Part two of our look back at the history of Command & Conquer picks up in the year 2002, when the series moved on from Red Alert 2 into the exciting world of 3D graphics. If you haven't already, be sure to check part one of our retrospective before diving into part two.
Command & Conquer: Renegade (PC)
- Developer:
- Westwood Studios
- Publisher:
- EA Games
- Release Date:
- Feb 25, 2002
Renegade was the first and, to date, only Command & Conquer game that wasn't a strategy game, and so far it's the only first-person shooter to take place in the C&C universe (sadly, the second planned shooter, Tiberium, was canceled in 2008). 2002's Renegade took the C&C commando--a soldier that had always been powerful but had always appeared as a tiny character on a big real-time strategy map--and made this soldier the hero of his very own action game. The single-player game pitted your GDI commando character, Nick "Havoc" Parker, against the forces of Nod, while in multiplayer, you could play as either a GDI or a Nod soldier in team-based battles. The game did a great job of creating an authentic C&C experience on the ground, since it reused numerous classic C&C sound effects and modeled many of its levels after actual C&C buildings. Unfortunately, Renegade never received an expansion pack, nor did it go on to make an appearance on any other platforms.
Command & Conquer: Generals (PC)
- Developer:
- EA Pacific
- Publisher:
- EA Games
- Release Date:
- Feb 10, 2003
Even though the Command & Conquer games had generally been successful, the creators of the series who remained with EA after the publisher fully assimilated (and shut down) Westwood Studios decided to take the series in a new direction after Red Alert 2. Westwood, and the studio that later emerged from the shutdown, EA Pacific, produced 2003's Command & Conquer: Generals, a real-time strategy game that chronicled a war between three asymmetrical forces based on political factions that could (somewhat) plausibly go to war with each other: the USA, China, and a terrorist faction known as the Global Liberation Army, or GLA. Visually, Generals was one of the best-looking games of its time, being the first C&C real-time strategy game to use 3D graphics (though it had been preceded by another, similar Westwood game, 2001's Emperor: Battle for Dune, which also featured 3D graphics), and it shipped with editing tools. The gameplay was also updated with more-intuitive interface and building options, and defense was deemphasized (buildings and other defensive structures weren't very powerful) in favor of fast, aggressive offense. Generals' most distinctive new feature was its "powers" system, which let you gain experience in battle and spend that experience to purchase tiered powers that could be called into the game, such as airstrikes and artillery strikes, on up to top-level superweapons. Unfortunately, the Chinese government (the real one, not the one in the game) didn't take kindly to the game's portrayal of the People's Liberation Army and later banned the game. Generals would go on to receive an expansion pack later that year with Command & Conquer: Generals Zero Hour, which added new units, new powers, and nine different subfactions to play as.
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (PC | X360)
- Developer:
- EA LA
- Publisher:
- EA Games
- Release Date:
- Mar 26, 2007
Then, for a long time, nothing happened. No, wait…that's not true. In 2001, Electronic Arts acquired the rights to the Lord of the Rings films, which led to the team at EA LA moving away from Command & Conquer in favor of creating the Battle for Middle-earth strategy series--a series that distinguished itself not only with solid, Tolkien-inspired gameplay, but also by appearing on consoles with The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II for the Xbox 360. By the time 2007 came around, it seemed like Command & Conquer 3 couldn't come out fast enough, but this new game was planned for release on both the Xbox 360 and the PC. Tiberium Wars was a return to both C&C (complete with full-motion video cutscenes starring the likes of Michael Ironside and Billy Dee Williams) and the Tiberium storyline; once again the GDI and the Brotherhood of Nod (spearheaded by the miraculously young-looking Joe Kucan in the role of Kane) returned to do battle in a game that was intended to focus much more heavily on story and blur the lines between the traditional "good guy" GDI faction and the traditional "bad guy" Nod faction using themes of social welfare and environmentalism. And as it turned out, the story wasn't just about GDI fighting Nod anyway, since Tiberium Wars introduced a third faction, the Scrin--a race of invading aliens from outer space who had a vested interest in the increasing spread of the energy-rich, but highly toxic, Tiberium crystals across the face of the Earth. In addition to featuring an in-depth single-player campaign, Tiberium Wars featured online multiplayer play along with community-focused tools, such as match replays and a telestrator, similar to the tools used by American football commentators to explain instant replays. Tiberium Wars was supported with the 2008 expansion Kane's Wrath, which appeared on both the PC and the Xbox 360 and which, like the Zero Hour expansion for Generals, added playable subfactions, along with a new campaign.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (PC | X360 | PS3)
- Developer:
- EA LA
- Publisher:
- EA Games
- Release Date:
- Oct 28, 2008
Once C&C returned with Tiberium Wars, it only made sense (or did it?) to revive the Red Alert series to once again pit the Soviets against the Allies. And while Tiberium Wars played things relatively straight, Red Alert 3 was completely over the top, offering a scenery-chewing cast for its live-action cutscenes that included the likes of Tim Curry (of The Rocky Horror Picture Show fame), George Takei (of Star Trek fame), and Jenny McCarthy (of Scary Movie 3 fame) as Tanya. The gameplay was also similarly crazy--like in the previous games, there were still attack dogs and robo-dolphins, along with ground-burrowing samurai and shrink-ray helicopters. Yet the game itself had several interesting features, including a new story in which the Soviets and Allies found themselves besieged in midbattle by the Empire of the Rising Sun, a faction based on Imperial Japan gone wild with transforming robot mechs and a psychic-powered schoolgirl commando. The gameplay was also much more focused on amphibious conflicts--many units and structures could function on land as well as at sea--and because of the slightly slower gameplay pace, and the fact that most units had a secondary ability, and the presence of two-player campaign cooperative play, Red Alert 3 offered a surprising amount of depth for a game where you could fire parachuting attack bears out of a cannon. (No, seriously, that's in the game.) It also offered the replay and telestrator community features of Tiberium Wars. The game hit the PC and the Xbox 360 and was the first Command & Conquer game to appear on the PS3, in March 2009. Red Alert 3 was later supplemented with 2009's Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Uprising, a download-only PC expansion that focused on single-player challenges and featured even more on-camera talent, such as actor Malcom McDowell and multi-time world champion pro wrestler Ric Flair, to appear in the game's cutscenes.
And that's the story so far--the story of nearly 15 years' worth of strategy, tanks, and women with bare midriffs blowing up buildings. But that can't be the end of the story, can it?
Leave a comment and share your favorite memories of the Command & Conquer series with us.179 Comments
Feature Navigation
Featured Games
-
Red Alert 3
(X360) -
Command & Conquer Gold Edition
(PC) -
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
(PS)
weonjin posted Jul 9, 2009 3:10 pm PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)
TehEliteElite posted Jul 9, 2009 12:16 pm PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)
snes_vs_ps1 posted Jul 9, 2009 8:25 am PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)