Review: Command & Conquer 3 - Tiberium Wars

Introduction

As a fan of Command & Conquer series, I personally glad that I could play this game at the time where it is still new. This is because I never get to play all their series on time. The first C&C comes in before I even have a PC. Then comes Red Alert where that is the time I started playing. That was my first strategy game I ever played and it means a lot to me. Tiberium Sun and Red Alert 2 comes in respectively and I was pretty demotivated in gaming that time, so I didn’t play those. Next is the C&C General and that time I was with my Pentium 3 (500MHz), 64MB RAM, and a piece of Vodoo 3; Definitely I can’t even start my game that time. And now, I can play this version with the highest detail without any problem at all.

C&C 3: Tiberium Wars consists of 3 race who they are the GDI, NOD and Scrin. The 3 race are all pretty well balanced. GDI are those good people who don’t abuse the use of tiberium for destruction or any killing purpose. Towards the end of the GDI campaign, you can actually choose to end the game nicely as a good person or you can end it with the abuse of some tiberium super weapon. Of course it takes more effort to win it nicely. While the NOD, with their leader KANE is obviously the race where you use tiberium to destroy or launch super weapons. Scrin, the alien comes into play when you enter GDI and NOD ACT IV of the campaign. This is the new race that never been introduced before throughout the previous C&C series.

The story of the Tiberium Wars in the campaign is great. You will start off with either GDI or NOD. After completing both campaign, you will unlocked the Scrin’s campaign. After most of the mission, you will have cinematic. This is what so great about C&C always, they had lots of cinematic to watch. However the cinematic does not get so interesting towards the end of the game. Most of it were mission briefing. It is glad that NOD and GDI had chicks to brief you while the Scrin had some alien briefing you. That is why I conclude that Scrin’s cinematic is worst here. Thank god that it is only 4 missions. The ending of each race is pretty different although they ended in Europe.


Gameplay

The C&C gameplay is pretty easy to catch, especially in collecting resources. Unlike other RTS, you need to collect two or more resources. While for the C&C, you will only have one which is the tiberium. It makes thing simple and easier to manage. One thing improved here is when you click to drag a group of your units; it will automatically filter out your harvester (worker). It is very irritating if you selected your worker. Because mostly when you drag and select, you attempt to attack and workers don’t attack! This is a good feature there.

Units here are hard to control, especially those heavy vehicle. Their respond and movement is slow and you tend to lose them if you are not careful. My favorite Mammoth Tank is one of them. GDI units are mostly heavily armored and a moderately damaging. The NOD is weaker in terms of the unit’s health, even for the heavy units. They rely more on stealth ability. The Scrin is also weaker in their health. But they don’t stealth; they had more unique ability such as mind control or activating protection shield. The strength of air units and ground units is well-balanced as well for all the race. You are not restricted to any unit production limit, so you can produce as many units as you want.

Constructing building in C&C is also pretty simple. It is just a few clicks on the right hand side of your bar and your building is out there. Unlike the older version of C&C, this time you have the chance to construct more than one building at once. This gives you the chance to multitask, not only in producing units, but also in constructing building. Overall, I can say that the gameplay is fantastic.


Graphics & Sound

For a RTS game, this game really has a good graphics. Shadows are everywhere, not only for the buildings and units, but also for the trees around. The game looks bright when you choose the highest detail. The texture for the building, units and terrain are very well done. The graphic on those things are very detailed and it runs smoothly with my system at 1024*768 resolution and the highest detail (except AA - OFF). So I can say that the game is very well optimized as well. The destruction using the super weapon is pretty awesome. It is never bored to be watching it.

The sound for Tiberium War is good, but not really tremendous there. Basically, all the gun fire, explosive and destruction are pretty solid. Well, for a RTS game, you can’t really expect much from their sound even on a 5.1 system. At least, the quality of the sound is good and it deserves a full mark in it. I think this is the best on what they can do at the moment.


Conclusion

If you are looking for a strategy game to play with, this is the one I can really recommend. It has nice stories all the way from the good side until the evil side. This is also a RTS game with fantastic gameplay together with its great graphics. Plus, It is an easy game to learn even for beginners. Hope you guys enjoy playing it! =))


System Used

-Intel Core 2 Duo 6300 (1.86 MHz)
-Corsair 1GB Value RAM PC3200
-Gigabyte 7600GS
-Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music
-Logitech X-530 (5.1 Surround)
-Philips SHP 805 Headphone (Sometimes)