You wouldn't believe how long I've been bumping Command & Conquer Generals down the list because "but it's abandonware and a pain in the hole to run" makes for a more frustrating read than "and it's available here".
Ever the afterthought, Generals has shimmered between abandonware and temporarily available in some obscure place with no fanfare (I think? I honestly lost track) for years, but it's now available in a bundle on Steam as part of whatever needlessly awkward thing EA are doing this month. There's suddenly an opportunity to get into why its design and atmosphere make it probably my favourite of the whole collection, and why I wish I could say that without adding that it indulges in a lot of boring early-00s racism.
]]>If you wanted to buy any of the games in the Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection, Dungeon Keeper, or Sim City 3000 - but didn't want to do it on GOG where they were already on sale - then rejoice! EA has made these classics and more, and for some reason The Saboteur, available on Steam for the first time. You can see the full list of games here. I don't have anything specific against The Saboteur, but I do think it's very funny that the list goes, like, "beloved game from the 90s, beloved game from the 90s, 7/10 action game from 2009, beloved game from the 90s". Also, I can take the opportunity to make fun of Graham and James, the tallest wrongest boys at RPS, who apparently both liked it.
]]>Last time, you decided that upgrading cards is better than fast travel. I think the outcome is partially from a love of cards, and partially a dislike of the impact fast travel has had on game design. Can't deny it's convenient, mind. This week, I ask you to pick between taking things you want and something that should always have been ours. What's better: capturing enemy buildings, or hand grenades exploding on impact with enemies?
]]>There’s always been something quaintly practical about the name Command & Conquer. Sure, there’s a touch of Julius Caesar’s ‘veni, vidi, vici’ in there. But less romantically, the title evokes Internet Explorer or Acrobat Reader - sitting comfortably alongside the clearly and sensibly labelled Windows software of the mid-90s. It’s a reminder of just how early Westwood happened upon the blueprint for real-time strategy, right as many PC users were buying their first trackball mice.
Back then, the developer was fresh from Dune II, its unlikely David Lynch adaptation and progenitor of the RTS genre as we know it today. Inspired by the house politics and struggle for resources that consumed the desert planet Arrakis, Westwood had come up with an addictive formula for harvesting spice and converting that wealth into military power, which in turn could be used in the battle to secure more spice. The team was, quite frankly, surprised by how much fun that formula had turned out to be.
]]>Earlier this month, we asked you to vote for your favourite strategy games of all time to celebrate the launch (and glorious return) of several strategy classics this month, including Relic's WW2 RTS Company Of Heroes 3, Blue Byte's The Settlers: New Allies and Cyanide's fantasy Warhamball Blood Bowl 3. And cor, I've never seen such love for individual expansions and total conversion mods among mainline RTS games and 4Xs. As with all strategy games, however, there can only be one victor - and you can find out what that single strategy game to rule them all is right here. Here are your 50 favourite strategy games of all time, as voted for by you, the RPS readership.
]]>Following the launch of the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection earlier this month, EA have now slammed its soundtracks onto streaming services for your sonic satisfaction. Along with its remastered versions of the C&C and Red Alert soundtracks, they've put up an album of hard-rockin' new recordings from C&C composer Frank Klepacki and his band, The Tiberian Sons. Put a pep in your step on those morning runs with Hell March, why don't you.
]]>You know you're onto a winner when your heart swells ten times its normal size out of pure excitement from the boot-up sequence for the remaster of a game you never played. I was far too young to even comprehend Command & Conquer when it first came out in 1995, and to my great shame it's never been something I've sought out in the intervening years. But watching Command & Conquer Remastered Collection's newly re-tooled EVA opening sequence had me pumping my fists and bellowing with excitement like I'd been down there in the fan trenches all along.
]]>When Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection launches next month, it'll arrive with a lovely little gift for the modding community. This week, EA announced that some of the source code for both Command & Conquer and Red Alert will be freely accessible at launch, giving modders the groundwork to go wild creating whatever they'd like - up to and including giant tanks that punt nukes out of their big ol' guns.
