Command and Conquer 4... worth it to finish the story?

Ragsnstitches

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I've recently replayed through the CnC tiberium series, right up to Kanes Wrath expansion for CnC3. As ludicrous as the plot has become, I sort of want closure on certain things.

When CnC4 hit I avoided it like the plague. CnC was never the most engrossing or complex of RTSs but it was fun. I enjoyed the building and defending of bases and the simplified resource management the series was built on. I was big into online matches as far back as Tiberium Sun, though that interest tapered off by the release of Kanes Wrath.

When I was following the development of CnC4 I was still reeling from the awfulness that was RA3: Uprising (I actually enjoyed RA3), and was cautiously sceptical about the new premise (removal of base building) for CnC4. A couple of other questionable changes took it off my radar altogether. Months later I went back to see how it faired. With a Metacritic below 70 (and a user score below 3) I was somewhat glad I stopped following it.

However, now I want to see the end of the story. Close that chapter and be done with it.

Is the game truly awful? A lot of vitriol and bile is directed at it, but by and large, most of it has to do with the core game changes that departed from the traditional mechanics.

Can anyone say anything good about it?

If you can, leave any frustrations you had with the game at the door. Tell me as objectively as possible. Is it at all competent as an RTS? Is it still capable of being fun? Is the story still as cheesy as ever?

And more importanly, is it worth ?25? If not, what price would you say it's worth?

EDIT: Thanks to all those who replied. I'm going to skip it as I don't think I can suffer another smack to my childhood.
 

MASTACHIEFPWN

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Mar 27, 2010
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No, the story sucked so much. Just look up the inbetween level videos on youtube. You'll see just how bad it is.

The game can be fun, but I still would not recommend buying for ?25, I've seen it a whole lot cheaper than that, and the fact that the game was pretty lack-luster.

The story is overly cheesy, with so much bad acting, btw. I expected cheesyness, but I didn't expect to see France when I played the game.
 

TheBelgianGuy

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If you want to know the story, I suggest reading the plot on wikipedia or something. It costs less money and time.
 

Mathak

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Mar 27, 2009
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Nope. That game had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Not even Joe Kucan could save it.

The big ending we've been waiting for for 4 games:
Kane's an alien, he goes back home through a Scrin gate, the war is over. The end.
 

JamesStone

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Jun 9, 2010
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No, no no no no no no no no no no.

A headcannon made by a 5 year old would have been a better story, the gameplay sucked, Kane's mistery was still unresolved, and they added even more questions, plotholes and bullshit. Not worth it at all. Save yourself 30 bucks and pretend this never existed.
 

Jdb

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Command & Conquer 4 doesn't answer anything and adds more questions. I don't think the story will ever officially resolve.

However, Westwood wanted the final game to be a merging of the Tiberium and Red Alert timelines. It would've been a three way end-all war between Einstein's GDI/Allied Forces Coalition, Kane's Scrin-infused Brotherhood of Nod, and Yuri's psychic mind slavers.
 

Confidingtripod

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I dont know much but I'll say what I know:

found out about it, looked it up, realised it had been long since released, looked up a video, saw the commander get shot by some woman and then kane act like he was a good guy and spout some vague religious jargon, since then this is the first I heard about it
 

Coach Morrison

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Jdb said:
Command & Conquer 4 doesn't answer anything and adds more questions. I don't think the story will ever officially resolve.

However, Westwood wanted the final game to be a merging of the Tiberium and Red Alert timelines. It would've been a three way end-all war between Einstein's GDI/Allied Forces Coalition, Kane's Scrin-infused Brotherhood of Nod, and Yuri's psychic mind slavers.
Now that's an amazing idea right there. If that had been released I think I would have played it more than all the others combined.

And maybe have eaten a copy hoping to gain some of it's awesomeness

Captcah is fork, knife, spoon
I think I'll just use my hands.
 

