IMO, all of the C&C games, except for C&C4, are well worth it, especially for the current Steam sale prices.
Worgen said:
RA 3 is really damn good, I haven't played it multi but the single is really cool, don't get C&C 4, ea fucked it up badly. It had potential but they really messed it up and the plot is amazingly bad, not good bad, just bad and it doesn't even fit with the series.
I have to agree with this. Red Alert 3 was a pretty good game, personally I loved it but I can see how it's not everyone's type of game. Coop was probably the gimmick feature of that game in which you could have two players go through the campaign, and usually both players had their own unique roles and positions.
For example, one mission had one player controlling a base of operations to support the other player, who only controlled one single unit, an incredibly powerful experimental weapon. Another mission, one player has a base on land to oversea the land assault on the enemy base, while the other player's base is out in the ocean. I mean, literally in the ocean, not a piece of land nearby, and was only able to build the structures that can be built on the water's surface (meaning no barracks or war factory, pretty much), so he was in charge of the naval and aerial assaults. The only problem with the Coop gimmick though is that if you play singleplayer, an AI controls the second base. Now, the AI is smart enough that you won't really be handicapped in any way, but the fact that you have 2 people against your enemy tends to make the game pretty easy, even with an AI in control of the second base.
One of the reasons why previous C&C games were difficult was because the enemy would often constantly throw a solid line of mixed units at you, making it difficult to defend for a while until you finally manage to solidify your defenses and begin making attacks. With two players, usually only one person will be attacked at a time, meaning both players get regular breathers to build up and stomp the enemy. It had a LOT of potential, but the fact that an AI ally is never going to be as useful as an actual player for an ally meant that they had to tone down the difficulty else you're going to lose your ally in singleplayer fast and then, chances are, you'll lose simply because your ally was in control of something vitally important, and can't finish the mission without it. The standalone expansion pack, Uprising, fixes this by making it just you alone, no assistance, but of course that means no coop mode either, and the expansion itself has no multiplayer at all, either. It's purely singleplayer, but challenging singleplayer. The campaigns are short but pretty decent, but it's the challenge mode where Uprising shined, being moderately easy to complete, but quite difficult to beat under the par time, and yes, finishing under par time for every challenge (50 challenge missions) grants an extra reward. Just a bonus FMV clip, an extra star to your name, and a slight main menu change, but still, pretty nice.
Back to Red Alert 3 itself, with the multiplayer, the units themselves are rather fragile, and with the usual rock-paper-scissors routine C&C games usually have, this means that an entire army can die extremely fast without doing much damage at all. I think this is one of the main reasons why people prefer C&C 3 over RA3, C&C's units are all beefy and even when countered will last long enough for you to at least do a little damage or do something to minimise your losses. With RA3, things die so fast that if you're countered, it's probably better to just leave them to die while you go back to base to build your own counter to THEIR counter. That said, a mixed army will perform very well, and is a part of the strategy of RA3, trying to predict what your enemy is going to build, how to counter it, and how to counter whatever they'll try to counter you with.
C&C4, however.... that was a mess. The gameplay itself was... alright... it had potential but it never lived up to its potential. An RTS C&C game with a mobile base rather than a constructed stationary base has its merits, especially considering that there's 3 types of mobile bases (offensive, can only build strong attack units, defensive, builds infantry that digs in rather well as well has stationary turrets, the closest thing to a base this game has, and the support base which flies, constructs aircraft and has a large array of support powers). But the lack of resources was probably the biggest downfall. With no resources, not only is there nowhere on the map that you need to be, but also your only limit in army is population capacity and time. This makes singleplayer VERY easy, as you can just spam units at the enemy, from any direction. The only time the game becomes difficult is when you have to try to protect something, or take something within a certain amount of time, but even then once you know what the units counter, its still easy.
Multiplayer solved this by making it a control point game. You needed to control enough points for long enough to win. This means that everyone needed to help defend or attack the points. Unfortunately, the game is still a case of spam-to-win, and games generally devolve into "They just spammed at that point and captured it, so we'll spam at this other point to capture it while they're too far away to defend!". A decidedly cat-and-mouse game.
The plot also had potential. It was supposed to answer all the questions on who Cain was, and why he never seemed to die, what his goal was, everything. Unfortunately, all it gave us was just one more big open ended question, without answering anything else in return. They also seemed to try to make the story much more dramatic. Hell, they even give you, the player, a backstory, and a wife, who's only reason for being in the game seems to be to try to put in sappy little "Please come back to me!" moments. It just didn't feel like C&C at all.
I actually liked the unit progression, though. Earning experience from completing mission objectives and accomplishing little minor goals like killing more enemies and losing less, in order to unlock new units that, while stronger, don't necessarily outclass the earlier units, felt like a rewarding system. Of course, this comes to the problem where you could just repeat the first mission constantly to get stronger units, and once you unlock a unit you can use it in any mission.... yeah. I liked the unit progression, but that only really works on the first playthrough and only if you actually try to complete the campaign with what you have at the time. You can't reset your experience progression at all, even when you've maxed out your XP, and you can exploit it too easily. Its a nice little gimmick I thought, but just like everything else in C&C4, it was poorly implemented.
