I thought the presentation and current state of Command & Conquer was impressive, but it does irk me that there is no single player campaigns right now. I was told by the game’s director that they’re strongly considering mini-campaigns as content players can purchase down the road.
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The focus right now though is all about multiplayer and lots of Generals. There will be three factions: Asia-Pacific, Middle Eastern, and Europe. There will be five or six Generals per faction to start with. Each general has a unique name, appearance, voice, personality, play style, and roughly two specialized units and a unique Power. The hope eventually is to give each General far more distinguishing characteristics.
We had a twenty minute play session with the game and were able to choose from a few of the Generals. These included “Red Arrow,” a rocket general with a clear tie to the “Red” faction of Russia/Japan. You also have “The Beast,” who is tagged as an “urban combat general.” Then “Mercury” a Rapid Assault General who looks like a badass commando. “Ghost” is a recon general, while “Junkyard” is a salvage general and “Dr. Thrax” specializes in toxins.
Special units and their unique power for these generals include:
-Red Arrow: Tank Hunter, Rocket Tank, and Thunderclap
-The Beast: Urban Assault Squad, Gatling Cannon, Teargas
-Mercury: Shock Troopers, Assault APC, Bulwark (creates a protective shield around some of your
troops)
-Ghost: Sniper Team, Fox LRV, Reaper UAV
-Junkyard: Rebel Squad, Battle Bus, Faulty Construction
-Dr. Thrax: Mobile Chemist, Toxin Tank, Toxin Bomb
This is only a fraction of the total Generals planned for launch. It should be no surprise that Victory intends to make the Command & Conquer ecosystem a very ‘live’ one — they’ll be flooded with requests and recommendations on balance tweaks and additions, but it’s good they know that going in and turn around time for patches is likely going to be days instead of months.
In the play session, I took control of Mercury. Players may recall from Generals that you start with a simple harvester and a few bucks. You need to quickly deploy your command center and create some building units (bulldozers in this case) to get your defenses up. Gameplay felt familiar right away and just very addictive. Graphically it looks great, although I thought the maximum zoom-out distance wasn’t enough — I felt like I should have been able to zoom out further. Twenty minutes is obviously not time enough to get any real sense of the balance of the units, but Mercury’s Shock Troopers seem pretty awesome.
I’m saddened that this is essentially an always-on, multiplayer-on C&C game, but I think the outcry of the community will encourage Victory to look at some kind of single player content sooner than later. There are skirmishes, I should add, but the legacy of the C&C series for many, myself especially, comes from its legendary campaigns. All that said, the Beta is firing up soon if not already underway, and this is shaping up to be a great game.
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