage of evolution. GDI views it as a catastrophe, something that needs to be contained and shut down. So you've got two competing views and there have been three World Wars fought over this stuff... GDI and Nod have been fighting for 50 years.

When we come into C&C 3, Nod's been pretty quiet for a while, but they launch a surprise attack on GDI and all hell breaks loose. If that wasn't bad enough, the stakes get raised and our new third faction shows up in the middle of the conflict. Those are the aliens called the Scrin.

GamesRadar: What is C&C? For people who are unfamiliar with the franchise, can you give us a quick overview?

MV: Command & Conquer is set in a dark future where an alien crystal called Tiberium is slowly consuming the Earth. This crystal appeared in the 1990s and then started spreading. It's a resource you can harvest and solves the Earth's energy problems, but it's also an ecological catastrophe. It's changing the climate and mutating into a self-replicating organism.

It's divided humanity into two factions - Global Defense Initiative (like NATO or the United Nations of today) fighting against a stateless superpower called The Brotherhood of Nod and led by an enigmatic guy named Kane. Kane believes that Tiberium is the future of humanity, that it is the catalyst for the next stage of evolution. GDI views it as a catastrophe, something that needs to be contained and shut down. So you've got two competing views and there have been three World Wars fought over this stuff... GDI and Nod have been fighting for 50 years.

When we come into C&C 3, Nod's been pretty quiet for a while, but they launch a surprise attack on GDI and all hell breaks loose. If that wasn't bad enough, the stakes get raised and our new third faction shows up in the middle of the conflict. Those are the aliens called the Scrin.

GamesRadar: Why return to the classic "Tiberium universe" of GDI and Nod now?

MV: A lot of us are very passionate about the Tiberium universe because the original C&C is what got us into RTS gaming. That universe has a timeless quality that really makes it good science fiction. We just knew we had to go back.

GamesRadar: Has the long wait paid off? What were you able to do now that you couldn't have a decade ago?

MV: Take advantage of the current generation of video cards to bring the world gloriously to life. The pyrotechnics are amazing and we're pushing literally ten times the number of particles than we were in our previous game. The world just comes alive. Particles in the atmosphere give it depth, the fireworks are tremendous, there are weather effects. Smoke, haze, force fields, all this really cool stuff that we just couldn't have done years ago.

GamesRadar: What else is updated for this iteration?

JB: We wanted to keep it simple where possible. We didn't want people to be worried about their base too much so, to keep them on the field, we went with a new interface. Everyone said, "If you're doing C&C, you have to bring the sidebar back." We thought, "How can we do that but still give you everything you've come to expect after playing modern day RTS's?"

We went back and redesigned the sidebar interface to give you the flexibility of both. You have the ability to build whatever you want from the field just by looking at the sidebar and navigating the sub tabs. Or you can use the contextual tab to click on things in the world and see them there, just like you'd expect in Generals. You get the best of both worlds and I'm really happy with that.

MV: The addition of the third faction is also a really big deal. We’ve opened up the C&C universe.

GamesRadar: Tell us more about them. How do the new aliens fit into the fiction?

MV: The Scrin have been around for a long time. There was a hint in Tiberian Sun that aliens were out there - now they're here. They've actually been dormant in our solar system, out beyond the orbit of Neptune, waiting for something to happen. That something happens in the third Tiberium War, draws them to Earth and, in the course of the story, you will find that they're not interested in the human race. They're interested in the same thing that the two human factions are fighting over - Tiberium. They have their own very interesting and complicated relationship with Tiberium that you'll learn more about as you play the game.

GamesRadar: What went into developing a third faction? How do they play differently from GDI and Nod?

MV: GDI is a steamroller - they build tanks, infantry, aircraft. It's all about a brute force assault. Nod is a finesse side, using hit-and-run tactics and stealth. It's very fast and you want to micro-manage your units more than you do when you're playing GDI.

The aliens have a bit of a mixed personality. It's our chance to bring a new style of play into Command & Conquer. They start with some weaker units, but as you build up into the higher units and tech up, you can bring out some amazing big guns. You've got city-destroying mother ships, huge tripods with independently targeted beam weapons, flying artillery ships and carriers that have swarms of fighters around them. Survive long enough and a Scrin player can dominate.

JB: The Scrin were a real challenge because we wanted to make them play very differently. They're an alien invasion force, here to accomplish something. They're constructors. They want to build up their technology and certain devices. They're not simply set on wiping out whatever life was on the planet. They have a different objective and have had to repurpose their equipment to fight us.

Aliens can be anything, but we wanted to create aliens that would fit into this world and still be able to fight toe-to-toe with Nod and GDI without just overwhelming them completely. The way their units are created factors into that.

