goldfries rated it

 

Kane’s Wrath, would it be just another Command & Conquer 3 : Tiberium Wars with new mission - I WAS WRONG!  This game IS what Command & Conquer 3 supposed to be!

The Story

The story has you playing an AI called LEGION, NOD’s AI of course. And the story spans across multiple zones in time, across the war between GDI and NOD. Yes, the game sets you from right after Tiberian Sun: Firestorm (Tiberium Sun was a lousy game to begin with, I didn’t manage to play the expansion) to Command & Conquer 3 and beyond.

Gameplay

The game is just like Command & Conquer 3 : Tiberium Wars“, so I won’t be repeating myself.  

What made Command & Conquer 3 : Kane’s Wrath (C∓C3:KW) different would be the new factions introduced to the game. This comes to a total of 9 factions. 2 new factions from each of the original factions, meaning you now have 3 types of GDI, NOD and SCRIN to play but I’ll talk more about that in the latter section.

During the course of the campaign mode, you’ll get to control some of the new units but you’re confined to only those affiliated to NOD. As for the rest, well you’ll learn about them as you they start to take down some of your stuff, they’re not some cheap new units that work as field decoration. And this time around, each faction also has a SUPER UNIT!

While C∓C3 was pretty easy to finish, C∓C3:KW on the other hand has a handful of surprises. Well it’s not exactly a surprise these days, it’s just like in games like Supreme Commander : Forged Alliance where accomplishing an objective would mean the operation area expansion and almost always a crazy horde of enemy units homing in on either your base or whatever it was that you were told to acquire.

I personally think that RTS games these days require you to unit spam. Well anyway, the early missions in the campaign were a piece of cake. The latter missions, it’s a matter of unit spamming and a bit of detailed management.

The campaign was rather short, it’s just that each mission has quite a few objectives but it doesn’t take long to accomplish. The difficulty on the other hand would definitely give RTS rookies a training session.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically speaking, the game looks slightly better than C∓C3.

The sound is just like C∓C3 of course, I still love how the game made use of my speakers. Let’s say you’re at the center of the map and a production facility on the lower right side just completed a unit, you’ll hear the voice of the unit (yes, they speak as they come out of the facility) sound coming from the rear-right speaker. Damn cool! It did manage to freak me out sometimes, you know how some of Kane’s minions sound like.  

The game looks beautiful even on lower range cards like the HD3650.

And as usual there were full-motion videos for cut-scenes, this time we have Natasha Henstridge (remember the movie Species?)

Online / Network Gaming

Skirmish and Multi-player gaming modes are same as what anyone has experienced in Command & Conquer 3 : Tiberium Wars, what made C&C3:KW great was the availability of 9 different factions instead of the usual 3.

These factions are similar and yet not the same, much thanks to the variety of units that are available SOLELY to them. There were new maps added in this expansion however I still find the maps rather limited.

The downside of this game would be the de-sync issues. My friends and I had resorted to playing other RTS, simply because the de-sync issue was wasting too much of our time.

Conclusion

It was a good game, the missions were enjoyable.

It was sad that there’s this de-sync issue when it comes to playing multi-player games. Looks like I’ll be spending more time on skirmish against AI and probably playing the game again on hard mode.

Ratings

PC Specifications Used

The computer setup used for this review.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Game Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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