Diary of a Pigman
My life started in a swamp, and it was as nice as swamps get. I decided to leave. Immediately I noticed a black figure teleporting away, then it teleported right next to me! It looked at me with its purple eyes and said “Hi!”(fun fact! Endermen actually say “hi” and “what’s up” but it is altered and messed up and that is why you hear….whatever you heard) and I repeated back “Hi?”. He told me his name, “John,” he said then he went on about this “End” thing and a nether portal and how to build it and how it is essential to go to the nether to get to the End. I asked him if he knew what either of these things are and he said “other dimensions”. I started to freak out, “I’ve never even been to a different area than this one, I’ve only been alive for like 10 minutes now and you expect me to go to a different dimension?!!”
“I’m in.” I said “So how do we get to the End anyhow?” I asked and John answered, “First we ask a blaze (which live in the nether) if we can have some of their extra blaze rods (which they always have extras). Then we turn it into blaze powder and we craft it with an ender pearl (which John has an infinite amount of) to get an eye of ender. When you throw an eye of ender it floats in to the sky leading you to the direction of the nether portal. Eventually it will fall or shatter in mid-air so you might need a lot of them to throw and you’ll also need twelve of them to place down on the end portal itself. When the eye of ender falls and shatters you’ll need to dig down. Eventually you will find yourself in a strange maze. Follow the light until you find the End portal. At that moment, destroy the thing that is spawning silverfish and deal with the silverfish! Then place down the eyes of ender on the yellowish-blueish block and your End portal will turn into a night sky. Jump in and you’re in the “End”.”
“Wow, that is a lot to take in. So, how do we get to the nether?”
“Well, we either have to build one out of obsidian or we can find a player that’s a Noob that will leave their nether portal unguarded. It would be a lot of trouble to build one out of obsidian, so we should look for a player for sure,” He said, pointing east. We eventually found what we wanted, an unguarded nether portal, so we went through it. It was very noisy going through and when we got there it looked like hell, really – I’m not joking! There was lava and red blocks everywhere called nether eak. In the distance, there was red building. I was 90% sure that was where we were going to get blaze rods.
I was right! John said, “That’s the building over there! Let’s go!” When we got inside the building we started exploring everywhere. Eventually we found a cage with a blaze spawner inside. We asked them if we could have some extra blaze rods. They said yes and gave us 2 stacks of them. We began our journey back to the nether portal. Once we got there, a magma cube asked us if he can come too! We said yes and we left together. Since we had the key ingredient and John’s wisdom, we crafted eyes of ender with ease. What a journey that was! I can’t wait for our next adventure.
Total War: Warhammer II DLC and its effect on Mortal Empires.
Now that the latest release of Warhammer II DLC has settled in, the new trends resulting from the changes and additions of the combined updates are starting to show their latest effect on the campaign overall. The trend thus far, while showing love to some badly neglected factions, has grown a little disappointing. So far four different Old World races have received major updates, increasing their competitive ability against the newer races of Warhammer II. Of those four, three of them have been from the “good guys” or Forces of Order, and it’s starting to show.
After each Old World update, the respective beneficiary race showed massive improvement, normally dominating its regional affairs and easily crushing its traditional rival. As potential competition was updated and introduced, like the Skaven or Vampire Coast, these dramatic results were curbed to some degree on a global level. Yet now that the Empire, one of the original superpower factions when Total War: Warhammer was introduced, has been added to the list of updated factions the global balance of power has finally produced noticeable ramifications across the world map.
Forces of Order factions, in this case a colloquial term identifying all Human, Dwarf, Elf, Lizardman, and yes even Tomb King factions, are typically more likely to ally with their neighbors and consolidate their power with peaceful confederations. This factor combined with the imbalance of Old World updates has resulted, in a frequent but not total basis, in the Forces of Order achieving overwhelming map dominance before Archaon’s Chaos invasion is even defeated. Greenskins are usually the first to go out, with Skaven relegated to balkanized provinces and the Dark Elves forced on a perpetual defensive campaign. The Vampire Counts, if fortunate, will survive just long enough for the dwarves to unify their realm and aid the Empire in crushing the remnants of Sylvanian undead.
This is all well and good for peace-loving players and diplomatic challenges, but for those players looking for a long game of global conquest and multi-racial challenges, this can be a bother on both sides of the alliances. Order players will rapidly find themselves with no one to fight since their beloved trading partners and military allies now likely control all the surrounding territory. Of course there is no game limitation on who to fight or when, but attacking a former ally typically causes more problems than it’s worth.
