28 replies to this topic

[Zeke]

Well I finished downloading the game last night (legally mind you...) and after spending the entire night doing the GDI campaign I actually think this game ain't that bad.

It takes a lot of getting used to, and I mean A LOT. If you are not willing to properly sit down and take the time to learn the game, chances are you will hate it.

However to those brave enough, CnC4 isn't actually that bad. It will not take the place of Generals any time soon, none of the newer ones did... but it has it's own brand of awesomeness.

So far, I've only "fully" tried the offense class through the GDI campaign, though I have played as defense and support once.

So let's begin with the art...

Art

Art Style - They tried fusing RA3's cartoony style into CnC's serious atmosphere which failed in most cases (yes nor avatar, I'm talking about you...). However if you consider the gamestyle of CnC4 it actually works pretty well.

Scale - OMG where do I start, CnC4 has the lamest unit scaling ever. Some tanks are fucking small, and most planes are fucking huge. If your the type that likes proper unit scaling, chances are you will hate this game.

Graphics - Graphics in general aren't that impressive. It's more or less the same as CnC3 and RA3, although in some cases it's worse.

Gameplay

New Armor System - CnC4 takes the rock paper scissor concept to a whole new level. There are types of armor in the game:

Light Armor - infantry, light vehicles
Medium Armor - most tanks and aircraft
Heavy Armor - large units and structures

Now you must be thinking, "I don't see snything particularly 'new' about that it's kinda self explanatory..." Well the difference is the weapons in CnC are armor specific. If a unit is classed as "Good VS Light" it is only good VS light and nothing else, if a unit is "Good VS Medium" it is worthless against heavy units.... AND light units. Yeah you heard me, medium tanks CANNOT hurt light units, nor can heavy units hurt light vehicles.

"your HEAVY laser cannot penetrate my LIGHT armor, hur hur hur"

This is the part of the game that really needs the most adjustment to. It is frustratingly annoying the first time, but the more you get used to it the less annoying it'll be.

People who have always hated units that can do "everything" can now breath a sigh of relief, there is NOTHING in CnC4 that is good against ALL targets (except maybe superweapons, I haven't tried them yet), meaning you will HAVE (not may have) to mix your units.

Pop Cap - In CnC4 there are no more resources!! There is nothing that hinders unit production aside from build time "YEEEEEEY!!" ..... AND a pop cap "NOOOOOO!!!!"

What this basically means is, as long as it fits in your pop cap (and you have that unit unlocked), you can make any unit combination you want, without worrying about cost. If your playing as defense, your defences take up power points (which is basically a pop cap for defences...).

The pop cap manifests as 'Command Points' Infantry and some light vehicles require 3 command points, regular medium vehicles require 6 and heavy vehicles require a lot more. I am still not sure what the "real" total pop cap is cause in the GDI campaign you start with 50, but towards the end it went up to 60. So you could either make 10 medium tanks or 20 infantry\light vehicles.

Don't be so disappointed with the small number though, the units in CnC4 are highly specialized in what they do and you won't need a lot to take on a specific target type.

If you are suddenly met by an unexpected enemy "NOES my heavy units are helpless against these light vehicles D:" no need to worry, you could always 'decommission' your old ineffective units to get new ones. The only thing it'll waste is time, but hey if you've been bringing you crawler along with you than it wouldn't waste THAT much time.

The Crawler - despite the god awful animations of the GDI offense crawler, I have grown to love the new crawler system. It builds everything, it heals everything, simple right? The crawler brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "forward base expansion". Normally in CnC games, after your first attack wave gets defeated it's "back to base" all the way back to base. However with the crawler you can build more units right there and continue your assault. The crawler can even help repair your assault force as they lay waste to the enemy. The crawler can even be PART of your attack force (after some upgrades).

New Repair System - gone is the holy spanner from the sky, instead engineers can now fix anything much like the crawler. The engineer's repair gun can heal anything, be it infantry, vehicles, or structures. If your playing as the support class however, you'll need it's flying engineer equivalent to repair aircraft, or you could use your crawler.

New Capture System - Engineers can't capture enemy crawlers, however they can capture destroyed heavy vehicles like in CnC3. For tech structures you don't need engineers, simply park your units near a tech structure to begin capturing it. If the tech structure has been captured by the enemy, you'll have to get red of the enemies in the area first.

Story

Pretty ok I guess, you'll probably understand it better if you watch the motion comics though. There is only one main campaign. You start as GDI, however somewhere in the near the beginning it lets you choose if you wanna ally with Kane or continue with GDI. I'm pretty disappointed actually, instead of answering all the questions about Kane like they said it would, it actually created more.

Well that's all I have for now...

gonna play more CnC4 now

[Shirou]

Spanners gone, you mean they are out of the game, just like Scalpels?