In the early game, they have their own personality and very different infantry units. In the mid-game, they fall behind a little bit. They have some amazing tanks, but Nod has all the stealth and GDI has all the armor, so they tend to get a little weak in multiplayer. But then in the endgame, they have all these super weapons, space ships and massive crazy alien technology.

GamesRadar: What's your favorite super weapon?

JB: My favorite super weapon is the new Scrin one. They have the ability to generate a black hole somewhere on the battlefield that just sucks everything up and sends it out into space. As it unfolds, you can see actual stars and nebulas in it. I think that's a lot of fun.

JB: The Scrin were a real challenge because we wanted to make them play very differently. They're an alien invasion force, here to accomplish something. They're constructors. They want to build up their technology and certain devices. They're not simply set on wiping out whatever life was on the planet. They have a different objective and have had to repurpose their equipment to fight us.

Aliens can be anything, but we wanted to create aliens that would fit into this world and still be able to fight toe-to-toe with Nod and GDI without just overwhelming them completely. The way their units are created factors into that.

In the early game, they have their own personality and very different infantry units. In the mid-game, they fall behind a little bit. They have some amazing tanks, but Nod has all the stealth and GDI has all the armor, so they tend to get a little weak in multiplayer. But then in the endgame, they have all these super weapons, space ships and massive crazy alien technology.

GamesRadar: What's your favorite super weapon?

JB: My favorite super weapon is the new Scrin one. They have the ability to generate a black hole somewhere on the battlefield that just sucks everything up and sends it out into space. As it unfolds, you can see actual stars and nebulas in it. I think that's a lot of fun.

GamesRadar: What about GDI and Nod... how have they changed from the last time we saw them?

MV: We've tried to add nuance to the factions. Nod in the original C&C games was pretty well defined in terms of its identity - they were "the bad guys." Kane was a bad guy, he surrounded himself with bad guys and they were unambiguously bent on doing evil. For C&C 3, we've tried to make that organization more sympathetic. After all, they are recruiting millions and millions of members into Nod. To understand why their cause would be appealing, we tried to make their philosophy an optimistic one. GDI wants to get rid of Tiberium and has a very apocalyptic view of what's happening to Earth. Nod has an uplifting world view. Tiberium is a gift. It's here to lift us up, it's here to transform us, it's the ultimate expression of progress.

And GDI is not unambiguously good. It's a big, ponderous bureaucracy that gets in its own way sometimes. Just like in the current day, you might end up with political leaders who are in conflict for the heart and soul of that organization. During C&C 3, you watch one of those conflicts take place and you actually have to pick a side.

GamesRadar: Can you talk more about how the game's plot feels topical to today's issues?

JB: GDI is what you might call a benevolent dictatorship. It's the guardian of humanity. The world is falling apart... Tiberium has destroyed the environment... there are ion storms everywhere. The world's population is displaced - 70% are out in these zones that are almost wastelands. GDI is trying to protect as many people as they can, but they can't save everyone, which makes the majority of the world stuck out there in what we call the "yellow zones" very resentful of the people that live in the "blue zones." So what you have is a population of haves and have-nots.

Meanwhile, Nod is using the have-nots to their own advantage. They're turning them against GDI. These people have nothing intrinsically that they would want to fight about, but they're living in squalor and are jealous, of course.

It's a little bit like what you see Western powers doing. We have to protect ourselves, but what can we do to help these other countries? And when we get there to try to help them, some other interest has turned them against us. That's very topical to what you see in the world today. We didn't go at it like we would with Generals and make it literally ripped-off-the-headlines, but the story is going to seem familiar to those of you paying attention to what's going on.

GamesRadar: Can you talk more about how the game's plot feels topical to today's issues?

JB: GDI is what you might call a benevolent dictatorship. It's the guardian of humanity. The world is falling apart... Tiberium has destroyed the environment... there are ion storms everywhere. The world's population is displaced - 70% are out in these zones that are almost wastelands. GDI is trying to protect as many people as they can, but they can't save everyone, which makes the majority of the world stuck out there in what we call the "yellow zones" very resentful of the people that live in the "blue zones." So what you have is a population of haves and have-nots.

Meanwhile, Nod is using the have-nots to their own advantage. They're turning them against GDI. These people have nothing intrinsically that they would want to fight about, but they're living in squalor and are jealous, of course.

It's a little bit like what you see Western powers doing. We have to protect ourselves, but what can we do to help these other countries? And when we get there to try to help them, some other interest has turned them against us. That's very topical to what you see in the world today. We didn't go at it like we would with Generals and make it literally ripped-off-the-headlines, but the story is going to seem familiar to those of you paying attention to what's going on.

GamesRadar: Speaking of story, why did you choose to stick with live-action cutscenes?

JB: When we first started going, "What are we going to keep about the old C&C?," we were thinking, "Is live action outdated?" Well, most people do it wrong, so what if we do it right? What if we put a lot of energy into it, get the right people, get the right script and really try to tell a good story. Can we do it? Can we pull it off?

