Hands On With Command & Conquer 4

This week I was invited to the EA offices in Redwood City to get a little hands on time with the upcoming Command & Conquer 4 RTS game to be released next month. I was expecting your normal RTS resource-based micro-management game that seems to be synonymous with the series; however, I was surprised that they had taken the series on a new turn, while also updating the graphics and furthering the Tiberium storyline. After playing a bit through the campaign, I feel like the new direction of the game will give all players something new to experience and will turn the heads of some of the previous critics of the game.

Probably the biggest change to the game is that they have removed the need for resource gathering. That means there's no need to micromanage crystal gathering in order to create your troops. Now, while the staple troops from previous games are still present in the game, the way in which you access them as been more streamlined. When you first start off a mission you can choose one of three class types, each with its own mobile production base. Each of the three class types (defensive, offensive, and support) have their own arrangement of units, vehicles and upgrades to bring to the fight, so deciding which role to play in a mission is a big part of the strategy. You can change out your class type a limited number of times during a campaign, and doing so is often important since the campaigns are very much more objective based.

As far as storyline goes, the game picks up 15 years after the alliance was formed to help save humanity, and guess what, Kane is back and playing as pivotal a role as ever. Apparently we'll finally be able to find out his true motives and identity, and the GDI campaign should help wrap things up a bit more. It seems that both the GDI and the Nod will have single player campaigns to play through, each with a smaller set of missions from the last, since many players didn't actually make it all the way through the campaign modes last time due to the sheer number of missions.

As always, the graphics of this game have been improved and look great. During the play through there were often multiple units on the field and it was easy to see what each one was firing and who they were attacking all resulting in a glorious firefight to watch unfold. The landscapes were also much brighter than the normal fair for RTS, which is always a plus. As far as mutiplayer goes, the game is currently in closed beta to help flesh out the experience. Apparently they have moved away from the "destroy all enemies" approach to the multiplayer battles and are centering around a controlling points of interest around the map. They also added cooperative play features to the game sot hat you can play some missions together with a friend.

Overall, it looks as though EA is trying to innovate and refresh the Command & Conquer series with Tiberian Twilight, and I feel like they have definitely made some great inroads to achieving that goal. Hopefully the risks will pay off next month when the game releases on March 16th stateside and March 19th in Europe. Be sure to check out the new trailer at the top of the article and the new screenshots from the game below.