One of the defining real time strategy games exhibits why it is.
Command & Conquer Gold for the PC is an updated version of Command & Conquer for DOS. After Windows 95 came out, this version gave users better resolution and the ability to run on the Windows OS smoothly.
The setting takes place in 1995 earth, but the history of the planet is different. Only recently, a strange landing from an alien source has caused areas of the worth to begin growing the earth has labeled as Tiberium named after the area it was first discovered. Tiberium is very easy to harvest and very profitable but the Tiberium leaches into the ground and changes other plants and materials into Tiberium much like a virus.
This wouldn't be much of a problem except that Tiberium is completely poisonous to people and animals. Because of the ease of money of Tiberium and the health problems related to it, some areas of the planet have become unstable. There are two main sides in this game vying for control. We have the GDI or Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod. GDI is basically a United Nations sort of force that is sent to protect the world over the overbearing and evil Nod.
Both sides have their unique units. Nod is much more speed and stealth based while GDI is more strength and balance based. Each side has access to infantry and vehicles and aircraft. The basic building block of each side is the Construction Yard. The construction yard allows players to build all the other buildings in the game. There are many buildings to select from barracks to communication centers, which grant you access to radar and many other buildings.
To get the buildings going, you need power and players can build power plants. The left bar indicates how much powder you need and how much is provided. Careful, because if the buildings are taking up more energy than the power your buildings are producing, your base will go down and producing units and other buildings will slow down to a snail's pace. Power plants can also lose power if they are attacked so repairing them is essential to keeping the power running through all hours of the night.
One unique aspect of the game is that when you building multiple units producing buildings of the same type, you are not given access to multiple building cues. Instead, the cues are combined into one and the times are reduced. You can select which building the units come out of.
Gameplay is fairly balanced in some respects over realism. For example, infantry units can easily be run over but tank shells do minimal damage to them. In reality, a tank shell would destroy dozens of infantry in one shot but in this game, 5 minigunners can easily take out a tank. Orca missiles destroy buildings in mere seconds but compared to flamethrower infantry, it will much longer. This type of balancing makes the game more playable but less realistic.
Building a balanced force is very important. Building all infantry units, or all hum vees, or all tanks is very dangerous because it can be far too easy to counter. Infantry also have the added disadvantage that tiberium causes them to lose life very easily and eventually burn up. Vehicles also get slower in mobility speed as they decrease in life so keeping the vitality of your units up is important.
Building an army is important but without the buildings, this can not be possible. One aspect of the game that is utterly frustrating is the fact that the entire game revolves around the construction yard. If you should lose it to an enemy engineer or should you accidentally sell it, the game is basically lost. There should be another way to get back into the game but there is nothing like that available.
Though this is annoying, the game does do well in it;s single player missions from rescuing scientists or defending against the enemies until more reinforcements arrived. But the game really shines in multiplayer. Back in the mid 90s, the basic way to play was over modem, direct connection or going on the Internet and using Westwood Chat. It's too bad that Westwood Chat no longer exists, so playing this game online is virtually impossible but there were a lot of fun games to be had for sure. You can change the amount of players to play with or how many resources each player started with. It was also possible to play with no bases and just have a lot of units beat each other up until everything was destroyed.
Though multiplayer was largely successful, a simple part of it was missed entirely. I am talking about the addition of computer opponents. You can not add computer opponents and this was a major letdown.
For what it is, Command & Conquer Gold was a fun game. It's probably not worth revisiting nowadays but it's easy to see why the game was good back then. It's colourful, had a intriguing story and had decent multiplayer.