I think we absolutely did and in no small part due to the talent. We wanted to be able to convey emotion and importance and weight on the events as they unfold. Full motion video allows us to do that and use some of the most powerful tools that we have at our disposal, especially being so close to Hollywood.

MV: We knew we wanted people who would resonate with C&C fans, so we looked to Michael Ironside, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Josh Holloway. Of course, we had to bring back Joe Kucan as Kane.

GamesRadar: Lando?

JB: Lando! Once you see Billy Dee Williams in action, he makes a very compelling case. I'm not gonna ruin anything, but towards the end of the single player campaign, he's imploring you to do something and it's Billy Dee Williams all the way.

CC: We're very excited about the mini-movie that we've created.

GamesRadar: The scale of the live action production was impressive. What percentage of the game's budget would go towards something like that?

MV: I can't really get into specifics, but you can safely say it's somewhere between a drop in the bucket and 1/3 of the production budget. But if you think about it, live action is actually less expensive than doing 90 minutes of very high-end CG. With the level of quality we have in some cut scenes, across the entire game it would cost many, many millions of dollars.

Bringing in a Hollywood cast and shooting in multiple locations, you think, "Wow, that's a very large scale production." But I've got to tell you, it's less expensive than if we'd done it all CG and I think having the live actors tell the story just adds a dimension that you can't get any other way.

GamesRadar: Lando?

JB: Lando! Once you see Billy Dee Williams in action, he makes a very compelling case. I'm notgonna ruin anything, but towards the end of the single player campaign, he's imploring you to do something and it's Billy Dee Williams all the way.

CC: We're very excited about the mini-movie that we've created.

GamesRadar: The scale of the live action production was impressive. What percentage of the game's budget would go towards something like that?

MV: I can't really get into specifics, but you can safely say it's somewhere between a drop in the bucket and 1/3 of the production budget. But if you think about it, live action is actually less expensive than doing 90 minutes of very high-end CG. With the level of quality we have in some cut scenes, across the entire game it would cost many, many millions of dollars.

Bringing in a Hollywood cast and shooting in multiple locations, you think, "Wow, that's a very large scale production." But I've got to tell you, it's less expensive than if we'd done it all CG and I think having the live actors tell the story just adds a dimension that you can't get any other way.

GamesRadar: Multiplayer is crucial to the success of any real time strategy game. What innovations are you bringing to that aspect of C&C 3?

MV: I think the biggest thing that we're adding is depth. This new feature we're calling BattleCast lets you broadcast your game out to hundreds or even thousands of people. You can go to a website, kind of the YouTube of game replays, and there's all this functionality designed to support the community - clans, ladders, all kinds of statistics that we track for your profile.

GamesRadar: Why did you add that feature? Why do you think it's important?

CC: I think there are two audiences for this. First, there's the hardcore player who craves ways to dissect strategy and to constantly get better. Once you're at the highest echelons of play, it's pretty hard. It becomes a game of inches as you learn those final top tier techniques. One of the best ways to facilitate that is by watching replays. In the past, making replays has been a diffuse exercise where there have been fan sites that would take replay files and host them. But we wanted to do something that was a little more centralized... a central storage facility for all replays or at least the highest quality replays. We want as many people as possible to play C&C 3, but more than anything, we want people to understand what real time strategy is about. Having a sort of way to watch RTS television in the form of BattleCast is absolutely one step in that direction.

JB: You can hear commentary and the commentators tell you what's happening. You can watch and say, "Oh my gosh, I didn't think about the third refinery on the expansion point. Man, no wonder that guy's able to pump out seven tanks while I'm only able to pump out five in the same amount of time." That's going to help people get into it and add a lot of depth into the multiplayer experience overall.

CC: We're even going to be making a BattleCast viewer available which will be a free download from the site that you can install much in the same way that you would install a demo. Using the BattleCast viewer, you can watch live matches in progress or you can download and watch those archives without ever buying the game. Again, it's about letting people ease into a genre that, in the past, has been a bit intimidating. There's a lot of "inside baseball" - you need to know the unit chain and tech trees. For some people, that requires a bit of an investment. This is a risk-free way to learn about RTS and to start becoming a great player.

JB: You can hear commentary and the commentators tell you what's happening. You can watch and say, "Oh my gosh, I didn't think about the third refinery on the expansion point. Man, no wonder that guy's able to pump out seven tanks while I'm only able to pump out five in the same amount of time." That's going to help people get into it and add a lot of depth into the multiplayer experience overall.

CC: We're even going to be making a BattleCast viewer available which will be a free download from the site that you can install much in the same way that you would install a demo. Using the BattleCast viewer, you can watch live matches in progress or you can download and watch those archives without ever buying the game. Again, it's about letting people ease into a genre that, in the past, has been a bit intimidating. There's a lot of "inside baseball" - you need to know the unit chain and tech trees. For some people, that requires a bit of an investment. This is a risk-free way to learn about RTS and to start becoming a great player.

