The Perfection3 Blog Official blog of the P3 community

Command & Conquer 4 beta

I'm sitting in front of the PC, dressed in my 3-color desert BDUs, the VOIP microphone in my ear and cup of coffee in front of me. It's 3:48am and I'm about to enter Command & Conquer 4 closed beta 1.15.3660 Build 30064co.

The surprisingly weak logo screen. Be aware.

Okay, main menu... and a chatroom?! WTF?! I want SkyMoon_2k10 to get the fuck out of MY game and not spam the chat! Now I need to set up my screen resolution. Later I find that everything set to high is a bit too much for my computer at the moment so I'm presented with a choice: should I change every single setting to 'medium' one at a time or use the "medium" preset? I know what you're thinking if you're not meta-gaming right now and the answer is INCORRECT! Because setting the preset to "medium" ALSO changes your screen resolution back to 1024x768. Which is another point altogether - who the fuck uses that resolution in a todays world when he is somebody playing computer games?!
Another weird thing I noticed is that the font text does not look very nice at all at this resolution.

You'll be seeing this image a lot.

The graphics are set, audio volume adjusted so that I can watch MacBreak Weekly with Leo Laporte on another monitor while playing the game, and I even set the VOIP levels to something I can use and used the "Push to Talk" setting, since I am a nice guy and don't want everybody to learn about Macs, what did not occur to me at that time though, was the fact that I don't know what button is the PTT button! Later, while trying to grab screenshots I found that my screenshot button was already mapped to an action and I did not manage to remap the games keys (and I'm NOT going to change my screenshot habits because of one game) since I did not find even where to see the mapping. I went over though the menus twice and then gave up, thinking that this is like every other game that offers in-game VOIP in that nobody ever uses it. I was finally correct about something!

Now add to the previous mess with keys that fact that when you click the go button (actually you pick a side and then "find game" button) and wait for the game to be found you realize that you don't know how to play this game. It's multi-player only after all, no skirmish option. But fear not, this is probably just like every other C&C game before it, right? Well, you can't find out right away because the auto-match feature is not working half the times and you're left in the main multi-player menu waiting for somebodies invite to his\her game. The community within the game's chat rooms is surprisingly friendly and you'll soon find yourself in the game.

This is where one third of all players will drop out.

Here you are, the only map in the beta (well, not really, I've seen two) and now you get to choose your role... oh, you didn't know about this? well basically there are three roles with different tech trees and buildable units and upgrades.
The Offence class gives you the toughest units in the battlefield and some research options to makes them even more deadly\fast\tough.
The Support class has mostly aviation units and in addition to upgrades, it can call in support powers (healing an area, artillery, the sorts)
The Defense class in the only one that can build structures. No you get to build only defense structures and apparently this is a good thing.

No matter what you choose, both of the other options would have played out better on this map.

Anyways you pick a class and then your "crawler" appears. The Crawler is a mobile Mobile Construction Vehicle (MCV) type vehicle that you can deploy to build stuff. You should note that you can build units even while the crawler is moving and it automatically deploys them when you unpack it. In the previous games the MCV has been relatively immobile, but here it moves quite fast and you're packing and unpacking it more since you need to move it around. Good news is that game is not over after you loose your Crawler. It can re-spawn.

Shoot the only building in the game!

"So how does one win the match then?" I hear you ask silently into your nonexistent beards. Simple, the map has five points that you must control to get points. Blowing up enemies gets points too but not as much. Oh, you're back? Good, so you finally realized that this is a Battlefield game in an RTS view within the C&C universe. I bet that in ten years time ALL of EA's games will look\feel the same. And just as Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare series, this game has player leveling up to unlock new units and upgrades. I generally like the leveling idea but there are two major flaws with the current setup:
a) The player does not get to choose what he would like to unlock. In any way.
b) You will get slaughtered on your way to level 20 because there seems to be no autobalance.
I started my first-ever game with a quick realization that I only have my crawler and no matter how many troops I pump out, that single enemy unit that he can unlock at level 7 (you know the one) will pulverize everything I throw at him.

This has not yet reached the Modern Warfare type of level-craze.

This is not the old-slow base building RTS where you had to plan your attacks out in advance to cut the enemies power and then take down his production centers before he got his base defenses back online. No, this is a fast-paced game where you build a small team of units and outflank the enemy while your buddies keep them busy.

I'm not saying its a bad game (hell, it's not even done yet) but I'm saying that this multi-player is as far from C&C game you can get. It pains me to say it, but it's almost like StarCraft without any single-player at all. I really liked a quote from the chatroom that said "Make your own IP, EA. Stop fucking with C&C" which pretty well speaks the minds of those old-school fans of Red Alert back when it was done by Westwood studios.

Sometimes even your best efforts aren't enough.

In Closing, if you like RTS games then I can really suggest you check this multi-player thing out, its fast, its brutal and most of the time its even winnable! If you are a hardcore C&C story fan, then you just have to wait until we know that the single-player doesn't suck and gives a worthy conclusion to the series that has spanned over the course of two decades and captured it's third generation of followers (soon, hopefully).