Command and Conquer Remaster

The 1st video when you launch the game, haha

 

Brings back all those memories
Try pressing space in a quiet moment for extra irritation

 

man I remeber have 2-5 hours long multiple battle with my uncle as kid, we want to see how far we could push game engine and how many units we could make and have huge melee before the game game to crawl 5 fps or slow. breing back great memorys good old baud modem memories we did this right threw tiberian sun and red alert 3, after which the C&C game turned to crap imo

 

Very fun so far, only played 1 skirmish in C&C (I'll try the Red Alert Remaster portion of this pack later). It was just a quick one to see the changes to visuals and audio mostly.

Had a 2 Vs 2 skirmish on a map called Green Acres I believe, with Medium AI (2x GDI, same team, and 2x NOD).

One thing happened that I thought was as classic as it goes with RTS games and AI matches (not exclusive to C&C at all), which is basically that A.I. is not coded to take the environment into consideration when building their base. What can happen sometimes is the A.I. will build everything as long as there's space for it, and will block itself, or its units, and suffocate its economy and effectiveness to death.

I took of picture of that match I had to illustrate what I mean:



The blue base is my ally A.I.

The blue harvester to the lower left near my advanced power plant had stayed immobile there next to the trees as soon as the weapons facility it built blocked the way to both its own refineries at the top. For some reason that harvester never re-assigned to the lower left blue refinery to drop the tiberium. Another code thing probably, they are 'linked' to the refinery they spawned from, and don't reassign to a new one if necessary; my assumption is that there's no condition for this in the coding, something along the lines of "If initial refinery cannot be reached, find a new one to reach" in layman's terms.

Eventually, it (my ally A.I.) decided to then build a radar next to the second refinery at the top, and that harvester at the top right got blocked and stayed in the field of tiberium doing nothing for the rest of the match. In the end, all three of its harvesters stopped working completely. Next to the A.I.'s economy thrown into oblivion, the problem became the units. The infantry got blocked inside the base, and the only units to react whenever enemy NOD units approached the area were the attack choppers, that was it.

I must admit though, it was a very, VERY long time since I actually played the original C&C (I actually still have my PS1 version but even that one I haven't touched in ages despite having my PS1 ready to go if I feel like it). I genuinely didn't remember that even the infantry units, as small as they are, can actually be blocked inside a base without a way out if buildings themselves blocked it for vehicles. I knew about vehicles like tanks or harvesters, but absolutely forgot about infantry as well. For the past couple of years my RTS gaming has pretty much consisted of mostly WH40K Dark Crusade so I got spoiled by how things work to some extent in that one (I.E. sure, it's possible to block the way even in that game with structures, so that vehicles can't move anymore even if they do come out of the factory building; however, infantry can still navigate its way between buildings without much problems).

A weird thing also happened in that skirmish I tried. I was fighting two NODs. But one of them 'chatted' during the match about an "Incoming!" threat, I think? Not sure. When I scouted my way down the map all I could see of one of the two bases were craters and a damaged barracks and a refinery (but the NOD harvester was still operating). Not sure what happened. But I did enable the tiberium mutants (or whatever the name is) so it might have been that, but I can't recall if those things can take down a base, it's been so long.

Anyway, some of this might sound like complaining but really it's not. I'm just having my memory about this game being refreshed and I'm re-observing things for the first time since 10+ years (it's about the last time I played my PS1 version probably). Not to mention that a conventional skirmish with base building in C&C 1 was originally never possible. It has been possible over time with mods on the PC version, which I myself never tried. It's just now with this Remaster that literally for the first time I'm having a typical 'Versus' skirmish with actual base building Red Alert-style but in the setting of the first game. There were some nearly skirmish-styled solo missions before for C&C1, but it never really involved base building with a proper pre-patch Custom setup for positioning spawn points on the map and creating teams, with team colors and match conditions and the likes. To be honest doing this in C&C1 feels absolutely amazing.

My only 'gripe' is that occasional A.I. problem with base building. It's very linear in its approach, very straightforward. It's thinks "Oh, there's space here, let's build", that's it. So I have to pick up open-environments maps with as much flat plains as possible with a minimum amount of map topography to avoid situations where the A.I. basically kills itself 5 minutes into the match.

Oh and, on a side note, am I having a real bad case of 'RTS Standards' or we can't assign a Waypoint in C&C 1? I've looked at the key binding settings and I can't find a way to set up a Waypoint for my infantry or vehicles as they come out of their respective building. Or it's not there because it never was possible in C&C 1 and only started with Red Alert? Someone please do refresh my memories on this one because it feels so... unnatural to not have Waypoints and always having to go back to my barracks to grab my units (I'm 99% sure it's possible though, I just can't recall the keys for it, or of it's a key combo like Alt+ or Ctrl+ something).

Anyway, so far it's really amazing to get back to this magnificent game. And the main menu music just gave me goosebumps, very emotional when I hear C&C1 music (Red Alert's OST too, don't get me wrong, but my God that C&C1 music man). And speaking of music, the Remastered version is very good so far, very clear too, a pleasure to hear that OST with such quality.

And this is just my impressions after 1 single skirmish just to try things out. I haven't even started the campaign, and I haven't touched the Red Alert portion of this.

 

Great review. Put it on Metacritic.

Ps. I do not think waypoints are possible in C&C1, I was also hoping they add that. I think they see RedAlert as the PvP option and C&C as the nostalgia option. I am sure the modders will fix it though having access to the .dll.