GamesRadar: But BattleCast won't be in the Xbox 360 version. Why?

CC: A system like BattleCast absolutely can work on the console and we certainly expect to get there someday. Xbox Live is a bit of a closed system right now and that has created a couple of challenges in trying to come up with a single service that can serve PC and the Xbox.

But of course, the 360 version has terrific 360-specific features of its own, like the Vision Cam support. I wish we were able to get something like that into the PC version. It allows people in multiplayer matches that have the Vision Cam to actually see on the battlefield these little thumbnail video portraits of their opponents. You can taunt each other; you can strategize with people that are on the same team. It really adds an additional element of immediacy to the experience that I think is going to be a lot of fun.

GamesRadar: Do you think the game controls as well on the Xbox 360 as it does on the PC?

MV: We've worked really hard on the controls. We pioneered RTS controls with Battle for Middle-earth II on the 360 and it was very well received. We've taken the next leap with C&C 3. I'm a PC guy from way back. I love my keyboard and mouse, but the console gamers swear they can beat a PC guy if you put the two of them together. I think that's a testament to how well the controls work.

GamesRadar: Have you given any thought to enabling PC and 360 users to play against each other?

CC: I think that's a terrific idea and I think we're probably not too far from one day seeing RTS matches between PC players and console players. We're not quite going to get there with C&C 3, but I think we're not too far from that and certainly our group has given that question a lot of thought.

GamesRadar: Will you offer downloadable content for C&C 3? New maps or anything?

MV: We will, but nothing I can talk about yet.

GamesRadar: Do you think the game controls as well on the Xbox 360 as it does on the PC?

MV: We've worked really hard on the controls. We pioneered RTS controls with Battle for Middle-earth II on the 360 and it was very well received. We've taken the next leap with C&C 3. I'm a PC guy from way back. I love my keyboard and mouse, but the console gamers swear they can beat a PC guy if you put the two of them together. I think that's a testament to how well the controls work.

GamesRadar: Have you given any thought to enabling PC and 360 users to play against each other?

CC: I think that's a terrific idea and I think we're probably not too far from one day seeing RTS matches between PC players and console players. We're not quite going to get there with C&C 3, but I think we're not too far from that and certainly our group has given that question a lot of thought.

GamesRadar: Will you offer downloadable content for C&C 3? New maps or anything?

MV: We will, but nothing I can talk about yet.

GamesRadar: There are currently a lot of other RTS games to choose from. What sets C&C apart from its competition?

MV: A really deep single player experience. We've got 38 missions tied together with these live-action cutscenes. The pace. C&C is all about fast action-strategy gameplay. It's not really deep resource gathering or economy modeling.

JB: We pack a ton of fun into a short amount of time. The length of multiplayer games, on average, runs 10-20 minutes. Which sounds very short, but it feels like a long time, because you've got so much going on. You're in the field, battling... three minutes into the game, you've got tank battles and you're fighting over resources and expansions already. 15 minutes into the game, you're deploying entire tech units - even super weapons - and it starts to get really, really hairy. If a game goes to 30 minutes, that's unheard of. That means these two guys are butting heads, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of tanks have exploded, there's all kinds of advanced weapons and upgrades out on the field and super weapons are getting dropped. There is no shortage of strategy and it gets really intense, but it's streamlined enough so that anyone can get right into it.

CC: What a great year for PC RTS! You have fantastic games like Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander. It feels like we're in this Renaissance Age and we love that. We love competing against great RTS games. We feel like that brings more to the table for us to bring our own game up.

JB: We pack a ton of fun into a short amount of time. The length of multiplayer games, on average, runs 10-20 minutes. Which sounds very short, but it feels like a long time, because you've got so much going on. You're in the field, battling... three minutes into the game, you've got tank battles and you're fighting over resources and expansions already. 15 minutes into the game, you're deploying entire tech units - even super weapons - and it starts to get really, really hairy. If a game goes to 30 minutes, that's unheard of. That means these two guys are butting heads, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of tanks have exploded, there's all kinds of advanced weapons and upgrades out on the field and super weapons are getting dropped. There is no shortage of strategy and it gets really intense, but it's streamlined enough so that anyone can get right into it.

CC: What a great year for PC RTS! You have fantastic games like Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander. It feels like we're in this Renaissance Age and we love that. We love competing against great RTS games. We feel like that brings more to the table for us to bring our own game up.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars has been toned down for the German audience, Electronic Arts revealed tousthis morning.

