C&C4: Tiberian Twilight.

[MinisterofDOOM]

I see Nali's rocking a Joe Kucan avatar, so I figured this was as good a time as any for this thread.

Many of us long-time C&C fans (I've been playing from the beginning...before I even owned a PC, and my first PC game purchase was Red Alert) wondered WTF was up when C&C3 did not bear the Tiberian Twilight subtitle, as that had been expected for several years.

Now, the closing chapter of the C&C series is upon us, and it's...freaking different.

My feelings on what's known of the game so far are mixed. I know EA is capable of making a good C&C game, because C&C3 and Kane's Wrath are both fantastic. But Generals and Red Alert 3 are s***. So there's just as much risk of the game being horrible.

I cannot say I'm pleased with the changes to mobile gameplay and consistent "character" development. I have never liked the idea of unlockables or the idea of persistent experience game across game modes. I dislike the lack of differentiation between multiplayer and singleplayer.

I also DO NOT like the removal of harvesters. It ruined RA3, and it will ruin C&C4. I could ALMOST understand mines in RA3 since piles of "ore" on the ground never made much sense anyway. But tiberium harvesting is THE staple of C&C. I don't want a "resource node" that magically generates income. Protecting your harvesters is a key piece of C&C strategy and removing it is unacceptable.

Mostly, though, the levelling/unlockables crap is stupid. It completely interferes with story progression. If you play online a lot, you can enter the early missions with tons of units. But if you never play online you won't get them until later. How the hell can that storyline have any balance with that degree of deviance?

I feel like this is yet another case of "why not call it something else if you don't want to make [x franchise] style game?" Why didn't EA just make EA's World Combat Strategy Extravaganza 2009(!) and call it a day? I don't see the point in shaking up what makes C&C C&C just to make it more appealing. ESPECIALLY considering it's the last game in the series, it should appeal to hardcore fans over anyone. To hell with casual gamers. C&C is NOT and has NEVER BEEN for casual gamers. C&C is freaking crazy-a** wartime doom with green crystals from space and a villain who refuses to STAY DEAD.

And that brings my to my other fearful point:EA interviews show that they COMPLETELY miss the point of C&C's live action cutscenes. They talk abou the camp ruining the experience, and how they're going to make them more serious and believable. C&C IS NOT SERIOUS. IT HAS GREEN CRYSTALS FROM SPACE AND JOE FREAKING KUCAN IN IT! The camp WAS GOOD. It was part of the atmosphere that IS C&C. If they go overboard trying to hard, they're just going to come out with something that's neither good NOR bad. Kane's crooked plastic helmet in Kane's Wrath was CAMPTASTIC and exactly what C&C needs more of. I don't want serious. I want crazy world-domination Kane monologues.

The idea of mobile crawlers is interesting, but I fear the current implementation strays TOO MUCH from what underpins the core C&C experience.

I am very excited to see walker AND treaded versions of the Mammoth finally get to fight side by side, though.

[s0m3th1ngAZ]

OMG YES.Have my babies from fricken space.C&C and covert missions was one of my first gaming experiences on the PC.And that game was HARD.I didn't complete it until 8 years later when I found the game discs.

[RCA]

Didn't they allready have "mobile crawlers" in C&C Red Alert? Those little robots that would jump in tanks and ore miners and destroy them from the inside out?

[MinisterofDOOM]

In RA2 they had Terror Drones, yeah, spider thingies that kill tanks. But that's definitely not what I meant by "mobile crawler."

THIS is a Crawler:http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Crawler

There are two of them, the GDI the prominent unit on screen, the red/black Nod one in the background. The two smaller (!?) massive walkers are Mastodons: the latest iteration of Tiberian Sun's Mammoth MkII walker.

The Crawler takes the place of the player's base in TT. In fact, unless you're playing the defensive class, you can't build structures at all. Crawlers build your units, and can store units inside them for protection or strategic deployment. They seem pretty heavily defended, and have different upgrades that can be earned.All crawlers can deploy into a construction yard, like classic MCVs. And depending on whether they're deployed or not, their capabilities will change.

Additionally the Crawler is slightly different for each class. The legged crawlers above are from the Offensive class. Support crawlers fly, while defensive crawlers use wheels.

That brings us to another new feature of TT:Respawns. C&C4 games are treated more like FPS matches than RTS matches. If you "die" you can respawn, and when you respawn, you choose your class. You can even self-destruct your crawler if you want to force a respawn to pick a different class. This holds true for both multiplayer and singleplayer. How that's going to work with victory conditions, I am not sure.