On the flip side, factions opposing the general Forces of Order will almost inevitably find themselves embroiled in what is effectively a world war. Fighting one or two major factions is usually little more than a hassle, but four or more super powers with their hordes of un-killable agents and unpredictable assault routes cause even a victorious campaign to bog down into quagmires of maneuvers, unfixable notifications, and compoundable domestic problems. Any single difficulty can usually be managed with a few turns of corrective action, but when faced with conflict on a multi-front scale simple problems like agent actions and harmful events grow out of proportion.
On top of all the above, evil factions generally have difficulty aligning with each other, making any sort of united front among surviving factions problematic if not impossible. This first manifests as evil factions are slowly eliminated by their main rivals while quarreling with their minor neighbors. Any survivors must fight alone against an increasingly growing alliance of opponents.
Now, the Old World updates do need to happen, and have clearly improved the playability and enjoyment of these races, but the weight of focus needs to move a little more towards center. The Forces of Order have received the overwhelming majority of new content, free or paid, and the Greenskins, Norsca, and other Chaos forces would benefit from an improvement to their now partially obsolete mechanics, skill trees, and traits. This would go a long way to not only making these races more viable and playable factions, but also permit a more contentious Mortal Empires campaign throughout the course of extended play.
The Aversion and confederation mechanics could use somewhat of an overhaul as well. Aversion, or the generic diplomatic penalty between races and factions that don’t like each other, was originally used to reinforce lore-based prejudices that existed among said powers. In the beginning this made sense, Skaven and Lizardmen, for example, hate each other bitterly and only the most determined diplomatic efforts should succeed between them.
Lately however Aversion has been turned into a mechanic that represents any disgruntlement or grievance a faction could have with another. It’s gotten to the point where almost any faction, including ones of the same race, will have an Aversion to almost all of its neighbors to some degree or another. Aversion has stopped becoming a mechanic that enhances flavor and has turned into a crutch to make early- and mid-game diplomacy more difficult.
Confederation has, in many ways, followed a similar path. It’s understandable that confederation is a somewhat divisive mechanic. Some players enjoy sweeping up large amounts of settlements and collecting Legendary Lords. Others don’t have the time or desire to mess with that diplomacy nonsense and wish confederation didn’t exist, or was harder, if that were possible. That disagreement is part of the reason that standard confederation is a favorable option; it gives the players complete freedom to choose if they want to try confederating. Norsca’s alteration to this formula was a welcome change, since it made confederation a very tangible objective while still giving the player freedom of choice.
Changes like this should be welcomed for future race updates. Confederation is fun when it is thematic and attainable, all the more so when it is unique between the races. The standard confederation mechanic, while functional, is becoming dated. The AI has a far easier time confederating, even among rivals, while players struggle to make even the most trusted friends accept that final step. Introducing unique, but optional, faction mechanics for confederation would go a long way in smoothing over the diplomatic hurdles and the troublesome mid-game relational challenges that so often bedevil “evil” factions.
The Empire’s new confederation mechanic is not this way. Now confederation is effectively a mandate for the defenders of humanity, and a very costly and time consuming one at that. The player suffers tangible penalties for not playing the diplomacy game; relational penalties pale in comparison. Although the mechanics are detailed and easily understood, they interfere with every aspect of the player’s immersion and strategy. CA should be applauded for trying a change as radical as they did, and in fairness they chose one the best factions, flavorfully speaking, to try it out with. Yet their first attempt has, overall, been a failure: the Empire is wearisome to play.
Once again, change is good and Warhammer II is vastly improved beyond its original release. The recently announced update for the long neglected Greenskin factions should go a long way in addressing many of the above issues and will hopefully encourage CA to take a more balanced approach to further updates and content releases. They have already demonstrated their willingness to attempt a revision of existing mechanics and with some trial and error already accomplished in previous DLCs there is a high possibility that more thematic and entertaining mechanics will be available in the future.
Epic Units: Part 2
This is the continuation of the epic units topic from previous post. Epic units had finally begun to enter mainstream Real-time Strategy gaming. Now it’s time to see what developers did with this growing concept.