To abide with the ultra-strict ratings laws, the Nod suicide bombers,erm, won't actually commit suicide. Instead the bomb-strapped Fanatic unit will apparently drop off his package and then scuttle off to safety, leaving the battlefield clear of limbs and nasty terrorist entrails. But that's ok.

It's not the first time violent videogames have had to be re-tinkered for the region ; '97 "racer" Carmageddon had its pedestrians changed to zombies and Gears of War was cancelled entirely.

C&C3's developers at EA assure us that the German censoring will have no affect on inter-version balancing and that the Fanatic switch is "purely an animation change."

Tiberium Wars is out for PC, suicides and all, on March 26. As for the 360 version, look for our hands-on impressions later this week.

March 13, 2007

A neat cheat has been discovered that will allow you to play as the NOD faction in the recently released Command %26amp; Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars demo.

While thestandard set up won't let you change the army you play as in a skirmish match, by following the directions below you'll be able to take charge of Kane's fanatical army and put the boot in to the goody-two-shoes GDI for a change. Just point your eyes down for the vital info.

Above: Here's us, just moments ago, playing as NOD in the great new C%26C 3 demo

• Select Skirmish mode from the main menu, then hover over the army column.
• Open the drop-down-box, which displays the army options - then hover your cursor over 'NOD.'
• Press 'n' on your keyboard and simultaneously click the left mouse button.
• Then, go to the computer's army selection box, and repeat the trick - only hovering over 'GDI' and pressing 'g' on your keyboard instead.

It may take a few tries, but it definitely works - and it's certainly worth it! Credit goes to the clever chaps on theEvil Avatar forum for uncovering such an excellent exploit.

March 1, 2007

It also gave the world its first taste of the Tiberium Universe, where the UN-backed Global Defense Initiative is locked in a brutal war with a quasi-religious militant group, known as the Brotherhood of Nod, and its infamous leader Kane.

In a refreshing twist to the ultra-real war settings of other RTS games of the time, C&C also introduced a hint of sci-fi with the arrival of the strange alien substance tiberium. This strange crystalline material mutates everything in its path and is the main catalyst behind Nod and GDI's worldwide campaign.

This was explored further in the highly-anticipated sequel, Tiberian Sun, which featured a 3D-like isometric engine for the first time.

Almost ten years have passed since then. That's nearly a decade devoid of Mammoth Tanks, ticking currency bars and the greatest bald dictator in all of gaming. Thankfully the wait is almost over. Next month the Tiberium Universe is set to make a triumphant return in Tiberium Wars - the biggest and most spectacular C&C yet.

In 2047 tiberium has blanketed the Earth. 30% of the planet is completely uninhabitable, with endless fields of alien landscape and violent ion storms blackening the skies. The rest of the world is covered in either partially habitable yellow zones or GDI-held blue zones, where the last refuges of the civilized world remain.

The infamous Kane returns (once again played by the legendary Joe Kucan) to lead the Brotherhood of Nod in the third Tiberium War and it's your job to stop him from turning the planet into nothing but a tiberium wasteland. You'll also face the mysterious alien Scrin for the first time.

The Command & Conquer universe is of course now presented in true 3D with a wealth of graphical effects helping to create the most atmospheric depiction of Tiberium-infested Earth yet. HD live-action cut-scenes also move the story along, with a cast of Hollywood favorites including sci-fi legend Michael Ironside and Billy Dee "Lando" Williams bringing the flaming politics of futuristic war to life.

Tiberium Wars is a refocus and return to form for C&C in more ways than one. The classic sidebar interface returns with a slick, ultra-refined makeover, helping to create the smoothest and most intuitive C&C experience since we last had to boot up our skirmish games in DOS.

There are also more of the familiar units and characters that first brought charm to the RTS genre, including the wise-cracking GDI commando, hulking Mammoth Tank and swift Orcas.

But as much as there's comfortable familiarity, Tiberium Wars also upgrades the classic C&C formula to the 21st century. Infantry units no-longer stand around getting shot at; improved AI technology has your soldiers taking-up stances, ducking behind cover and traveling in numbers impossible to produce in previous series entries.

And no C&C would be complete without a no-holds-barred multiplayer mode; a slew of broadcast and interactive spectator modes bring the online strategy theatre closer to a sport than in any other contender, and combined with VOIP communication and player commentary it should make for a truly in-depth and complete online experience.

Welcome back, Commander. Click here to visit the official site.

Here are the first screens ofthe sinister Tiberium-hungry alien invaders from Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, the third faction in the upcoming sequel, and one that uses markedly different tactics to the existing GDI and Brotherhood of Nod armies. Click your way to the images by using the tab above.

As you can see from these alien-action shots, there's an insectoid flavor to the newcomers, ranging from foot soldier-level beetle things to the three-tentacled tripod in the top right corner of the screen below - which can use each of its flexible arms to attack a separate target. The aliens (or "visitors" as Nod refers to them) work in smaller numbers but have far more grunt than equivalent enemy units.