]]>Ahead of its launch on June 5th, I've been able to see the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection in action, and it certainly looks the part. The quarter-century-old RTS, as well as comrade Red Alert and their squad of three expansion packs, have been sent over the top of their pixellated trench, and into the high-res carnage of no-man's-land. Malaysian art house Lemon Sky Studios have armed them with visual assets suitable for the rigours of combat in 4k resolution, and they're entering the fray to a remade soundtrack by original series composer Frank Klepacki. Their FMV cutscene artillery has been digitally embiggened through a combination of digital archaeology and machine sorcery, while their archaic multiplayer setup (I guess it can be a metaphorical tank), has been scrapped in favour of a much more robust new system.
I've no doubt that fans of these two grizzled soldiers will be delighted that they've been commanded back onto the battlefield of PC games. But as faithful as their rearming has been, they're still working to a set of mechanics that are old enough to join the army themselves. The question, and the reason for this whole tortured allegory, remains: will these very old games have what it takes to conquer new hearts?
]]>The Command & Conquer Remastered Collection will deliver its overhauled versions of the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert (plus expansions) on June 5th, Electronic Arts announced today. Westwood's cheery 'n' cheesy real-time strategy games from the 90s come with fancying-up including redrawn high-resolution artwork, support for mahoosive monitors, a revamped interface, remastered sound, and a new multiplayer backend. And yes, absolutely, they've touched up those wonderful FMV cutscenes. Have a peek at all this in the new trailer below.
]]>Slowly, but surely, we've been drip-fed more deets on Command & Conquer Remastered - EA's upcoming HD re-release of Tiberian Sun and Red Alert. Last year we got a brief look at C&C Remastered's scaled up assets. They're very nice, too, sharpening decades-old art to bring it up to a modern standard without going overboard on fancy effects. But what about Command & Conquer's (in)famous FMV cutscenes?
Worry not, commanders. EA have brought C&C's B-movie acting chops into high-definition, showing off a brief clip earlier this week. But scaling up decades-old footage didn't come without tactical challenges of its own.
]]>Staring at a screen for 20+ years tends to make things blurry. My solution is to completely ignore the ravages of time on my eyes and to hope that things will work out anyway. And they did! EA have been working on a Command & Conquer remaster that sharpens the original sprites and deblurs the destruction, so I can more easily make out the Nod's bikes for a few more years. The first teaser is here, so let's shuffle our chairs a bit closer to the screen and take a look, eh?
]]>EA have now officially announced their Command & Conquer remasters, and they look to be in good hands. Several of the strategy classics's original developers are returning, including talent from ex-Westwood folks Petroglyph and original composer Frank Klepacki. Together, they're polishing up the original Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, along with its alt-history cousin C&C: Red Alert, plus all expansions for both games. Preempting the cynics amongst us, EA have also confirmed that there'll be no micro-transactions. The devs announce the news below.
]]>Rather than open with a press release or trailer, EA have chosen to quietly announce an official Command & Conquer remaster on Reddit. In a post from EA producer Jim Vessella, he says the studio have plans for the series's fast-approaching 25th anniversary. While it sounds like it's just one game being updated for now, Vessella's statement suggests that more may be planned.
He has also been answering a few questions in the Reddit thread, and has confirmed that there will be no microtransactions attached, which is always nice to hear. Below, a mostly-unrelated (but official) video of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 to remind us all just how silly this game of soldiers could get.
Update: EA also made this announcement on the OpenRA forums, another major old-school C&C fan-hub.
]]>Hello. This is Spawn Point, a new not-quite-regular feature in which we take a genre, series or other facet of gaming culture, and try to convince you to give it a shot. It might be those hero shooters you’ve always wanted to get into, or that terrifying space game played by thousands of jerks. We’ll briefly explain the thing, followed by some ways for you to breach it.
First up, it’s... the real-time strategy.
