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EA’s Command & Conquer at its absolute peak.
Kane’s Wrath’s additions are music to the ears of veteran C&C fans, adding just the right sprinkling of units, experimentation and a collection of story missions loaded with fan service. However, as with all C&C games, nothing has really changed since 1995.
Despite EA being synonymous with killing the C&C franchise (a slightly more nuanced debate than is usually presented) Kane’s Wrath is held firmly in cult classic territory. In fact, to most it’s probably considered the peak of 3D C&C besides perhaps Generals, which has an acquired thematic taste. And it retains this status for good reason: Kane’s Wrath adds a campaign based entirely around the titular, iconic character of Kane, who fans will never get enough of. Joe Kucan’s performance is good, but it doesn’t need to be; his presence as a general issuing you direct orders is enough to win over any C&C fan. The missions themselves are surprisingly lengthy and challenging, and do try to bring more to the table than just Kane. For example, the best plot revolves around capturing a competing NOD officer who, in the interim of Kane’s disappearance, launches a leadership bid. “He has an oratorical gift” Kane says admiringly, and from here the player realises there is space for more interesting C&C lore characters than just the game’s namesake.
Gameplay wise, the campaign is a welcome challenge yet some of this difficulty stems from rapidly blindsiding the player in the eleventh hour. Most missions will highlight a final objective which, upon completion, will take a twist and introduce a new, harder objective. These final objectives come entirely out of the blue and often include a significant amount of preparation (often on a timer) which will lead to many cheap defeats for people not suspecting it. This encourages players to run a somewhat amateur, turtling playstyle so their resources will allow them to respond to these sudden changes, punishing rushers unnecessarily.
At a more meta level, balancing is shaky at best. The GDI Hammerhead aircraft, for example, can load the slow moving and vulnerable grenadiers into its passenger seats to instantly make them one of the most manoeuvrable units in the game, all while retaining their brutal damage output. This makes short work of virtually every AI opponent in Kane’s Wrath. Scrin also have ridiculously powerful air vehicles now, but their early game is conversely too weak to be used seriously by veteran players.
Despite these specific exploits, all of which revolve around cheesing the AI rather than a human opponent, the gameplay improvements of Kane’s Wrath are generally fantastic. Each of the three factions have two new shoot-off sets, which feature new units and economic structures to play into thematic roles. The Black Hand, for example, specialise in flame units, providing more powerful and cheaper napalm troops and vehicles. It’s not quite as binary as the general factions in Zero Hour, so you’re not completely locked out of specific playstyles (aside from aircraft being limited by some factions) but it does encourage you to identify what you enjoy about C&C. The new epic units, which are essentially ultra-powerful end-game vehicles, sometimes lack a bit of firepower but do encourage you to mix and match unit combinations to upgrade their abilities.
Kane’s Wrath’s final addition is a Global Conquest game mode, a sort of Star Wars Battlefront 2 style mode which acts more as a skirmish randomiser than a seriously strategic war game. The AI is particularly predictable here, and battles are often decided far before they play out due to blatant differences in unit counts (particularly if you click auto-resolve).
Nevertheless, C&C3 Kane’s Wrath represents perhaps the peak of the franchise under EA. While I’ve nitpicked several aspects of the game, these are the views of a veteran player who has pushed this game to its absolute limits since 2008. These flaws do not hamper the experience, and the core C&C gameplay is as fast, frenetic and tactical is ever. If you enjoyed C&C3, this is a must-buy.