IMPRESSIONS: C&C 3 DEMO

By: chronic cramps on June 03, 2007 [<<][>>] [back to archive index]

"re-post" Full article credits go to the ArabRabbi!
Download.com: C&C 3 DEMO (EA, 1.2 Gigs!)
As if it was meant to come out of the blue, the one PC gaming event that has my interest piqued this year (as sadily, Halo Wars is Xbox 360 only) was delivered by some unremarkable story on a game blog I like to frequent. But nestled deep in the comments were sentences that caught my attention. Things like "I tried the demo. It was great" and "OMG WTF BBQ." The imparatives were set: get the Command and Conquer 3 Demo and have some BBQ. Since I already got some BBQ on Sunday from Stubbs' Gospel Brunch (so good!), Tuesday night's quest afoot: gotsta grab me the demo!

And so I did. One torrent search later -because paying for server access to download something is bitch- I was downloading the file. Yet, as is many things in life, there were surprises. The installation file's size? 1.2 gigs! That, and coupled with Road Runner's "Lite" service (think "good enough for e-mail and browsing, barely cutting it for YouTube), the game took me OVER ONE DAY to completely download. Highest speed was about 80K a second. But I digress...

So, when 11:27pm Wednesday February 28th rolled around, I was still excited. Drained, yes, due to my current bout of sinus-related headaches, but still excited enough to tolorate a "You will need 2.4 gigabytes to decompress and install this Demo" as well as the subsequent install time; get out your Ali G discs, because this whole process took a full half hour on my computer. For those keeping score at home, here's the specs:

Pentium M 1.86Ghz
512MB PC-4200 DDR2 SIDORAM
ATI 128MB Mobility 300X

And that's about all that's relevant.

Now that we've got exposition out of the way, let's take a look at the piece itself.

Impressions:

Dare I say it, but you've gotta give credit where credit is due. The powers that be at Electronic Arts, despite their lust for the blood and sweat of the innocent, have effectively given the old school Command and Conquer that I've come to know and love - COMPLETE WITH CHEESY CUTSCENES - a facelift meant to take advantage of more contemporary gaming rigs. Everything I remember liking from the earlier C and C games has returned, and it was even playable on my megar Dell Inspiron 6000.

Take the story, for instance. The GDI and NOD are still at each other's throats, but they're at it in what seems like a larger context. At this point in time, Tiberium has effectively divided the world into three zones: a utopian Blue zone protected by the GDI (fairly small), a huge and economically ravaged Yellow zone in which NOD has more supremacy, and the Red zone which is completely uninhabitable and unhospitable to human life. During the cutscenes, it's fun to see what countries line up in the respective zones: the only Blue zones in the US are it's costal areas (point Sensation!). On this background, as well as the introduction of a third faction that might be related to the Tiberium's spread, it looks like there acutally may be something compelling to command my interest. Hell- they've even adopted Papa Bush's "Threat Level" meter- it's a gas!

Sure, the idea of battling NOD across the globe has always been there, but the production values at EA's disposal just make that seem bigger and better. They've got all the cheesy actors you'd expect to be playing their respective roles which, despite some prior assumption on my part, actually contribute to the sense of urgency in the game. And now you're asking- what about the game itself?

Gameplay-wise, it's all here. Every bit you know and love from any prior game is here, with some noticable differences. A side tab has been introduced that follows your objectives, as well as an information folder about everything you come across that you can read in order to fully exploit a character's or structure's capability. One interesting choice they did, though, was break from the past and decided to use the right mouse button to move units across the board; something that you might have only found in other games like Starcraft or Total Anhiliation. Other gameplay aspects have changed too. For instance: you no longer train individual soldiers, but rather squads of them (sans Engineers- they still roll solo). And in addition to your standard objectives, they've also added "bonus objectives" to supposedly augment your progress. But save for these differences, this is what a Command and Conquer game is expected to feel like.

Graphically, all is well. While I don't have a three-wheeled mouse to try it, C n C 3 looks like they've taken the gameplay of the orthodox games and gave it a Generals-esque facelift. Structures and vehicles are in full 3D, and even at a low resolution look fairly decent. You'll get video and audio prompts during gameplay that, while annoying at times, help to point out the obvious for less attentive players. Be weary of, as it happened to me, of off-sync video and audio during portions of video both in and out of gameplay. The video itself is in damn high resolution; it may stutter while the audio leaves without it. My guess is that more RAM or a faster processor might take care of this, but I won't be able to finance the answer for a while.

All the sounds, bells and whistles are intact. And to compliment the cheesiness, the voice acting is great. Things sound like they should. And while I haven't been able to see if Westwood's trademark cheesy line humor on certain units is in... well, I wouldn't be surprised either way.

So what of it all? While I don't have the money, this gives me a valid reason to put more RAM in the system. Command and Conquer 3 looks like it could be a worthy addition to the Lounge library, provided there's equippment all around to take advantage of it.

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