]]>The Command and Conquer franchise is almost twenty years old and it may already be on its last legs. The free-to-play Generals 2 had been rebranded as simply 'Command & Conquer' when EA decided to pull the plug and it's all been quiet on the (formerly) Westwood front since then. Indeed, the cries of havoc and unleashing of time travelling, Tesla-faced dogs of war were almost silenced for good when multiplayer support vanished as part of the GameSpy cull. The community has stepped in though, with free servers for the five C&C games affected.
]]>Let's take a moment to appreciate the mere existence of Renegade-X. It's a fan-made re-make and successor to Command & Conquer: Renegade, the short-lived first-person spin-off from Westwood's real-time strategy series. It was released first as an Unreal Tournament 3 mod in 2009, and on Wednesday it was re-born as a free, standalone, open beta, made with the blessing of Electronic Arts. I've spent a few hours fighting for the GDI and Nod, and it's crazy how much game is here. It's a delightful thing that it was all made by a group of volunteers, as an expression of love for a nearly forgotten game from twelve years ago.
Right. Moment over. Now let's talk about why I haven't had any fun with it in those hours I've spent playing.
]]>Renegade-X, which we previously reported would be released on its release date, has now been released on its release date. The Command & Conquer-inspired multiplayer shooter is now in open beta and available to download for free, although it looks like the official site is getting a bit hammered.
]]>With official C&C games staggering dazedly around development limbo at the moment, our need for a tasty bit of NOD must instead be sated by the fan community. Renegade-X is a modders' ambitious and apparently impressive attempt to redo EA's ill-fated FPS-RTS spin-off Renegade, and it's been in the works for quite a while now. Last November brought news that a version 1 release would arrive on February 26th; today brings news that a version 1 release will arrive on February 26th. Er. Well, I suppose someone meeting a projected release date, especially in oft-unpredictable modland, is news of a sort. Anyway, it's a handy reminder for your diaries, plus there's an extensive new trailer to look at, showing plenty of in-game shootybangery.
]]>Command & Conquer FPS spin-off Renegade: bobbins. Commander & Conquer FPS spin-off Renegade's fan-made reinvention Renegade X: not bobbins?
Watch this video. It is quite an exciting video.
]]>The plot, it thickens - like an ultra-syrupy plot milkshake or a rail-thin wisp of a plot that's been secretly lifting plot weights for plot months. A few weeks ago, EA announced that it had canceled EA Victory's free-to-play Command & Conquer pseudo-reboot and closed down the studio altogether. This left the series' future very much in doubt, especially given that Victory had been established largely for the sole purpose of propelling the storied war machine ever onward. But now Blue's News has dug up a rather interesting tidbit: an EA support statement on refunds (posted not long after the cancellation announcement) specifically mentions that previously activated early beta access "will be honored once production of this title resumes under a new studio." Good news? Kinda! But it's also rather sad, when you think about it.
]]>Well now, here's a surprise. I knew some players weren't altogether on board with EA's latest Command & Conquer pseudo-reboot, but I had heard decent-ish things by and large. Apparently, however, the nay-screamers outnumbered the yea-sayers, because EA's elected to reduce the whole project to a shower of raining, Frostbite-3-friendly rubble. But that's just the beginning, er, of the end. In addition, EA is completely disbanding and shutting down longtime RTS studio EA Victory. A sad day indeed.
]]>EA's free-to-play reimagining of Command & Conquer just keeps on growing. Next year, it'll slowly but surely roll out a full single-player campaign set in the Generals universe, replete with triumphant returns (or cackling callbacks) from the Global Liberation Army and revamped Chinese and US factions. But how exactly will these missions release? And what lies beyond, after what essentially constitutes Command & Conquer Generals 2 has given up all of its tiny, suicidally obedient ghosts? Victory Games explained in a new video, and let's just say that they haven't forgotten the legendary RTS series' legacy.
]]>Electronic Arts and Victory Games send word of one of those explanatory videos, where serious people talk about how games are made. Specifically how the forthcoming Command & Conquer gets made. It all seems pretty exciting, and no one appears glum says "well, we go into this big glass building every day, and eventually a game happens." In fact, this video makes the work of just building a single RTS unit seem a bit like putting a man into space, with lots of people and technology in which things spin and explode. (But just on a computer screen of course.)