For more information on this third race and what it's like to play as them, read our recenthands-on. Or, to see them in action for yourself, hit the Movies tab above and look for the video called "Command & Conquer 3 - Alien Units in Action 01-12-07."

C&C3: Tiberium Wars is due for release on Xbox 360 and PC toward the end of March - so with the launch so close, expect to see much more on the game's extraterrestrial intruders in the coming weeks.

January 16, 2007

Real-time strategy is back - more popular and accessible than ever. We saw a rebirth ofquality entries on the PC last year, with at least five different titles competing seriously for best in genre, as well as best in platform, awards. And the surprising success of Battle for Middle-earth II on Xbox 360 - a console! - proves that the audience and demand for these games have never been bigger.

What better time, then, for an original king of the genre to make its return? Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars is hoping to do just that, hitting PCs in March and 360s sometime this spring.

The series is finally returning to roots, too. The super militaristic Global Defense Initiative (GDI), with its mammoth tanks, grenadiers and building-blasting Ion Cannon. The corporate terrorists Brotherhood of Nod, with their rocket-launching motorbikes, stealth infantry and, of course, charismatically evil leader Kane. And the one and only thing they're fighting over - a poisonous but apparently invaluable bunch of green rocks known as Tiberium. This is the stuff that made Command & Conquer fun to begin with and it's all back.

In fact, during our hands-on time with the game, the two famous factions behaved much like we remembered them. Winning with the GDI still meant amassing a huge, powerful army and crushing the other side with superior firepower. In the first skirmish mode we played, we simply stomped our way to victory, marching through the streets of a deserted, war-torn town. Our smoke-trailing missiles and white-heat laser beams laid quick waste to Nod's overmatched forces... and to what little remnants of architecture that still stood around us.

Succeeding with Nod, meanwhile, still calls for a sneaky approach - scouting the enemy's base, hitting-and-running its weak points and infiltrating its strong points. In our second match, we had no luck moving our units past a heavily fortified wall of defense towers. The things just ate us to pieces. Instead, we ordered a pair of stealth bombers to fly discreetly over the wall, land next to the power plant being protected and attach an explosive that obliterated the entire base in one fiery moment. Sure, our pilots died, but a good Nod general understands that guerrilla warfare sometimes requires sacrifice.

Succeeding with Nod, meanwhile, still calls for a sneaky approach - scouting the enemy's base, hitting-and-running its weak points and infiltrating its strong points. In our second match, we had no luck moving our units past a heavily fortified wall of defense towers. The things just ate us to pieces. Instead, we ordered a pair of stealth bombers to fly discreetly over the wall, land next to the power plant being protected and attach an explosive that obliterated the entire base in one fiery moment. Sure, our pilots died, but a good Nod general understands that guerrilla warfare sometimes requires sacrifice.

So the GDI are still a serious, straightforward war machine, painted in drab camo colors, while Nod are still the flashy and bizarre comic book villains of the C&C universe, building giant temples to themselves and recruiting ninjas. Everything should be very familiar and comforting to long-time fans of the franchise. But what's new?

First, the look. The environments we tore apart were startlingly real world, strewn with apartment buildings, parking lots, traffic signals... even a softball field. Watching out-of-this-world units - rendered equally realistically - stride through these settings gave the game a cinematic science fiction appeal. And, perhaps for the first time, we actually felt like this story was taking place on our Earth.

So the GDI are still a serious, straightforward war machine, painted in drab camo colors, while Nod are still the flashy and bizarre comic book villains of the C&C universe, building giant temples to themselves and recruiting ninjas. Everything should be very familiar and comforting to long-time fans of the franchise. But what's new?

First, the look. The environments we tore apart were startlingly real world, strewn with apartment buildings, parking lots, traffic signals... even a softball field. Watching out-of-this-world units - rendered equally realistically - stride through these settings gave the game a cinematic science fiction appeal. And, perhaps for the first time, we actually felt like this story was taking place on our Earth.

Next, the strategy. While we encountered plenty of old standbys - Tiberium harvesting, energy management through power plants, super weapon charging - there were also a few twists we weren't expecting. Like the Brotherhood of Nod's Avatar, a humanoid killer robot that can take the wreckage of other units off the battlefield and attach them to itself. Pick up a defunct tank and absorb its firepower or grab a crashed stealth plane and become invisible. Don't worry if you're GDI, however, because you can always bring the Avatar to the ground and send an engineer in to commandeer it.

Next, the strategy. While we encountered plenty of old standbys - Tiberium harvesting, energy management through power plants, super weapon charging - there were also a few twists we weren't expecting. Like the Brotherhood of Nod's Avatar, a humanoid killer robot that can take the wreckage of other units off the battlefield and attach them to itself. Pick up a defunct tank and absorb its firepower or grab a crashed stealth plane and become invisible. Don't worry if you're GDI, however, because you can always bring the Avatar to the ground and send an engineer in to commandeer it.

