C&C 3: Tiberium Wars

Since recovering my copy of C&C 3 from a certain lovely house in St Andrews, I've been playing my way through the Nod campaign. Or at least, I was, until the game decides to crash just before the next mission starts. Which means I have to restart my PC, load up the last save on the previous mission as the autosave doesn't kick in until after the mission starts. Never mind it tends to crash a hell of a lot during the cutscenes. It's not HD or anything like that, and I do worry when my craptop has trouble playing a video.

So anyhoo, while the patch is downloading, I figured I may as well contribute my two cents to the mix. C&C 3 is the first Electronic Arts C&C game in the original C&C universe (the one with all the Tiberium)

Eeeeeexcellent.

By original C&C universe I also mean the most interesting C&C universe - Generals was far too close to real life for comfort and Red Alert 2, while a good game, was a complete joke in terms of storyline (thank you very much EA). So now that C&C has long since been out of the hands of its original creators, how does it shape up?

I personally think - not too badly. I have to admit, I was originally rather bemused as to:

• Kane is, apparently, alive again, and as usual, no effort at all is made to explain how the fuck does he do it. This is pretty standard by now, and fair enough - Kane needs about as much exposition as Gordon Freeman and the G-Man do. What bothered me more is that at least in Tiberian Sun there was a bit of a "FUCK YEAH KANE'S ALIVE" moment. In C&C3 Kane gives you your first mission briefing after emerging from a shadowy corner. Is that where he's been hiding for 17 years? For all we know he has been....

• CABAL is nowhere to be seen. This is an even bigger travesty in my book. Being insulted by a bald human is one thing. Being insulted by a bald AI is fucking AWESOME.

• The Forgotten/tiberium mutants were a big part of Tiberian Sun, and despite some physical mutations, were quite enlightened and intelligent warriors, so why do the single remaining class of mutant sound a bit like they have Down's Syndrome?

However, one of these niggling questions was actually resolved in-game. The Mammoth Mark 2 (you remember, the huge four legged walker with rail guns that was incredibly slow and the one prototype that was built in Britain during Tiberian Sun got the stuffing knocked out of it within about 5 minutes of it being switched on), as well as many of the walkers from TS, were retired in order to return to treaded vehicles. Cynically, you could say that EA wanted their game to be so well balanced they gave each side one walker type unit, which meant most of GDI's walker units (i.e most of their army) have been replaced with fucking tanks. However, in one of the little tidbits of story you find during missions, the "real" reason for this was because Nod commandos had gotten so skilled at getting up close to a walker's legs and C4ing them off. You can still do this with your commando to the three walker units in the game.

It's funny how a small detail like that can change your opinion of a game. C&C3 is still lots of fun, but to be playing with tanks that look like every other tank in every other C&C game is a bit annoying. However, I'm a geek at heart, and a bit of extra thought put into the story like that will let you get away with a lot where I'm concerned. And I was similarly glad to hear that Kane's Wrath (expansion pack) is around the corner, which covers some of the period between Tiberian Sun and Tiberium Wars (not least what happens to CABAL and his cyborgs), as well as continuing off after the end of C&C 3 with the Scrin invasion of Earth slowed but not stopped.

Here's hoping EA, while maybe not having the exact same desires for this series and its story as Westwood might have, won't drop the ball nonetheless and give the fans something really enthralling for the next instalment.