Sign ups for the new C&C beta are taking place on the site, if that's your cup of tiberium.
]]>The game formerly known as Generals 2, probably also known within internal EA circles as 'please rescue the franchise after we repeatedly tried to murder it with really silly decisions' but officially known as simply Command & Conquer has fully broken cover at last. In what way? Well, this week is E3. I'll give you three guesses as to how an upcoming videogame might try to promote itself right now, and the first two don't count.
]]>Command & Conquer's march into free-to-play territory has been fraught with confusion. Will it have single-player? Won't it? Is it even technically Command & Conquer Generals 2 anymore? I guess not, seeing as EA's taken to shaving off that grizzled, battle-tested moniker in favor of the simple, sprightly Command & Conquer. And that, it would seem, wasn't some careless "why not?" decision made on a whim. "We need to kind of wash the stain of C&C 4 away," said lead designer Samuel Bass. The goal? To go back to the series' roots. By, er, using Generals as a blueprint. I guess Victory's reasoning kind of makes sense in video form. See the whole thing after the break.
]]>Blue draws my attention to a blogpost over at the Command & Conquer website. The game, which is free to play and seemingly distanced from the Generals 2 subtitle, is set to have "the longest running beta phase in franchise history", beginning in the first half of 2013. I don't think that "longest running" C&C beta means a great deal, it'd be surprising if the first free to play release didn't have a lengthy beta. The post doesn't contain much information about how the free to play model will be implemented, but it does come right out and admit the problems of previous games and then says it'll all be 'different' this time
]]>The forthcoming Frostbite-powered free to play Command and Conquer sequel will be enjoying a single player campaign after all, as an interview by Polygon with Frank Gibeau, president of EA Labels announces, going back on the previous No-Single Player reveal. Or will it? It's not actually that clear. Gibeau sounded perhaps a little defensive in his statement, talking more about fan reaction than detailing the actual game development. The relevant quote: "Does that mean it's not going to have single-player? No, that's something we've obviously heard loud and clear that is important to people."
Is that official confirmation of a big story-driven campaign mode? No, that's a confusingly worded, ambiguous double-negative.
]]>Right, this will get tongues a-wagging. C&C Tiberium Alliances is the next reboot of the Nod vs GDI universe, and as we discovered earlier it's a browser-based "epic strategy MMO" using the dark magicks of HTML5. Here's what it's going to look like. In short, like C&C classic in some ways and yet... not. Really not.
]]>Update: we now also know that this will indeed be free to play, and that the beta kicks off tomorrow.
]]>My brain: C&C news is big news, we should report it! My soul: But it's just a rumour of the name of the rumoured new C&C game that a division of Bioware is rumoured to be making. Rumour, rumour, rumour, and even if it's true it doesn't reveal anything about the game. My brain: Maybe it does - 'Command & Conquer Alliances' could mean a lot of things. Like, NOD and the GDI palling up? Or they're merging all the different C&C universes? Or a co-op focus? My soul: Or it's just a random word added after the colon, like Hitman: Subtitle. You take these things too seriously, man.
]]>A little more of the new Bioware game was shown last night, giving us a glimpse of APCs. Meanwhile the various nodes of the internet were at work, speculating that the new game could be either Command & Conquer or even a Mercenaries game. Or even Army Of Two. It won't be that. (I hope.) The best lead is the clue that was in this LinkedIn profile, which stated at the artist worked for Victory Games, which was formed from EA LA to make C&C games. Combine this with the apparent disappearance of Visceral, another LA-based EA studio, and you have a bunch of devs who could have formed into this new studio. This could, it is speculated, be a new Los Angeles-based Bioware studio working on the old faithful.