When Electronic Arts defied expectations and made their RTS adaption of the Lord of the Rings film series an epic retelling with massive battles, grand fortresses, and larger than life heroes, it only stood to reason that such a game needed at least one super unit thrown in. The fiery demon of Moria, the Balrog, fulfilled this requirement in every way. The pinnacle of the evil forces’ power tree, the Balrog required a large number of power points to unlock (or successfully progressing through 2/3rds of the evil campaign). It was summoned rather than built, and only remained on the battlefield for a limited amount of time. Yet its raw power and special abilities gave it every advantage against whatever enemies it faced. Unless the great Gandalf was on the field, the Balrog was pretty much guaranteed to take the day.
By this point an epic unit of some kind was practically expected in any true RTS publication that was not a strictly historical/contemporary setting. If the game’s genre was sci-fi or fantasy, an epic unit was almost guaranteed to appear. This became readily apparent when Big Huge Games announced Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, the series’ first foray away from historical settings. The epic units, or Master Units as they were called, were advertised from the beginning and no one was surprised at their inclusion. Indeed, their presence was a source of great excitement and anticipation among the RTS community; and they did not disappoint. Each unit was worth an army by itself, and possessed capabilities beyond what any other single unit-class in the game could deliver.
Now that epic units had become commonplace in RTS titles, it was time to make them a central part of game design. Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander was released to great excitement in the RTS community as it was billed as the spiritual successor to the much beloved Total Annihilation. Supreme Commander featured a full tier of epic units, dubbed experimental units (and buildings in the some cases), and a great deal of the game’s overall strategy revolved around acquiring these units quickly, or ensuring that opponents could not acquire them easily.
Some such units were so powerful that they were classified as “game-enders” and could be disabled in online or skirmish matches if the player(s) so choose. Surpreme Commander 2, a sequel released three years later, not only featured even more experimental units, but made them almost ubiquitous by going so far as to sideline conventional combat units to the pure rolls of cannon fodder and swarm tactics.
Even though the Command & Conquer franchise had been one of the first to introduce a super unit worthy of the title, it became rather anomalous by staying in production for over a decade without an epic unit of note. This would change with the release of Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath, which introduced three epic units, one for each game faction. These monstrous war machines physically and statistically dwarfed any other unit, and featured customization slots allowing them to be equipped with a variety of secondary weapons systems. Each epic unit could only be produced from an advanced version of the war factory and cost more credits than any other unit in the game.
Another Command & Conquer title, Red Alert 3, would be released later the same year. It never approached Kane’s Wrath’s level of epic integration, but it included a campaign only epic unit, the Shogun Executioner, that the player was allowed to control on a few occasions. On an interesting note, this would mark one of the rare times in all of RTS history that a campaign only epic unit was given freely to the player. In fairness, the Shogun Executioner was far from invincible, but its destructive capability surpassed even the faction super-weapons.
The epic units of RTS were the arcade bosses of old brought into the RTS genre. They were rarely the centerpiece of the game’s design or story, but each one almost always left a notable impression on the players that encountered them. As the years passed some players used them as a sort of handicap mode to test unique strategies or challenge themselves to defeat otherwise unbeatable opponents. Designers and producers that had grown up experiencing these battlefield giants in action now applied the concept to new genres and mediums; with movies, card games, literature, and video games on other platforms all featuring super units in one variation or another. The RTS genre may have become obscure as the new millennium moved on, but its contribution to the media presence of epic units is undeniable and will continue to be felt by gamers of all genres for generations to come.
Epic Units: Part 1
For a Real-Time Strategy player, there are few things more satisfying than the comprehensive act of causing immense digital destruction in a short amount of time. Traditionally this is accomplished utilizing super weapons like nuclear missiles or orbital bombardment, but starting in the mid-90s game developers provided players with a new way to devastate their opponents on the battlefield. Epic units, as they would come to be called, were powerful creatures or war machines that were incredibly durable, possessed immense destructive power, and were typically the pinnacle of the player’s economic and technological development. Their presentation and themes took different turns over the years, but the trend is unmistakable.
As with Westwood Studio’s iconic Mammoth Tank, the development of epic units had a slow and indeterminate start. In Blizzard’s landmark title Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, each race is able to use its highest tier caster to summon a powerful, temporary unit; the Water Elemental for the humans, and the Daemon for the orcs. While both units were not in the strictest sense epic, they were notable for requiring the highest possible concentration of resources to produce, and possessed combat abilities far beyond anything else the rest of the army rosters could muster. Despite this being something of a hallmark for things to come, Blizzard would never fully pickup on this trend.
