Command & Conquer 4:
Tiberian Twilight
Developer: EA
Publisher: EA
Release Date: 19/03/2010
Format: PC
Command and Conquer is a brand that has proved it might time after time, with hit after hit. But the main criticism it that all games pretty much play the same. Build a base, collect resources and destroy the opposition. So for the conclusion of the Tiberian saga EA thought to change things up a bit, by removing the time consuming “boring” parts and concentrating on all-out war.
When Tiberian Twilight is first played, you are shown a high quality video of Kane being transported to GDI headquarters, Joseph D.Kucan who played Kane in the first Command and Conquer and every game since reprises his role and is the highlight of the acting till the end. No expenditure is spared with the video cut-scenes the norm of most C&C games. Everything is viewed from your perspective and because of this the acting does feel a tad ‘off’ as they are only playing off a camera. All of this is as you would expect from a C&C game, it’s once you take control that you notice the difference. But Kane wishes to work with GDI to rid the Tiberian riddled earth of its infestation with his own personal mission of ascension.
The first few missions are an introduction to the new game mechanics. You are introduced to your Mobile MCV. Able to unpack produce units and pack up again ready to roll out where ever need in a flash. This is the only “base building” you will be doing; another massive difference you will notice is there is no need to collect Tiberian to fund your army. Units simply need command points and a few seconds to build. Smaller units require 3 command points; Medium vehicles require more and so on. This is fine until I say there is a cap of 50 command points, 60 in the very last mission. Meaning you have a choice, build lots of smaller weaker units or go in with less bigger units.
First impressions are massive and loyal C&C fans will discard playing this game with what I have just written above and I don’t blame them. But stick with it and you begin to understand the reasoning, by removing core C&C elements, you get to micro manage with a fewer units and 100% of your concentration power is on those units. No worrying that your Harvester is taking damage on the other side of the map or a batch of engineers capturing your base buildings. All you need to worry about is right in-front of you.
Publisher: EA
Release Date: 19/03/2010
Format: PC
Command and Conquer is a brand that has proved it might time after time, with hit after hit. But the main criticism it that all games pretty much play the same. Build a base, collect resources and destroy the opposition. So for the conclusion of the Tiberian saga EA thought to change things up a bit, by removing the time consuming “boring” parts and concentrating on all-out war.
When Tiberian Twilight is first played, you are shown a high quality video of Kane being transported to GDI headquarters, Joseph D.Kucan who played Kane in the first Command and Conquer and every game since reprises his role and is the highlight of the acting till the end. No expenditure is spared with the video cut-scenes the norm of most C&C games. Everything is viewed from your perspective and because of this the acting does feel a tad ‘off’ as they are only playing off a camera. All of this is as you would expect from a C&C game, it’s once you take control that you notice the difference. But Kane wishes to work with GDI to rid the Tiberian riddled earth of its infestation with his own personal mission of ascension.
The first few missions are an introduction to the new game mechanics. You are introduced to your Mobile MCV. Able to unpack produce units and pack up again ready to roll out where ever need in a flash. This is the only “base building” you will be doing; another massive difference you will notice is there is no need to collect Tiberian to fund your army. Units simply need command points and a few seconds to build. Smaller units require 3 command points; Medium vehicles require more and so on. This is fine until I say there is a cap of 50 command points, 60 in the very last mission. Meaning you have a choice, build lots of smaller weaker units or go in with less bigger units.
First impressions are massive and loyal C&C fans will discard playing this game with what I have just written above and I don’t blame them. But stick with it and you begin to understand the reasoning, by removing core C&C elements, you get to micro manage with a fewer units and 100% of your concentration power is on those units. No worrying that your Harvester is taking damage on the other side of the map or a batch of engineers capturing your base buildings. All you need to worry about is right in-front of you.
By the looks of it, its like any other C&C before it
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Video cut-scenes are odd, everything is played from a first person perspective.
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During the introduction missions you are shown the three different MCVs to choice from. Offence is your usual full steam ahead into battle, offering straight forward units. Defence is gear towards holding an area, allowing you to build defences. And Support offers plenty of support powers like instant repair and weapon overcharge. All three MCVs offer completely different units to create. Offence is your main battle tanks, defence is mainly soldiers able to garrison buildings and Support is your air units. You can only have one on MCV the battlefield at a time and utilising the other MCVs can easily be over looked. Once you make a decision at the very start of the mission it is difficult and unwise to change half way thru a fire-fight. However, a lot of the missions will have more than one objective, usually geared towards a certain class of MCV and you can change when the objective does, but this is often pointless. You will already have your full quota of command points and unless you wish to delete half your army you might as well stick with what you have. Just because you have an offence MCV doesn’t mean it can’t defend.
Once you are familiarised with the new control system you are given a choice, fight with GDI or for the Brotherhood of NOD. Each offers 7 missions that play out really similar but on the other side of the fight. For one NOD mission you will down the massive GDI control ship and as GDI will are tasked with repairing it and more similar missions and cut-scenes present themselves towards the end of the game. The missions are fairly simple, destroy this, capture that, and defend a certain area. With the mobile MCV you will
travel in one large force unpacking your MCV to repair damaged units and to build more if required. It all plays like the old C&C missions where you had a limited number of starting units to complete your goal. But change limited for unlimited, the game can easily become a stale mate as two opposing MCVs just sit their producing units that are blasting one another. This is where the collecting resources would come into play, as one would soon run out of money before the other. Only real way to gain the upper hand and go over your Command Point cap is by finding and capturing downed large vehicles. Something that was introduced in the last Tiberian game. The NOD avatars when destroyed would leave a husk, able to be reactive with an engineer from either side. The missions have several of these husk laying around and it is well worth deleting a normal unit to build an engineer and capturing a Mammoth Tank or the 4 legged Masterdon, (a variant of the forgotten Mammoth MkII from a previous C&C game).
