Command & Conquer 4 review

I saw several reviews of C&C4 yesterday indicating that the single-player mode of C&C4 is absolutely horrible.

I got it in the mail today.  I’ve played part of the single-player campaign now… and I have to say, it’s even worse than the reviews have said.

There is virtually no background given for what’s going on.  We’re given no explanation for why GDI and Nod have both, simultaneously, completely and fundamentally changed the way they do war.  The cutscenes are far worse than anything they’ve ever done before – atrocious acting, cardboard characters, awful script…  even Kane himself isn’t a very compelling character (though I blame the terrible writing, not Joe Kucan).  There is very little tying one mission to the next – contrast this with C&C3, where each mission has clear implications on what’s going to happen later on.

You can enable subtitles during cutscenes; I make a habit of doing this in any game that has the option, so I don’t miss anything.  Unfortunately, the subtitles in C&C4 are in serious need of proofreading.  There are numerous misspellings and typos, sometimes of the most obvious sort.  It’s obvious they didn’t do any QA whatsoever on the subtitles.

A minor spoiler: After you play the introductory GDI missions, you’re given a choice whether to continue with GDI, under Colonel James, or to join up with Nod under Kane… except it’s very unclear exactly what’s happening.  GDI doesn’t know Kane has betrayed them, and apparently GDI doesn’t realize you’ve left them for Nod.  Somehow.  Even though you no longer show up for work at GDI HQ.

Whatever.

The whole plot with your character’s wife is completely tacked on, cheesy, unnecessary, and stupid.  During the Nod missions, at one point, you inexplicably show some doubt about betraying GDI – and suddenly Kane is threatening your wife’s life in exchange for your loyalty.  Didn’t you already betray GDI?  Yes, you did!  You’ve already betrayed GDI, so there is no logical reason your character would hesitate about doing it some more.  The next few cutscenes don’t even mention Kane holding your wife hostage.  (This tacked-on feeling persists all the way through the final cutscene for both factions, believe it or not.)

The single-player missions themselves are extremely difficult solo, even on “Easy” difficulty.  Based on what I’ve played, I’d bet they’re far more doable in co-op; solo, you can’t really hold more than one objective point at a time, which makes objectives like “capture all five anti-air batteries” nearly impossible.  Your command point limit is absurdly low, and your tech level is consistently lower than that of your enemies.  One mission I beat by literally spamming Engineers to capture enemy Avatars and keep them healed while they took a beating from a large number of enemy units.

Other glaring issues with the game include:
– It freezes if you alt-tab during the video that plays when the game launches.
– The menu background is, quite frankly, garbage.  2-D sprites as ships, pretending to orbit by moving horizontally, and not even moving smoothly?  Why on earth couldn’t they even make the movement smooth?  It’s not exactly quantum mechanics!
– In stark contrast to every other C&C game ever made, the installer for C&C4 is a bog-standard Windows installer.
– The soundtrack has far too few songs; it gets far too repetitive far too soon.

I won’t even go into how unbalanced multiplayer is, but we’ve known that since beta.

Oh, and remember how I’m boycotting Assassin’s Creed II because of its “you must be online all the time” DRM?  Turns out C&C4 has it too.  If your internet connection drops during the single-player campaign, you lose any progress you’ve made.  Had I known about this, I would not have made the purchase, last C&C game or no.

Overall, my impression is as follows: “EA, why do you hate us so much?”

I can’t even make myself go back through this and proofread, let alone try to finish the single-player campaigns.