Playing Command and Conquer Remastered lately.
First, why am I playing it over the CnCnet versions?
- A bunch of quality of life changes. Queueing, a larger sidebar, and multiple control types that you can freely swap between are all a godsend
- Features from later games, notably Skirmish mode, applied to Tiberian Dawn
- Lots of extra material, like all of the green screen recordings for all of the FMVs (someone could have real fun with these…) and original/OST/remastered versions of every track
- Relatively decent graphics overhaul. Maintains spirit of original while doing HD sprites. Swap at any time with spacebar. (I still prefer the pixel art because I love the little CnC guys
I remembered these games being hard as a kid but WOW did I forget just how ball-busting they are.
The campaigns are easily the highlight. Cheesy FMVs about Flame Tanks and guys getting radiation poisoning and time travel and such will always be great to me, and every mission is a tight little puzzle to solve with limited resources. As a kid I really hated not being able to build a base and losing units over and over, but as an adult I really appreciate the game teaching me just how interesting the micro is, even if you never see it in competitive play because everyone plays on Fastest.
I’m playing on Slow because I too am slow, and there’s lots of little strategies I’m noticing to make the best use of my poor armies. Take this mission for example, the bane of my existence as a kid: UN Sanctions (GDI 8A)
On fastest, I can’t react quick enough to prevent the AI from destroying some of these vehicles, which in this mission are literally irreplaceable - you have no Construction Yard or War Factory, so all buildings and vehicles are one-and-done. In fact, I went online and watched someone play it on that speed and they lost ALL OF THEIR VEHICLES.
But on slow, it’s totally different. With some smart infantry squad composition and placement, I now have a line of expendable troops to draw enemy fire. The rocket trucks kill flamethrowers and rocket infantry, and my own rocket infantry and tanks clean up the enemy tanks that follow an AI infantry push. By playing on a slower speed and learning my micro better, I manage to do a LOT more with less, and won this mission losing only two vehicles - both of my APCs, which I used to engineer-snipe the enemy Construction Yard.
At those speeds the whole engine also starts to unfold to you too. Like what your unit ranges are in tiles, and how you can finagle placement or kiting to get an extra tile or so of range. Or how infantry crawl more often when you shoot at them with tank shells. Or how a single scout vehicle can super fuck up the pathfinding of an advancing army by constantly darting in and out of range of enemies.
Of course, later RTS games have much better pathfinding and all sorts of quality of life features to make playing at those high speeds much easier. But it feels like in sanding off all the rough edges, something was lost. Maybe Command and Conquer WAS meant to be played at lower speeds. Maybe the genre went in the wrong direction by chasing Starcraft and faster game speeds. I know it’s a barrier for me personally; my APM is dogshit and I hate having to cycle through units to cast spells or whatever. But CnC plays like a TBS with a time limit on turns at low speeds and it rules. I want more of this.
Here’s hoping they eventually give my favorite game in the series - Tiberian Sun - a remaster treatment too. If just so I can get lossless versions of the absolute fucking monster of a soundtrack.