And if that's still not enough newness for you, did we mention the entirely playable third race? The aliens are, for the most part, still being kept a mystery. The developers say they like it that way, as they are hoping that gamers will slowly discover these invaders' powers for themselves. Having now seen them and played them for ourselves, though, we can tell you that they are nothing at all like the GDI or Nod.

Their basic unit isn't a soldier - it's a buzzing hive of razor sharp extraterrestrial fish. Seriously. Instead of tanks, they have shiny organic tripods with flailing tentacles; instead of airships, they have what look like floating prehistoric fossils with regenerating, detachable insects; and instead of barracks, they have shimmering portals. By the time we discovered that the deadly fish swarm could attach itself to the tripod's spindly pulsating legs, we had no choice but to abandon logic and just enjoy the crazy alienness of it all. These... things... could end up being people's favorite faction.

Check them out for yourself by clicking the Movies tab above and looking for the video entitled "Command & Conquer 3 - Alien Units in Action 01-12-07." And watch this space for further coverage in the coming weeks.

And if that's still not enough newness for you, did we mention the entirely playable third race? The aliens are, for the most part, still being kept a mystery. The developers say they like it that way, as they are hoping that gamers will slowly discover these invaders' powers for themselves. Having now seen them and played them for ourselves, though, we can tell you that they are nothing at all like the GDI or Nod.

Their basic unit isn't a soldier - it's a buzzing hive of razor sharp extraterrestrial fish. Seriously. Instead of tanks, they have shiny organic tripods with flailing tentacles; instead of airships, they have what look like floatingprehistoric fossils with regenerating, detachable insects; and instead of barracks, they have shimmering portals. By the time we discovered that the deadly fish swarm could attach itself to the tripod's spindly pulsating legs, we had no choice but to abandon logic and just enjoy the crazy alienness of it all. These... things... could end up being people's favorite faction.

Check them out for yourself by clicking the Movies tab above and looking for the video entitled "Command & Conquer 3 - Alien Units in Action 01-12-07." Andwatch this space for further coverage in the coming weeks.

Command & Conquer 3's third race has been revealed as an invading alien force, fighting to lay claim to Earth's deadly infestation of Tiberium crystals. We've just uncovered a brand new trailer showing snippets of C&C3's cut-scene movies - including Lost's Sawyer as a gun-toting NOD commander - as well as what will be your first peek of the new alien enemies. Hit the Movies tab above right now.

The extraterrestrials resemble insect-like, almost robotic creatures, and a recent preview in PC mag Games For Windows has images of the aliens (or 'visitors' as Kane calls them in the movie) and their unit-recruiting structures, which apparently take the form of space-hopping warpgates, unlike NOD and GDI's barracks and factories.

Above: Some of the aliens look like huge beetles - but is there a softer, vulnerable E.T. inside these war machines?

Nothing specific has been revealed about the alien race and its forces - although EA has told GamesRadar that they will field smaller armies of more powerful individual units compared to NOD and GDI - but it's only a matter of time before Command & Conquer 3's exciting new secret raceis revealed in full detail. And we'll be there when the news breaks, bringing it to you in brain-friendly words.

December 13, 2006

This new all-action trailer RTS sequel Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is as remarkable for its many explosions and frantic activity as it is for the accompanying music which is as 'rawk' as it gets. Check out the Movies tab and look for "Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - trailer 11-30-06" for your dose of the action.

The trailer gets up close to the conflict between the GDI and Brotherhood of Nod, raging in 2047. Both are fighting over the areas of Earth that are not tainted by the spread of the strange alien mineral Tiberium, which is slowly consuming the planet. It also shows that ground troops are more than capable of taking down the larger war machines if their attacks are swift and coordinated.

EA's real-time strategy will be released for PC and Xbox 360 early next year.

November 30, 2006

Today is glorious for ruthless warlords with Microsoft console loyalties, because corporate super-power EA has bellowed for more TV-based bloodshed. They will bring the real-time-strategy epic Command & Conquer: 3 Tiberium Wars to the Xbox 360.

In Conquer 3, Tiberium is a destructivebut erotically radiant alien substance that is slowly devouring our planet. Humans still desperately need it though, so they go to war over it. And in the future, genocide is most fashionable when committed with psychotic robots and flashing laser cannons. To learn more about the Utopia we’ll be living in 41 years from now, scan your cybernetic eyes over ourpreviews of the PC version, as well as a couple of meager new genuine 360screenshots.