That Westwood Studios would be the next developer to produce an example of a proto-epic unit is quite ironic given the rivalry it shared with Blizzard. Red Alert: The Aftermath, the second expansion to the popular Command & Conquer: Red Alert title, featured a single mission with three AI controlled “super tanks”. Although un-buildable and uncontrollable for the player, these tanks had all the features of an epic unit, which the mission proceeded to showcase as the tanks shrugged off tesla coils and nuclear warheads while laying waste to an extensive Soviet Base. Editing the unit files would allow modders to gain access to the super tanks, but as yet a true epic unit would remain out of reach of players for a few more months.
In March of 1998, Cavedog Entertainment would release the first expansion to its seminal product, Total Annihilation. The Core Contingency, as the pack was titled, introduced a host of new units to the base game, including the mighty and powerful Krogoth Experimental K-bot (k-bots being essentially single-purpose mechs). The Krogoth was a surprise for many Total Annihilation players as it had no direct counter or equivalent in the opposing faction. Additionally, its only weakness was its inability to cross water; in all other respects the Krogoth annihilated any form of opposition that could be sent against it aside from massed, accurate, long range firepower. The Commander unit could destroy it easily with its disintegrator, but only a skilled player could micro a Commander close enough without being obliterated in turn. Krogoths required immense time and resources to produce, and typically necessitated an immediate response by the opposition before the battle was swiftly resolved.
Westwood Studios would take a cue from the arcade and console traditions of the previous decade and introduce a “boss battle” in their Firestorm expansion to Tiberian Sun. The Core Defender was an enormous humanoid mech that towered over every unit and structure in the game. It activated after players completed the pen-ultimate objective in the final mission; with no warning or foreshadowing given that the Defender would even appear. Capable of dispatching the strongest units in seconds, the Defender’s only weakness was a lack of air defense, yet its enormous pool of hit points necessitated some very creative tactics that can still be found on various forums and videos today.
As the development era of the 2000s came into full swing, developers knew that super units were a rare but accepted aspect. The only challenge was balancing them, if they were available to the player at all. Ensemble Studio’s Age of Mythology featured several in-game cutscenes were deities and similar beings appeared on the battlefield and wrecked havoc, but it wasn’t until The Titans expansion came out that the enormous Titan units were made available to the player. Titans were far from invincible as they lacked air defense and the ability to traverse water. Yet they had the largest hit point pool of any buildable unit by a vast margin, and their attack could level buildings and finish off most units in a couple of hits. The most impressive feature of the titan was its scale, the enormous model was quite often the largest single object on the map.
After the success of Starcraft, and the publishing of expansions like the Core Contingency or The Titans, two developments became increasingly apparent. Firstly it was possible to safely provide players with epic units, secondly the standard “heavy” or “high tier” units like Terran Battlecruisers had slowly become just expensive cannon fodder in the faster paced meta of modern RTS games. Relic Entertainment’s Warhammer 40k franchise, Dawn of War, took this to heart by providing each playable faction in the base game and its expansions with a top tier unit. Typically these took the form of super heavy armored vehicles or supernatural gods and demons.
Each of them was, by default the last thing unlocked in a battle and required more resources than any other technology or unit. Additionally, players had to control at least one relic resource on the battlefield in order to even build these epic units, and only one such unit could be built at any time. Once constructed, these epic monsters and machines typically required an opposing epic unit to stop them, otherwise the battle was often resolved quickly. Another new development was the uniqueness of each epic unit. Each had its own quirks and mechanics, and they were not balanced around each other, but around their faction as a whole. Some were more effective as support weapons, others as frontline units or building destroyers. For the first time, epic units had transitioned from a class or type to an actual unit tier.
This topic turned out to be a bit longer than expected, so it’s being broken up into two releases. Now that we’ve had a chance to see where RTS epic units got their start, next time we’ll see what they turned into as the concept entered mainstream RTS gaming in force.
Episodic Sequels
Recently I watched a gameplay exposition and review for the upcoming Total War: Warhammer II video game, the highly anticipated sequel to Creative Assembly’s landmark title, Total War: Warhammer, set to release on September 28th. The review itself was straightforward and highly informative and I had no trouble with it. However it brought up an interesting point that relates directly to the nature of episodic titles in video games.
