izigame.me

This is going to be a long review with spoilers because the C&C/RA series is probably my all time favourite video game franchise. So, right off the bat this is a C&C game. Well, it's basically an anthology of elements from numerous games all spliced together in a haphazard way that makes little sense. At a high level you have C&C aesthetics mixed with a RA alternate history scenario and the plot of Kane's Wrath with dashes of Yuri's Revenge psychic control stuff. That's a lot of ground to cover which is probably why this games feels so half hearted because it's trying to cram almost 15 years of plot into an 11 mission campaign. To put it bluntly, it doesn't work and results in a game with no identity. If the devs had pulled an Earth 2160 by having the events of one faction pick up where the last left off then this might have been possible with 22 missions. But 11? No chance. Oh and large portions of the GDI/Nod end scenes are the same. How cheap can you get? It's bad enough the plot is the same but you're literally going to reuse big chunks of the final end scenes too? Well, gotten ahead of myself so lets jump in.
Nod (Tempest but screw that) are the easier faction with a playstyle pretty close with the Soviets from RA; ie build lots of tanks/planes and roll over everything in sight. The campaign missions are fine but have a rather glaring problem the more you play. Where's the base building? Virtually every time you're even able to build you're inheriting an already built base that looks it was put together by a drunk chimp and most missions force you to defend something which further restricts you. I don't think there was a single mission you just spawn with an MCV, some starting forces and get told to wipe out the enemy. That's all I want. Why do I need to inherit some short bus base built in the middle of the map with fifteen attack points which all ignore terrain advantage? The base building isn't there and it got so frustrating that I dipped into skirmish mode just to get my RTS junky base building fix because the campaign wasn't giving the good stuff. Oh and I'll get to skirmish mode later.
As you progress through the campaign you get introduced to the rich cast of characters; female Bane, banana lips and Russian Xavier. Female Bane has no personality and is utterly pointless because she fills the roll of hot officer which RA3 really amped up but she isn't hot and only wears a Bane mask to either hide the AI voice acting or atrocious lip sync and possibly both. Banana lips is supposed to be Seth and Russian Xavier is sometimes Yuri and sometimes Kane but always dumb. After a few missions of placating Bane and banana lips you get told by Xavier that the GDI aren't the real enemy so obviously your mind jumps to Scrin. But the game teases you with conspiracy nonsense, enemies within and rats in the sewers, blah blah blah. Remember when Seth tried to undermine you so Kane shot him in the head without breaking a sweat? That was also the first introduction to Kane and it was a masterful piece of character building without saying a word. In this you get told there's a conspiracy but see no evidence of it. Nobody acts weird or over steps their authority or anything. But Xavier says so and seems to be the only one with mind powers in this world so whatevs. Yuri did it or something.
The campaign grinds on until eventually, big reveal, it's the Scrin. Wow, whodda thunk? Then two missions later the Scrin get ass clapped back to Narnia and the campaign ends. Uhh, okay. So the tie in is being able to play a faction that has the staying power of a chocolate teapot? However, the game had a chance to do something cool because Nod ends with a slight mystery in that we don't know how the GDI dealt with them nor where the Scrin originally came from. So if the game were designed to strongly encourage you to play Nod first and then the GDI campaign picked up from the end events of Nod it could cover twice the ground and make the player eager to jump into GDI. Result? GDI campaign covers the exact same ground as Nod and has the gall to reuse cut-sce. Bruh, C&C was iconic because of the cut-scene. Joe Cucan dominated every scene he was in and you honestly think bad CGI and AI voices are going to even exist in the same zip code? How the F does a game 30 years older have better cut-scenes than this? I mean, that's impressive in itself if it weren't so pathetic but oh well.
So GDI campaign starts and you get GDI female Bane (completely different to Nod female Bane) Marlboro man instead of banana lips and Marlboro man silhouette instead of Xavier. Events don't change between campaigns so you see the same events unfold in the same order and know it's all going to the same place. And whilst we're here, the map screen in any C&C game is important because it visually informs you of your progress, shows you how strong you are in the region, marks enemy advances/retreats and gives you choices as to how to proceed with the next mission. Tempest Rising? Nah, you get the same events and the map is just for show. Oh but you have some insanely token skill system which is so exciting I stopped looking at it after a few missions and doesn't add anything to the game.
Anyway, GDI campaign crawls along until ending by telling you the same things you already knew from Nod and covering the same ground. What was the point? Remember how Nod ends in C&C by letting you wipe out a world monument and finishing with a news crawl of the worlds reaction? Also remember how GDI ends by doing the same thing? Of course not, the endings were completely different because you were turning the tide in one way or another and experiencing many different events along the way with each faction. Tempest Rising just has one story, or rather the story from Kane's Wrath which you witness from two perspectives and that's it. Well, you get to use different units I suppose but balance is completely whack at the moment so play Nod, build tanks and planes and win. Alternatively, try and play GDI without planes and fail before cheesing planes and winning. Some units feel completely pointless, infantry is scientifically proven to be pointless, tanks are made out of wet bread, base defenc made out of wet noodles and planes fly around the map armed with BFG9000's whilst feeling like you've just pitted the Terminator against Bambi.
So the campaign is nonsense but if you turn your brain off it's fine and primarily exists as a hook for the Scrin DLC coming in however long it'll be. The factions are just GDI and Nod. The faction balance is terrible. The faction aesthetics are fine but uninspired. The music is Frank Klepacki surprisingly but no tracks have lyrics so mostly blend together into white noise and there's certainly nothing outstanding like Act on Instinct, Mechanical Man, Just Do it Up or basically any song from the original. It feels like mush if I'm honest just like the campaign feels like mush and the story and everything else. It's mush created by an AI that was fed all the original C&C games and tasked to create C&C4 because of course C&C 4 never happened, it was all a lie.
Oh and skirmish mode. Yeah there's three maps. No seriously, three maps. Okay, technically there's 9 but 6 of them are 1v1 only whilst the other three can support up to 4 players so you'll reach the dazzling heights of 2v2. Huh, I seem to remember C&C Generals supporting 8 players 20 years ago but I guess that's progress, everything becomes worse and we just need to clap our hands in applause because the emaciated RTS genre finally got a scrap so 11/10 would pay more.
I don't even know what's left to say. It's a modern RTS wearing a C&C skin suit and if that's good enough for you then buy it but there's nothing here, just an empty vessel. All the lost memories of better days have long since faded, never to be replaced, there's no USP, no hook, no personality, just "member Kane? Pepperidge farm remembers..."
Buy wisely commander.