Command & Conquer 4 – What the hell?

Having never played the final game in the Command & Conquer series before, I thought it was about time. To finally experience the ending for myself, and see how the legacy of Kane finishes. I know about the controversy, of course. How disappointed fans were of this release – but, really, how bad can it truly be? Well, as I soon learned, very bad indeed. The suffering starts even way before actually playing the game. To play Command & Conquer 4 you must first login to their servers, and nine times out of ten, the EA servers just refuse to connect. Luckily, or should I say, unluckily, I managed to log on…

The positives
First off, this is not a review, since even if the campaign is short, I just can’t stomach the gameplay enough to complete it. So, this will just be a short, rambling article over whatever this mess is. There were a few parts I liked, however. It’s not void of merit. The FMVs looked cool, with the story feeling interesting (the bit I saw). I enjoyed the approach to it, as in you, the commander, being in the focus of it. Or, at least, shown from your commander’s eyes. I also found the evolution of the units and base-building fascinating conceptually.

Now, being 15 years further in the future, it seems warfare has dropped conventional military infantry and replaced them with men in bulky exosuits. Bases have been replaced with huge walking production factories, to swiftly being able to move forward the battle lines. GDI are fighting terrorists, which can attack from anywhere, and usually use underground to travel. This is a natural progression of military doctrine, I would say – to be able to meet the enemy anywhere. The idea of this makes sense, and fits the lore. Also considering the state of the world, by having it consumed by Tiberium when even one spore crystal down the lungs will spell doom. Regular infantry equipped with just a breather is just too risky, I presume. So, this also makes complete sense.

Gameplay
Then we have the gameplay, and I can’t say that the somewhat interesting evolution of the lore transitioned well to gameplay. There is no base-building, as your mobile base will be your all. I picked the defensive mode for the missions I played, and lord, was it boring. I just moved around my base, and spammed units, since there don’t seem to be any real downside to losing stuff – except for unit veterancy. It just felt incredibly boring in a pure gameplay sense, yet, that’s not the worst of it. The missions themselves are extremely basic and non-engaging. Not even the pre-missions FMVs made up for them. Overall, it just felt very low quality and passionless, made with minimal effort to get a cheap product out.

The game is also designed around you gaining levels for upgrades, but the singelplayer campaign doesn’t take this into consideration. You will be level 1 for a couple of missions, leaving you in the dust for when the harder missions pop up with enemy units that almost one-shot yours. Absolutely retarded game design. Want to know the solution? Play a bunch of skirmish matches first to level up your commander, so you stand a chance. Who even came up with this? Something got seriously lost in translation when trying to make an online dependent Command & Conquer game with persistent upgrades and units.

The look
The visuals looked fine, at least on a technical level, as it seems it was made in the same engine as Command & Conquer 3 – which to me, was a looker. For some reason, though, the units got remade into some kind of cartoon/anime style. The game just looks and feels overly goofy. A few units in Command & Conquer 3 also looked a bit out there, but it wasn’t on this level. It’s an unpleasant visual style, with the maps, instead of feeling like real places now looking and feeling very gamified to accompany the new kind of gameplay. Nothing feels natural.

I have no idea what happened during development, but I can say the abysmal rating on Steam is entirely justified with its 16% positive rating (ouch). It’s a damn shame, because C&C 3 with the expansion Kane’s Wrath were good and enjoyable games. It also furthered the story and lore of the franchise in a very satisfactory way. Either this mess came from disillusioned higher ups, thinking a more MOBA like style of gameplay would help the series, or this was sabotaged intentionally. Could it be that the CEO hated it and wanted the series dead? Because this is how you kill a game franchise, forever.

Thanks for reading.

/Thomas