RTTR

Real Time Tank Rushing.

I purchased a copy of Command and Conquer 3 several weeks ago and upon playing the game in some depth found myself disgusted with the fact it was advertised as a "Real Time Strategy" game. Pretty much the only strategy available to the player is to build as many tanks as possible and throw them towards the enemy base hoping to do enough damage that he cant rebuild before rinsing and repeating. If the player were to attempt any other kind of strategy such as aerial domination and bombardment, stealth elimination of key targets or just plain old artillery siege the player would quickly find that in the time it took to build and array such forces the AI would have built 20 cheap tanks and be having its way with your base.

Maybe I'm turning into a strategy snob after being spoilt with Supreme Commander and Galactic Civilizations II but one would expect that a "real time strategy" game would permit more than one strategy.

My other major problem is with over-powered super weapons. If you can put up with the monotony of constant tank rushes long enough to build one of the games super weapons you can effectively eliminate their entire base in one shot. Generals more or less proved that overpowering super weapons was a quick way to suck the fun out of the game. A super weapon should allow you to take out one or two structures or a large group of units whilst leaving the structures intact. This is how the original C&C games worked. Also the game runs way too fast, 3 seconds to build an entire infantry platoon, 7 second for a tank. Resource problems are virtually eliminated as you get so much from one load to Tiberium that you don't need to bother fighting over resources. For comparison, in C&C 1, you would get 700 from each harvester which took about 15 to 30 seconds, in C&C 3 you get 2000 from each harvester every 10 to 15 seconds which means you don't need to conserve resources and make careful purchases.

It's only saving grace were the FMV (Video) sequences. Whist the C&C series had notoriously (and deliberately) cheesy B grade video sequences these were a new level of cheese entirely. I'll begin with the GDI video's, Michael Ironside and Billy Dee Williams were over-acting way too much, even for a B grade extravaganza like C&C, Grace Park was not even acting at all, was she told to just stand there and speak, I mean what were they thinking. The NOD side was better but I will begin with Tricia Helfer's performance, It was the same quality as her performance on Battlestar Galactica, in fact I would say it was pretty much exactly like her performance on BSG, did EA save money on not bothering to write a new character. Joseph Kucan's played Kane well and I think this is the first time in the C&C series where Kane actually gets angry. Josh Holloway was also pretty good in the films, despite having a Serbian character with a drawl one normally associates with the South of the United states, although I haven't seen Lost so I have no material for comparison.

I was exited to get a new C&C game when it was first announced last year but in the first few hours of its release I was only reassured in Electronic Arts ability to screw up a perfectly good idea. I did get value out of the few hours of video on the DVD I didn't get AU$90 worth of value,

EA, I want 45 dollars back

You can add it to the $25 you owe me for C&C renegade.