Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars Demo Impressions

I haven’t played the Command and Conquer series since the original game on the first Playstation, so I was unsure of whether or not to be awed and surprised as the storyline for C&C 3 was beginning. Kane is back, the planet is dying, and this alien resource, called tiberium, is responsible for war, plague, and desolation. Tiberium is infesting the planet, and the Brotherhood of the Nod is trying to accelerate the growth of this resource, gather it and use it as a catalyst for the next phase of human evolution. However, the Brotherhood has been unusually quiet the last few years, with little activity going on. The GDI or Global Defense Initiative controls the regions of the planet that have remained unscathed by tiberium infestation. Their goal is to halt the spread of tiberium and eliminate Nod forces trying to harvest this resource.

The game starts you off with a quick tutorial to help you with basic commands and building structures, the typical RTS tutorial. The interface is easy to use, commands only appear when they can be used, so you won’t have unit formation buttons scattered across the screen if your building a power planet, etc. After the quick initiation, your treated to a briefing of the current state of the planet, and enemy activity, with real actors. I didn’t know they were still doing this! Real acting cutscenes in a video game aren’t that popular, especially nowadays. After the prologue, the Nod suddenly comes out of hiding, wreaking havoc all over the world. Your first task is to destroy several docking cranes in Northern Africa that are responsible for loading tiberium onto boats supplying Nod forces all over the world. You don’t start off only able to build weak units on the first mission, like the usual RTS, instead you’re given some of the most powerful units right as you start the mission, and you’re also able to build most of the GDI units in this mission. The only resource is tiberium, it’s responsible for building and unit cost production, however power is responsible for keeping your base running efficiently, if your base is running low on power, certain buildings won’t be able to function, so it’s also critical keep an eye on power consumption. After building a battalion of mammoth and predator tanks and sending them across the map, the mission was basically over. They destroyed everything in their path.

Real Actors!

Watching the devastation these tanks can cause was mesmerizing. After equipping them with rail guns, they roll across the terrain and are able to fire missiles and guns simultaneously. Seeing infantry squads get blown up into the air, buildings come crashing down, and flying units exploding in mid air was very satisfying. The terrain and visual effects were very well done. The voice acting was great, and other sound effects in-game were excellent.

I was very impressed with the demo, I was able to run it at max settings with my Nvidia 6800 with a decent frame rate. The requirements aren’t too steep, but make sure you have the necessary amount of space, the demo alone took up 2.7 GB, and the full game will require more than 8 GB!

The Ion Cannon Is AWESOME!