We still have goose bumps from witnessing the triumphant return of the Command & Conquer franchise during its first unveiling at E3. It wasn't necessarily the gorgeous visuals, either - it was the little things; classic audio cues, instantly recognizable unit types and familiar faces. Sure, everything was drenched in the swirling cauldron of next-gen graphical goodness, but it was undeniably C&C.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars' Executive Producer Mike Verdu explains our deep pangs of nostalgia: "Finding the right balance between innovation and the classic and timeless features that define C&C is a constant challenge. Our goal is to make a game that is fresh but familiar - a state-of-the-art 2007 RTS that also gives fans the feeling that they've reconnected with the essence of C&C. If we're successful, people will feel like they are finally coming home when they play our game, but they'll also be surprised at how great the game looks and plays... and how cool some of the new features are to use."

"A great example of the balance between the classic and the new is the in-game User Interface (UI). The C&C 3 UI started with a simple idea: Make a best-of-breed RTS in-game UI that combined features from the traditional C&C 'side bar' and the Generals-style 'command bar' interface. Then add a healthy dose of accessibility and ease-of-use based on the lessons we've learned with our more recent games. The end result is an in-game UI that is approachable, intuitive and easy to use for the novice RTS gamer, but has tremendous power and flexibility for the hardcore player."

We can't wait to get our hands on it, Mike. Command & Conquer 3 isn't due out until 2007, but expect a demo for the game soon. Hit the next page for a blown out diagram of the snazzy new interface.

1. Objectives/Player Status - Click this button to view your primary and bonus objectives
2. Sell Button - Sell your structures and be refunded a percentage of their build cost
3. Power Toggle - Shut down an individual structure in trade of freeing up more power
4. Repair Button - Use this button to Repair your damaged structures
5. Power Meter - This meter determines how much power your base is generating vs. consuming
6. Mini-map - Strategic overview of the battlefield. Allows instant navigation to any point on the map
7. Resources - This displays the total amount of resources available to purchase items
8. Contextual Tab - Provides the commander with a complete listing of all selected units and structures
9. Production Tabs - Manage your production queues from anywhere on the battlefield
10. Production Sub-Tabs - Manage your production queues for each individual structure
11. Build Buttons - Queue up, pause, or cancel the building of units and structures
12. Contextual Window - Portrait and overall information about the currently selected unit
13. Health - Represents the remaining hit points on the selected unit or squad
14. Upgrades - Display which Upgrades the item can receive
15. Combat Chain - These icons indicate where the unit falls in the combat chain
16. Veterancy - Displays the selected unit's combat experience and rank
17. Special Abilities - Activate Special Abilities for the selected unit or structure
18. Purchase Upgrades - Purchase upgrades for the selected unit or structure
19. Common Command Interface - Easy access to many of the most commonly used commands
20. Superpower Timers - Countdown timer will be represented here
21. Player Powers - Artillery strikes, bombing runs, radar scans and reinforcements

In addition to showing off fresh views of the Brotherhood of Nod faction, executive producer of the blisteringly good-looking Command & Conquer 3 brought good news for both sides. He confirmed that ravenous PC gamers will be given at least one demo before the game's 2007 launch. No word yet on sneaking a peek on the Xbox Live Marketplace yet for console gamers on the 360, though.

A single-player demo has been promised and a later multiplayer version may also be released, depending on the main game's schedule - strategy fans will want to keep their fingers crossed for it. The final C&C3's multiplayer is intended to be a step forward for RTS titles, offering a tournament mode that allows hundreds of players to sit on the sidelines as spectators and watch the action.

In order to get every gamer up to speed with the story behind its new real-time strategy game, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, EA has released an overview of each of the three factions that will appear in the game, starting with the Global Defense Initiative.

Tiberium Wars is set in 2047 where the alien mineral tiberium is slowly consuming the planet and three factions are scrapping for the areas that can still produce food and resources. One of these factions is the GDI, who started as a secret military alliance of the world's G8 nations.

By the time of C&C3, the GDI is no longer an alliance, but a unified political and military state that's locked in a conflict with the terrorist organization, Brotherhood of Nod. The GDI control the 20% of the Earth that hasn't been significantly affected by the tiberium and these civilization friendly areas are called blue zones.

To keep these areas Brotherhood free, GDI has built up a technologically advanced military force that can operate on all types of terrain. The vehicles used include the Predator battle tank, Mammoth heavy tank, Guardian APC and Juggernaut mobile artillery unit. Infantry is made up of fast-moving, lightly armored combat soldiers. The GDI can also attack from the air with Firehawk fast attack jets.

Gamers playing the GDI will have to become familiar with all these units' abilities in order to keep Nodat bay and attempt to halt the spread of tiberium.

A "big announcement" is planned for Command %26amp; Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars this August, as the next-gen strategy sequel's multiplayer mode goes on show during the Leipzig games event. Producer Mike Verdu says the announcement will "mean a lot to Command %26amp; Conquer fans" - could this spell the return of series villain Kane?