An episodic series of video games is a run of at least two titles with a single, overarching plot that runs through each title, tying the series’ storyline, characters, and even mechanics and themes together across the series. Normally the release dates, intended consoles, and even genre of the titles don’t define if a title is part of the episodic series; content is the only determining factor. Yet perhaps the most important aspect of an episodic series versus a franchise or saga is the proximity of each title’s release to the releases of the other titles in the series. It’s not enough to share the title, setting, and mechanics of prequels and sequels; an episodic title must be an indispensable part of a larger whole.
Command & Conquer Online: Westwood Classics
This December marks the 25th anniversary of the release of the landmark Real-Time Strategy game Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty by Westwood Studios. Dune II was not the first RTS game to be developed but its release marked the beginning of RTS as a major genre in PC, and to a lesser degree console, gaming. It introduced the mechanics and style that would be utilized in RTS games for the next decade, only being superseded by Blizzard’s variation of the genre after the release of Command & Conquer: Generals in 2003.
Since Dune II’s release Westwood Studios developed several RTS titles, with accompanying sequels, before its closure by Electronic Arts in early 2003. These included the seminal Command & Conquer and its associate spinoff Command & Conquer: Red Alert, as well as a remake of Dune II titled Dune 2000 which featured enhanced graphics and improved gameplay taken from the development of Red Alert. All of these titles stayed true to their original RTS format and nourished a thriving RTS community.
Endless Space 2 – Prologue
Endless Space 2, developed by Amplitude Studios and published by Sega, is the direct sequel to Amplitude’s previous 4X title Endless Space and the latest release in the Endless series. After a widely publicized and well-received early access period Endless Space 2 was released on May 19th, 2017 for PC and Mac. As yet I have not had the pleasure of experiencing everything the new release has to offer so until there’s some real review material to present I’m going to put up some quick notes about the eager anticipation surrounding Endless Space 2.
Out of the numerous 4X titles released in the last decade few came close to matching the vaunted Civilization series’ quality and appeal as Amplitude’s last title, Endless Legend. Endless Legend combined Civilization’s highly accessible user interface with the Endless series’ science-fantasy mythos and invigorating territorial control mechanics to make a 4X experience that was able to capture and hold a player’s attention across each game’s progression. The enjoyment remained consistent across single player and multiplayer and a new take on 4X diplomacy, while not perfect, kept competitive and cooperative play intriguing.
Orcas Online Private Minecraft Server
Attention San Juan Gamers!
Orcas Online is setting up a Minecraft server that any Orcas Online customer can access. The server is currently set to survival-mode and is open to anyone on the Orcas Online network. This project is an attempt to create a digital environment that local gamers can enjoy and socialize on. Bring your friends, build and explore, and find other gamers in the San Juan Islands!
At this time we do not have any plans for a sandbox mode server; but check back for updates on that subject in the future.
Contact Orcas Online for information on how to create a profile and access the server or with questions about the setup.
email: info@orcasonline.com
office phone: 376-4124
Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight
After Electronic Arts successfully continued the Command & Conquer saga with its releases of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and it’s expansion Kane’s Wrath in 2007 and 2008 respectively there was a great deal of hype and excitement when EA announced the fourth and final title of the current Tiberium saga: Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. EA added to the hype by promising that Tiberian Twilight would introduce new mechanics and concepts never before tried in a Real-Time Strategy game. These would of course be appearing alongside such iconic C&C staples as live action movies, familiar faction units, and the desolate landscape of a tiberium-scarred earth.
One of the most important aspects about Tiberian Twilight is that it is a server based game requiring an active online connection to update the player’s profile. EA utilizes what they called an RPG style approach toward player profiles. As the player completed missions and won skirmish and multiplayer battles their profile gained experience which unlocked units and technologies of the faction that they played as. Once their profile reached enough experience for each faction they would be able to utilize all of the units, buildings, and technologies of those factions in any single player or multiplayer game. Each faction levels up separately, although the player need not create a different profile to play both factions. The game can be played without an internet connection and single player games are not interrupted if the connection is somehow lost, but the player’s profile will not gain experience in offline mode.
Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight does away with the old C&C convention of a single unit providing a central building from which a static base grows to provide the player with a fully advanced and capable army. Instead at the start of a game the player receives the option to choose from three different crawler units. Each crawler represents offensive, defensive, and support classes and the player will have access to different types of units and abilities depending on which class is chosen. The chosen crawler appears in a deployment zone and serves as both a unit and factory for all of the player’s units.