Big with Tiberian Twilight is capturing natural structures, these vary from Turrets, ground control (another area able to spawn another MCV if required) and Tiberian Nodes. These buildings act as focal points on the map and captured by moving your units with-in its radius, if you have more units than the enemy it becomes yours and vice versa. This is more of a factor when playing skirmish or online, as the only objective is to hold more Nodes than the opposition and collect points. There is no more satisfying wipe it bases, as any destroyed MCV can instantly be re-spawned again. Offering 5v5 played battles is chaos, no other way of saying it. Any kind of strategy goes out of the window and just becomes a game of ganging up MCVs against one another in a seemingly endless battle. But playing smaller 2v2 games sees you walking from Node to Node with little action.
As with all C&C games building your tech tree is important, usually this will take place of the course of the missions meaning towards the end of the game everything will be unlocked. Tiberian Twilight is different again; completing the campaign will get you about half way thru your tech tree. Requiring you to play skirmish or online to unlock the rest. This needs to be done for both GDI and NOD and when facing fully unlocked enemies online will lead to unbalancing issues.
Once you are familiarised with the new control system you are given a choice, fight with GDI or for the Brotherhood of NOD. Each offers 7 missions that play out really similar but on the other side of the fight. For one NOD mission you will down the massive GDI control ship and as GDI will are tasked with repairing it and more similar missions and cut-scenes present themselves towards the end of the game. The missions are fairly simple, destroy this, capture that, and defend a certain area. With the mobile MCV you will
travel in one large force unpacking your MCV to repair damaged units and to build more if required. It all plays like the old C&C missions where you had a limited number of starting units to complete your goal. But change limited for unlimited, the game can easily become a stale mate as two opposing MCVs just sit their producing units that are blasting one another. This is where the collecting resources would come into play, as one would soon run out of money before the other. Only real way to gain the upper hand and go over your Command Point cap is by finding and capturing downed large vehicles. Something that was introduced in the last Tiberian game. The NOD avatars when destroyed would leave a husk, able to be reactive with an engineer from either side. The missions have several of these husk laying around and it is well worth deleting a normal unit to build an engineer and capturing a Mammoth Tank or the 4 legged Masterdon, (a variant of the forgotten Mammoth MkII from a previous C&C game).
Big with Tiberian Twilight is capturing natural structures, these vary from Turrets, ground control (another area able to spawn another MCV if required) and Tiberian Nodes. These buildings act as focal points on the map and captured by moving your units with-in its radius, if you have more units than the enemy it becomes yours and vice versa. This is more of a factor when playing skirmish or online, as the only objective is to hold more Nodes than the opposition and collect points. There is no more satisfying wipe it bases, as any destroyed MCV can instantly be re-spawned again. Offering 5v5 played battles is chaos, no other way of saying it. Any kind of strategy goes out of the window and just becomes a game of ganging up MCVs against one another in a seemingly endless battle. But playing smaller 2v2 games sees you walking from Node to Node with little action.
As with all C&C games building your tech tree is important, usually this will take place of the course of the missions meaning towards the end of the game everything will be unlocked. Tiberian Twilight is different again; completing the campaign will get you about half way thru your tech tree. Requiring you to play skirmish or online to unlock the rest. This needs to be done for both GDI and NOD and when facing fully unlocked enemies online will lead to unbalancing issues.
Tiberian can still be collected, but adds upgrades to your vehicals.
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No, that's not the Mammoth MkII, but that would have knocked the score a tad higher.
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This game is by no means a disaster; only loyal C&C fans will say that it is. Biggest mistake they did was call it Command and Conquer and to try something new with the conclusion of the Tiberian Saga that started it all was another grave mistake. The story is iffy anyway, but acceptable leaving you wanting more. Requiring a constant internet connection is again another problem, needing to login to play the missions is a turn off. Even if they can be played co-op, not every household has internet or what if you internet provider goes down. It all means you can’t play this game.
EA wanted to give us more time with strategy with this title, when in fact the outcome was the opposite, all games are played as one large group around your MCV, and this works for GDI, as their units are basic. NOD units need strategy to be effective; their units have always been weaker head to head. But with micro management, NOD can combat this. Stealth tanks wiping out Harvesters or flames tanks decimating buildings within seconds. NOD units are specialized, using hit and run tactics and needing the option to play around the whole map to be useful. This game can be enjoyable, but you need to forget everything you love and know about previous C&C games. The limited missions feel like they are there to get you into the new mechanics and ready for the online slug, requiring you to level up and unlocking the bigger and better units will keep people playing and multiplayer is best suited for this new play style. Able to bypass the slow buildings and start rolling out tanks from the start and get straight into the action.
Chris Sowry 6/10
EA wanted to give us more time with strategy with this title, when in fact the outcome was the opposite, all games are played as one large group around your MCV, and this works for GDI, as their units are basic. NOD units need strategy to be effective; their units have always been weaker head to head. But with micro management, NOD can combat this. Stealth tanks wiping out Harvesters or flames tanks decimating buildings within seconds. NOD units are specialized, using hit and run tactics and needing the option to play around the whole map to be useful. This game can be enjoyable, but you need to forget everything you love and know about previous C&C games. The limited missions feel like they are there to get you into the new mechanics and ready for the online slug, requiring you to level up and unlocking the bigger and better units will keep people playing and multiplayer is best suited for this new play style. Able to bypass the slow buildings and start rolling out tanks from the start and get straight into the action.
Chris Sowry 6/10
"Look at my big shiny ball"