My review:

TRUE TO THE ORIGINAL WITH SOME LIFESTYLE IMPROVEMENTS:

Graphics Remaster 10 (looks great)
Video Remaster 6 (It is a shame they did not have the original videos)
Music Remaster 10 (This is just amazing!)
Gameplay Remaster 9 (Good old C&C fun with a new interface, only AI path could be better)
Extra Content 9 (Great extra content that I have not seen, played or listened to)

Final Score 8.8 (Worth the money and great fun with a big dose of nostalgia)

To understand my excitement, you have to put yourself in my shoes, As a white 16 year old South African coming out of the apartheid years in isolation. Flying to Europe for the first time to travel the Netherlands, France, Belgium and England on a 4-week trip. When in London I walked down Oxford street and walk past this massive music and game store. In the window is this new game from the creators of Dune. A game I played, and we could not buy in South Africa. Begging and convincing my sister that we should scrape every penny together to buy Command & Conquer (she still teases me to this day - I chose a game rather than explore London more). On the plane back to South Africa I read the manual over and over. Got home, hardly greeted my parents, installed Command & Conquer and played through the night until I could not keep my eyes open anymore.

Supported every Command and Conquer game since. I still long for just that type of game-play, music, atmosphere. Later years I ran 7 consecutive gaming competitions with Command & Conquer & Battle for Middle Earth at the South African RAGE (Really Awesome Gaming Expo).

C&C 4 was so bad that I have yet to finish the game to this day!

It was thus with suspicion that I approached this C&C Tiberian Dawn remaster. Could EA ruin this again with their greed and corporate culture and modern micro transaction monetization?

Luckily the producer, Jim Vassella in charge of this did not and he stayed in contact with the community and understood what we wanted.

This is a classic game with some of its original faults improved so that you can enjoy the original experience and tap into the nostalgia. From the upgrading of the original installation sequences to the AI path finding issues this is true to what the original Command and Conquer and Red Alert games were with some much-needed graphics and UI improvements.

The star however of this game is the music. It is amazing crisp and hard hitting. Better than the original. The music alone is worth the price. Frank Klepacki and the Tiberian Sons are great.

Thank you to the community, the developers and the people that supported brought this into high definition so that I can enjoy a past experience with some modern conveniences.

May this be the start of some good things to come.

Now let me go and play some more.

 

Looks like it has no support for 16:10 aspect ratio, it just adds borders.

Good thing i checked that first with the CODEX version before buying.

I can now just lay it all to rest and stick with childhood memories.

 

I read in another forum that you can alter the resolution on the game files, don´t know if this fixes the problem completly. I also have an ultrawide so this is bad news for me and it´s the reason why i never touched Starcraft 2 again...

 

1600x1200 makes the window even smaller than 1920x1200.

Some really poor scaling going on in this game.

 

One thing I noticed as well is, you can't stream it via discord (because friends asked me if I could show it to them). Is it UWP or something so that it does not get recognized?

 

I have had fun with this remaster over the weekend! It's very nice to look at, the smooth movement of the sprites really helps to make things look a bit more "modern" XD. The remastered soundtrack is amazing, and the bonus tracks from the Tiberian Sons is really cool! The original CnC is a bit clunky and slow in this day and age, but Red Alert 1 had aged a lot better! It shows how even back then the genre (that CnC was one of the pioneers) was moving forward rapidly from instalment to instalment.

This is more for the original fans than AoE2 DE was, since there aren't as many QoL improvements (there are some, but as was pointed out - no waypoints or gathering points for trained units - just like in the originals), but for me it was about what I was expecting. There are already news of upcoming fixed, so we may get more stuff in the future. Also, Origin isn't needed at all if you bought the game on Steam (you log into your EA account for multiplayer, so it's the same like in the case of AoE2 DE), and Steam Workshop is supported for mods, so there's that convenience.

 

Hopefully the modding community can fix scaling issues with different aspect ratios, otherwise i'm just gonna forget this ever happend.

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2020-command-and-conquer-remastered-analysis

Eurogamer's Digital Foundry analysis says this:
"(21:9 ultrawide support does seem to be bugged right now)"

 

I'm on 16:10 (1920x1200) which has black bars on top and bottom.

The original windows version has 640x400 which is 16:10, so i'm not sure why they cut it out.

Seems to be a thing with 2D Remasters or some Pixel Indies though, forcing 16:9 down people throat. Developers just don't want to put in extra work anymore these days.

 

Having had a 1920x1200 screen I sympathize, I know some games just don't bother and add black borders. Honestly, that's never bothered me, and I've always accepted it was my own choice to go against the masses with a screen that offered a bit more real estate at the cost of an unusual aspect ratio. I don't really think you can accuse EA and Petroglyph of not putting in the extra work though, this remaster is very thorough in most aspects.

I hope aspect ratios get fixed, and I'd see why you'd withhold for now. It's never bothered me to play a 16:9 game on a 16:10 monitor, but to each his own.

 

Having played this for four hours, wow does it make me appreciate Company of Heroes 2. Whilst the nostalgia and gameplay is present, it is slowly disappearing as i become frustrated at the lack of control and units. With say a modded version of COH2 you may have over 170 units per faction to choose from, and each with differing abilities depending on how you arm them, C&C whilst beautifully simple is also annoyingly so. Lets hope the modding community can sort this out.

 

Interesting that a 25 year old game is more fun to play than a lot of what we buy today. For only $20. Fix a couple of minor issues and this is near perfection.