]]>[This was written at 11.30am, but our scheduler messed up. Hooray! - Retroactive Ed] I should be at the Eurogamer Expo right now, but instead I’ve been stuck on a train for the last few hours, diverted through the darkest and most obscure reaches of the South-East, because this is crappy old Britain and its greedily-privatised public transport infrastructure is totally capable of efficiently dealing with day-to-day problems. I have a laptop, but the only game on it is Diablo 3. So I won’t be playing that. Hey, DRM? Screw you. Screw you right in the ear.
The battery-sapping miracles of phone tethering allow me to at least bring you this brief missive, which isn’t actually intended to be about my travel gripes – those are a beige alert at best – but instead about an ambitious mod for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, which enthusiastically recreates the original, purer Red Alert within this the more recent C&C's shiny, full-3D engine.
]]>Welcome back, commander. We know EA's deathless strategy titan C&C is due for yet another reboot, but we don't really know anything about what form it will take. Turns out EA - or at least their new strategy studio Victory Games - haven't entirely worked it out yet either. Hence, they've put out an open call for suggestions and requests from players. It's been a bit of confused old dear of late, but hopefully with fans' help this once and future RTS king can be restored to its former glories.
]]>Monday this week we had a surprise. A new Command & Conquer game! This was surprising on two counts. Firstly, EA had rather publicly given up on the series last year. Secondly, there was no build up, no tiresome PR campaign. Just POW! News! So of course it was an accident. The site so keenly spotted by VE3D was hastily pulled, the story buried. But fortunately by the magic of caching Alec was able to fetch the important details. Our hearts were set to Believe*. And now EA, perhaps sooner than they'd hoped, have made the news official.
]]>This happened all of sudden, and quietly. EA stealth-rebooted its Command & Conquer website, announcing in quick sucession a new community manager, a whole new studio and a brand new, mystery C&C game.
We thought it was all over. (C'mon, we didn't think it was all over for even a second). It isn't now. Sounds like they're really going for it this time. Commandingly, they sound like they want to conquer strategy again.
Edit - Voodoo Extreme report the site has reverted to its pre-OMG NEW GAME status, which suggests a cat was let out of the bag by mistake.
]]>Turns out that Nick Earl was talking about EA as a whole, not Visceral, as Game Informer managed to uncover: "EA confirmed with us that a new Command & Conquer title is indeed early in development, but that it was being handled by an Los Angeles-based team that reports to Earl in Redwood Shores, CA."
]]>Dead Space creators Visceral have been having a pleasant chat with Gamasutra, and along the way they confirmed that they're working on a new Command & Conquer action game. It won't be the first, of course, and a previous C&C-based action title was canned by EA in 2008, but it will apparently be, in the words of label general manager Nick Earl, "pretty far out."
]]>With C&C4 leaving some big huge gaps in Tiberium-town's long-running lore, it seems only right that the series' fans would fill in the gaps. Better to do it with new game-stuff than with long, rambling fanfic, too. C&C3 mod the Forgotten is a three years in the making tale of a rag-tag band of space crystal-mutated lost souls, and the part they played in the Third Tiberium War. Introduced in Tiberian Sun: Firestorm, they basically got dropped from the story from thereon in. Forgotten, if you will.
]]>Free C and C Four Three. C Free and Three Four C. She sells seashells on the seashore. Aaargh. Anyway! The first three Command & Conquer games: no-pennies. A welcome promotional wotsit by EA on the eve-ish of C&C4: Tiberian Twilight, the only price you have to pay to get your hands on C&C, Red Alert and Tiberian Sun (plus the Firestorm expansion) is to take the time to burn/extract some ISOs. It's all over here. Of course, you'll need to buy C&C3 to get the entire Tiberium story, but that can be summed up as "Earth's screwed, nasty aliens arrive, Kane wants to pal up with them, Kane's killed again (except not), Earth's even more screwed."
]]>This is odd. The revelation that there is to be a Command & Conquer 4 is scarcely any surprise, as EA's rejuvenated franchise seems to be on a bit of a roll these days (bar the cancellation of FPS Tiberium). That they're saying it will finish the Tiberium saga is the shocker - surely its silly sci-fi storyline was designed to blather away forever? A red herring, I suspect - yeah, we might finally get answers as to what bechromedomed uber-bad Kane really wants, and what all those magic crystals will ultimately do to poor Earth, but that hardly closes the door on telling more tales in that future-war universe.