Auron

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It's worth 5 dollars, or to be bought with ultimate edition at 25$(which is the price I paid for it on Amazon) because of the new C&C's beta. I have seem both stories on Tiberian Twilight and it kind of makes sense overall but was rushed and very very badly written. I think Joe Kucan's a good actor but Kane was not very well written this time. The ending has the most disappointing production values in the history of filmed cutscenes and is not at all logical. Kane's Wrath should have been the conclusion to the series... In fact Tiberian Twilight was meant to be an arena game with no story(which internal developers thought was not gonna fly.) but EA thought it was marketable as one last C&C game before EALA disbanded and this devil spawn was created.


SPOILERS



Kane is a stranded alien(already pretty obvious after Tiberium Wars.) and the Scrin Towers are his way of going back home he has been manipulating human history for the last few thousand years to complete this goal. The GDI general directly in command of your "character" lost her family to Nod and breaks all the rules to kill 'em all she's a pretty shallow and terrible character with even worse scripting than Kane. Your wife does nothing but cry and adds NOTHING to the game value is not a relatable character at all and was meant to try and make the player feel emotional, terrible. The ending all these 3 characters and you get together at the Scrin portal back (kane's) home and you get killed the general gets killed your wife cries Kane goes back home with the remnants of Nod... Something that if you can remember could have happened already in Kane's Wrath ending with the activation of the Tacitus and the capturing of the towers.
 

Worgen

Follower of the Glorious Sun Butt.
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Whatever, just wash your hands.
No, the only thing worse than the weird leveling system they have for it is the story, the story is shit, not even fun shit, just shit.
 

Some_weirdGuy

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Jdb said:
Command & Conquer 4 doesn't answer anything and adds more questions. I don't think the story will ever officially resolve.

However, Westwood wanted the final game to be a merging of the Tiberium and Red Alert timelines. It would've been a three way end-all war between Einstein's GDI/Allied Forces Coalition, Kane's Scrin-infused Brotherhood of Nod, and Yuri's psychic mind slavers.

I don't think they ever planned to connect them in the manner you speak. I heard that they were going to link their stories together in their version of C&C3, with yuri being an acolyte of kane's, who gets sent back in-time when GDI inadvertently activates the old Chronosphere tech in a RA era army base or something along those lines, thus causing RA2 (original timeline was RA->TD->TS, RA2 kinda messed that up a bit so they were going to fix it in their CnC3)

They weren't going to have all those factions mashed in together though like you mention. It was going to be GDI, Nod and Cabal as playable factions, (With a maybe on Scrin, though they might have not been playable themself) and mentions of a Mutant faction for the possible expansion.

Still very interesting stuff. I always love delving into the back stories and other cut content and the like.

((in case anyone is interested:
http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Tiberian_Incursion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert#Connection_to_the_Tiberian_games
http://forums.cncnz.com/topic/17116-new-article-connecting-red-alert-and-tiberium-universes/
))
 

Djcian

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i absolutely loved the story and spent quite a long time reading up on previous games story after playing more recent ones. i picked up cnc4 when it was on a steam sale for 5 bucks just to finish the story. I couldn't force myself to go past the 4th mission it was so bad. Even the story up until that point made me hate it.
 

Smooth Operator

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Well if you are capable of enjoying RA3 then by all means go for it, there is just no possible way you could ever be disappointed.

But for any sensible human being, avoid that shit like the plague, if story is that important just go to youtube.
 

Luca72

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Sure as hell wasn't for me. I was thinking the exact same thing - it's not like the story of the games has been excellent, but I've been playing them since I was a kid. And CnC3 re-ignited my interest in the series pretty strongly. But I investigated CnC4s' story through what was available online, and it seems like there's no real closure or point to any of it. Seriously. Go watch the ending cinematic of CnC4 right now on Youtube. It's lower quality than the stuff from the goddamn first game.

At least in the first few games there was an awareness of the camp factor and a sense of humor about all of it. That seems to have been gone since CnC3 (well, I guess RA3 was pretty whacky, but still).
 

Ragsnstitches

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Mr.K. said:
Well if you are capable of enjoying RA3 then by all means go for it, there is just no possible way you could ever be disappointed.