Crawlers are heavily armored and as the player unlocks more technologies the crawlers gain weapons, armor, and other defensive abilities. Like their MCV predecessors from previous C&C games crawlers must deploy to produce units which are produced almost instantly. The support class emphasizes air units and their crawler appropriately is an air unit, but it must still deploy to produce or call down other aircraft. If a player’s crawler is destroyed, or if the player wants to switch classes, a new crawler can be chosen and will appear in the same manner as the first one.
Each map in single player or multiplayer has several small landing pads on which green and blue tiberium crystals will routinely spawn. These crystals can be collected by ground units and carried back to the player’s deployment zone to unlock technologies and are an important point of contention for players as the player who gathers more crystals more quickly will have the better army in the early game. Once a player unlocks all of their units and technologies, the crystals provide small boosts to their victory point track.
Single player missions still feature traditional objectives and follow the game’s storyline in terms of the enemies and maps encountered. In skirmish and multiplayer modes victory is determined by a point track. The principle way to gain points is to control a majority of tiberium nodes around the map. Nodes are structures that can be captured by stationing more units than an opponent near the node for a certain amount of time. Battles over these nodes take place on arena style maps with AI controlled structures defending each faction’s deployment zones while the nods themselves are situated in the map’s central no-man’s land.
EA finalizes its changes to the C&C formula by introducing rock-paper-scissors style interaction between units based on their type and weapon. For example, machine guns are effective against infantry and light vehicles while laser weapons are effective against heavy vehicles and structures. A heavy unit with machine guns will be effective against infantry, but vulnerable to lasers, and vice versa. Some units deal enough raw damage to be somewhat effective against any threat, but the formula holds true for the arsenals of each class and faction.
The many changes to the RTS and C&C formulas that appear in Tiberian Twilight practically make it its own game with unique style and strategies. Sadly, this is perhaps the single greatest failure of the game and EA. If Tiberian Twilight had been produced as its own game, distinct from the style associated with its predecessors, it may have been far more successful and well received. Unfortunately it turns out to be another attempt by EA to project their own creative designs onto a classical franchise in an attempt to sell their own ideas on the shoulders of someone else’s giant.
The profile leveling system ensures that players cannot experience the full game until they’ve played dozens of hours of meaningless grinding. The fact that profiles can’t be leveled in offline mode slaves the players to a continual internet connection and makes offline mode a pointless option. Poor or even moderate latency will result in continual disconnects forcing players to reload games to continue gaining experience. The single player missions do not restrict a player’s units and buildings and are thus not balanced for any level of technology, which can confuse and frustrate new players.
The crawler based combat is hectic and clumsy at best. Units are thrown into a mosh-pit style battles with little chance for strategic planning and no possibility for territory control. The rock-paper-scissors dynamic to weapons is also a disappointment. Units have been marginalized from their distinctive roles in previous C&C titles into generic types that have little use if their intended opponent type is not present. Combat also devolves into players trading unit types as endless counters are swapped. Units die quickly to their hard-counters but practically ignore attacks from any other weapon type. This leaves players who maxed out their limited population cap with the wrong types completely out of luck until they suffer enough casualties to allow rebuilding.
The faction’s distinctive styles have also disappeared. The fast and stealthy Nod no longer clashes with the slow and steady GDI; now each faction is essentially a mirror match. Resources are no longer present so the only limitation on a player’s production is the population cap. This cap is far too small to control a significant portion of the map and players can find themselves kitted around by small groups of fast units stealing tiberium nodes while avoiding direct conflict.
Finally the game itself, for all its nostalgic units and references to previous C&C titles, lacks theme and flair. It is a boring slug-fest where units without identity or history clash on generic and alien battlefields for objectives with no tangible accomplishments or definable impact on their opponents. There is no sense of accomplishment or ownership for the player profile, only a grind to unlock units, which should rightly be available from the start, until the full tech tree is unlocked. The fact that players have to work to experience and enjoy a game they paid for in full is itself an unforgivable sin.
Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight had a lot of ideas that, taken by themselves, could have been very successful. Mashed together they ensure that yet another attempt by EA to match the MOBA and Starcraft environments has only succeeded in ruining another beloved gaming franchise. If Tiberian Twilight had at least been marketed as a different game instead of trying to usurp the C&C series it might have stood a chance; but many fans were left feeling cheated and frustrated by the alien style and disorienting focus of gameplay.