For those who don't play real-time strategy for the lore, C&C4 also promises major shake-ups to the Dune 2-derived formula it's been based around for the last 15 years...
]]>I was thinking only the other day that we hadn't heard anything about that somewhat dreary-looking Command & Conquer FPS for a while, and then I spot news over at Blue's that EA have unexpectedly put it out of its misery.
"It is with a heavy heart that I announce the end to all work on 'Tiberium,' effective immediately", sez Ea's Mike Verdu. "The game had fundamental design challenges from the start."
Given it really wasn't looking all that stellar (RPS readers at the time of the first footage certainly weren't terribly taken with it), it's probably for the best, what with C&C's populist profile recently being boosted by all that Red Alert 3 boob-mania. The real sad news is that it could affect some folks' jobs - here's hoping they're all moved onto interesting new projects. Below the cut: the trailer and some in-game footage, for old time's sakes.
]]>Which is my way of distracting you from the fact we're linking to a lot of stuff we've written elsewhere today. This time it's Alec's review of Kane's Wrath which PC Gamer have put on their electro-net-commuicato-think masters C&VG. In it he says things like... oh, go and read it. Now... I've reviewed it. Jim's done it for someone else. Walker is clearly never going to play it. Sounds like time for an RPS Verdict.
]]>Gamers: we are so cool.
]]>Comrades, rejoice! Yes, the next in the Command & Conquer series will indeed be Red Alert 3. Which we pretty much knew. (In fact, did kinda know. Just couldn't say so before without raining down death and destruction upon ourselves, infuriatingly. One day, RPS will have its Woodward and Bernstein moment, but "inevitable RTS sequel inevitably announced" was not it).
]]>Take a look at this bonkers unit trailer for the forthcoming C&C expansion, Kane's Wrath. And RTS developers, if you're reading, more insane units like this, please:
]]>C&C was not aflush with the ruddy glow of good health until recently. Tiberian Sun seemed a passionless retread, Renegade bombed, Generals chucked all the characterful babies out with the Tiberium bathwater...
Somehow though, the RTS old hand seems to have a headful of steam all over again. C&C3 went down surprisingly smooth, and, while new FPS Tiberium looks pretty meatheaded, it's got Xbox Smash Hit written all over it. And there's to be yet more. Goodness. The latest Command & Conquer Battlecast, an official vodcast so cheese-laden I worry about developing a lactose allergy whenever I watch it, alludes to an upcoming announcement in two weeks time. "You will have one more reason to cheer," apparently. Whatever could it be?
]]>Interesting times for fans of what's usually considered Command & Conquer's Godfather III moment. In a minute, I'll politely introduce you to a free game. First though, the bit you probably already know about. C&C: Renegade, the awful-singplayer-but-quite-interesting-actually-multiplayer FPS is, rumour has it, to receive a sequel.
]]>This is probably the oddest free thing to emerge from EA for the last few months: Tiberium Earth, which turns Google Earth into a kind of Tiberium-based fan mod. You get to imagine what it might be like if Earth really was infested with the crystalline super-resource from the games... Albeit using Google Sketchup, so not exactly click 'n spray.
]]>It's the 12th birthday of Command & Conquer today - which means you only have to wait another four years until you can sleep with your copy of the first game (according to UK law, in case you're a shocked US reader. Although I'm not rightly sure if any country actually has laws about physical intimacy with plastic discs).
]]>To placate angry fans, Command & Conquer 3's Executive Producer (now there's a title which, in film-land at least, means nothing, apart from 'gets to swim in all the money') Mike Verdu has posted on the official forums apologising for inconsistencies in the game's plot in context to the C&C 'universe', and pledging to fix them ASAP.
]]>
.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "שחרורו של Assassin's Creed Shadows נדחה למרץ כאשר מועצת המנהלים של Ubisoft שוקל מכירת חברה")