But for any sensible human being, avoid that shit like the plague, if story is that important just go to youtube.
I came here to ask for opinions on a game, not to have my taste in games be insulted. Was it that hard for you to not be a condescending ass?

Luca72 said:
Sure as hell wasn't for me. I was thinking the exact same thing - it's not like the story of the games has been excellent, but I've been playing them since I was a kid. And CnC3 re-ignited my interest in the series pretty strongly. But I investigated CnC4s' story through what was available online, and it seems like there's no real closure or point to any of it. Seriously. Go watch the ending cinematic of CnC4 right now on Youtube. It's lower quality than the stuff from the goddamn first game.

At least in the first few games there was an awareness of the camp factor and a sense of humor about all of it. That seems to have been gone since CnC3 (well, I guess RA3 was pretty whacky, but still).
Yeah you seem to be coming from my mindset. Geez that's unfortunate, CnC was a large chunk of my gaming childhood. I guess I'll check out the ending, but if it's as bad as you say I can probably skip it and be content with that.
Some_weirdGuy said:
Jdb said:
Command & Conquer 4 doesn't answer anything and adds more questions. I don't think the story will ever officially resolve.

However, Westwood wanted the final game to be a merging of the Tiberium and Red Alert timelines. It would've been a three way end-all war between Einstein's GDI/Allied Forces Coalition, Kane's Scrin-infused Brotherhood of Nod, and Yuri's psychic mind slavers.

I don't think they ever planned to connect them in the manner you speak. I heard that they were going to link their stories together in their version of C&C3, with yuri being an acolyte of kane's, who gets sent back in-time when GDI inadvertently activates the old Chronosphere tech in a RA era army base or something along those lines, thus causing RA2 (original timeline was RA->TD->TS, RA2 kinda messed that up a bit so they were going to fix it in their CnC3)

They weren't going to have all those factions mashed in together though like you mention. It was going to be GDI, Nod and Cabal as playable factions, (With a maybe on Scrin, though they might have not been playable themself) and mentions of a Mutant faction for the possible expansion.

Still very interesting stuff. I always love delving into the back stories and other cut content and the like.

((in case anyone is interested:
http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Tiberian_Incursion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert#Connection_to_the_Tiberian_games
http://forums.cncnz.com/topic/17116-new-article-connecting-red-alert-and-tiberium-universes/
))
Yeah I'm not loving the idea. I guess we'll never know how it would turn out... but I feel somewhat glad that it didn't go this way. Red Alert and Tiberium feel too different aesthetically and conceptually for them to merge like that. They diverged way too much by RA2 and Tiberium Sun for such a premise to work. I can't see how their CnC3 could have retconed the aesthetic and thematic differences in such a way that benefited both series.

Anyway, thanks folks... I think I'll pass on this game. Heck, I'm going to pass on the story too, since I'd probably be better off not knowing it as it stands.
 

Some_weirdGuy

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Ragsnstitches said:
Yeah I'm not loving the idea. I guess we'll never know how it would turn out... but I feel somewhat glad that it didn't go this way. Red Alert and Tiberium feel too different aesthetically and conceptually for them to merge like that. They diverged way too much by RA2 and Tiberium Sun for such a premise to work. I can't see how their CnC3 could have retconed the aesthetic and thematic differences in such a way that benefited both series.

Anyway, thanks folks... I think I'll pass on this game. Heck, I'm going to pass on the story too, since I'd probably be better off not knowing it as it stands.
Well, the Red Alert -> Tiberian Dawn connection was already firmly established as westwood's canon. It was specifically made as a prequel to the first CnC, and as we know had stuff like the mammoth tanks, and even kane himself directly connecting them. (and tonally those two did fit together without much issue)

It's not so much directly connecting TS and RA2 together as it would have just explaining how the 'timelines' came to exist, which i think having the reference to yuri being a time traveller who caused the RA2 timeline is actually kinda neat. I like stories using time travel to mix things up :p

Unlike EA's 3 fully separate universes, westwoods timelines were based on timetravel messing with the events of history, and a tiberium-filled near-ish future. I do wonder if the path EA followed was what westwood was intending, or if we would have gotten something completely different.