Fans who want to see the Tiberium saga played out need only invest about a dozen hours into completing the campaigns and will find that purchasing the game on sale is about equal to the value; but they should avoid buying the game at EA’s full retail price. Any other gamer hoping for a fulfilling RTS experience, or gaming experience in general, should not waste the money and time on Tiberian Twilight; a sad end that such a storied franchise did not deserve.
Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath
A Command & Conquer title is just not the same without an expansion pack to accompany it and flesh out its content. C&C expansions come from the golden age of expansions when gamers could expect at the least new units, missions, and multiplayer maps if not full fledged campaigns and new factions. Thankfully Electronic Arts has not departed from this model with its expansion to Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars; Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath.
Each of the three main factions receives new units and support powers. Many of these units, like the GDI Slingshot anti-air unit, were added to remove deficiencies in existing faction rosters or new gaps that arose as a result of the new minor factions. Epic units, one for each side, were also introduced as super powerful vehicles capable of crushing lesser units and could be customized by loading infantry into their hard points to add secondary weapons. The new toys are worth a few games just to play with and are enjoyable for the most part but can still be overshadowed by high tier units.
Following after its successful implementation of minor factions in Command & Conquer: Generals EA chose to add two minor factions to each major faction in Kane’s Wrath. The minor factions focus on a particular strategy or aspect of their parent faction; like flame weapons and heavy infantry for the Brotherhood of Nod or sonic weaponry and tiberium immunity for GDI. Minor factions also receive build restrictions in exchange for their specializations; one GDI minor faction can only produce basic infantry units but gets a strong boost to its armored units. Many of the new units added by Kane’s Wrath are unique to the minor factions; some are entirely new and others are improvements of existing designs to match them with their respective minor faction’s emphasis.
The campaign for Kane’s Wrath is less filled out then the rest of the game as its 13 missions only feature the Brotherhood of Nod as the playable faction. The campaign is still very well done with strong narrative and many entertaining missions. Players will also get to utilize each of Nod’s minor factions to their fullest and will also encounter the other minor factions as enemies throughout the course of the campaign. Sadly it can only serve as a blueprint for the campaign experience that could have been; the lack of a similar model for the other two factions puts a damper on the player’s ability to enjoy the new minor factions in a narrative environment.
Perhaps the most innovative addition that Kane’s Wrath brings is the Global Conquest mode. This single player options presents a turn based world map where the player, as one of the three major factions, builds bases, raises armies, and conducts global warfare against the other two factions. Bases can be upgraded with defenses and tech levels to allow them to produce armies with stronger units.
Armies can be moved a set distance across the map, or ferried between bases on different continents. When opposing armies meet or an army attacks an enemy base the battle can be auto-resolved or played out in real-time in a manner resembling a skirmish battle. However if the attacking army does not include base-building units it will not be able to construct a base and if the defending base has high enough technology and defenses it will be able to produce advanced units a the start of the game, tying in developments on the strategic level with tactical combat.
The Global Conquest mode compensates somewhat for the lack of a full campaign. Players can enjoy what each faction has to offer at length. The AI in this mode is essentially a basic Skirmish AI and is competent enough to manage the world map effectively. However its tactical capacities are lacking on lower difficulty settings and don’t always mesh in capability with the AI’s performance on the world map; making for a somewhat dichotomous experience. On the flip-side it is usually fairly easy for the player to establish a continental stronghold thus allowing the full extent of the mode’s options to be tested at length.
Multiplayer sees little improvement from C&C 3. The new minor factions can offer interesting tactical opportunities, but some limitations on their tech tree limit tactical flexibility; generally making the main factions the safer and well-rounded option. Perhaps the greatest tragedy for multiplayer was the lack of inclusion for Global Conquest mode. Granted the mode features only three factions so a multiplayer version would have been either incredibly limited or PvP only but the option still would have been a great benefit to the game; all the more so if a co-op feature had been included.
Kane’s Wrath isn’t needed to make C&C 3 a great game; the full package was already there. The minor factions are a welcome addition for expanding skirmish and multiplayer gameplay, but the lack of campaign options to enjoy them at leisure detracts a bit from their impact. However the Global Conquest mode suffers only from the somewhat mediocre performance of the AI at lower difficulty levels. In all other aspects it is a very ambitious and enjoyable experience with a smooth design that needs only the ability to share it with a friend. Kane’s Wrath isn’t its own game, but it expands C&C 3 to the fullest possible extent.