I'm just not so sure if this is really worth my € 50, its a lot of money for just not enough content.

The gameplay mechanics and the new style is certainly unique in a sense (DoWII is similar but still different), but they could have done so much more with it. All you get for multiplayer is one game mode named Domination, something which hints at the fact that more were planned (as it always says which game mode you play in, but there is only one?!). This could have been a good hybrid between direct action strategic FPS (Battlefield) and RTS.

Game modes like conquest where you have to capture nodes that link to the enemy main 'something' you can then destroy, frontline gameplay, or why not just an old style annihilation 1vs1, other stuff like that. I'm thinking here EA didn't have much faith in the studio EALA but gave them one last project to 'finish' the CnC4 storyline, on a very meager budget. This is reflected in the decline of quality showed in the CnC website advertising. Battlefield primetime is nice, but after that hour or so of CnC blabber, they will release all that was revealed in it as separate updates gradually on the way, just to actualise the website. This to me seems a bit desperate, as its all no real news. Sam Bass said he was the lore writer (cuz they probably couldn't afford to hire a real one) as well, and didnt have time to make all the unit descriptions before the release. With Red Alert 3 they did have one and made descriptions and vids for every unit, which is another sign that this game is just B grade.

Its a sad thing, the game has potential but is so low on content it will probably be forgotten very fast. This in contrast with EA's other big game release BFBC2 which does have 4 different game modes and a more rewarding unlock system. I can see where EA put its money now.

With the projected low budget there are enough CnC fans left around the world to make this game profitable. EA is doing good business anyway, as their three top games (Dragon Age, Battlefield and CnC4) are topping the PC game sales charts on Steam. (Not even naming Mass Effect)

Edited by Trivmvirate, 26 March 2010 - 09:11.

[RaiDK]

The Light/Medium/Heavy system sounds pretty interesting. It doesn't sound so bad since it never made sense to me that infantry could take tank bullets by the dozen in all the other games, so yeah.

[Golan]

RaiDK, on 20 Mar 2010, 13:06, said:

The Light/Medium/Heavy system sounds pretty interesting. It doesn't sound so bad since it never made sense to me that infantry could take tank bullets by the dozen in all the other games, so yeah.

Then you'll be happy to see that in CNC4, Flamethrowers are useless against infantry, light vehicles can shrug off anti-tank shells, high-powered trillion jigawattzzz Lasers are largely ineffective against armored tanks and soldiers can take a missile barrage right to the face! It makes so much more sense now, it's incredible!

Edited by Golan, 20 March 2010 - 13:30.

[ĦѦʠʠɵƇҟ Ϣϙɩƭ]

Golan, on 20 Mar 2010, 9:25, said:

RaiDK, on 20 Mar 2010, 13:06, said:

The Light/Medium/Heavy system sounds pretty interesting. It doesn't sound so bad since it never made sense to me that infantry could take tank bullets by the dozen in all the other games, so yeah.

Then you'll be happy to see that in CNC4, Flamethrowers are useless against infantry, light vehicles can shrug off anti-tank shells, high-powered trillion jigawattzzz Lasers are largely ineffective against armored tanks and soldiers can take a missile barrage right to the face! It makes so much more sense now, it's incredible!

Not if you spam them. A large group of Titans can level quite a lot rather quickly, especially upgraded. Also, two words. Sandstorm Spam. These tech 2 units hit everything, level up quickly, and with a BTC, double their attacks. A group of 7-8 are unstoppable, and can stop the dreaded venom spam nearly instantly. with that many, even large groups of nod tanks are largely ineffective. add a couple of engineers to the mix, and it's a pretty tough group.

[Kris]

So many mention of the word "Spam"....Where's the rock, paper, scissors balance where C&C Generals succeded?

Edited by Kris, 20 March 2010 - 20:51.

[ĦѦʠʠɵƇҟ Ϣϙɩƭ]

And don't even get me started on Engi spam
Yeah, spamming is the only viable strategy in C&C4

[Zeke]

It's hard to spam with the pop cap though you need to spam smartly

[BeefJeRKy]

So I take it that C&C4 is a flawed delivery of what could have been an awesome new start for the C&C franchise right?

I hope that Generals II would be a much more thoroughly made games compared to C&C4. It doesn't have to be with base building but I think more attention to detail would be nice as well as a better damage scaling system. Its oversimplified right now. I think that tank shells should be lethal against infantry but to not unbalance it, add an accuracy variable. The smaller the target, the harder it is to hit. I dunno. Up until now, my fave RTSes stand as CoH and DoW with RA2 and Generals nearby not to forget RoN ofc.

[RaiDK]

Golan, on 20 Mar 2010, 23:25, said:

RaiDK, on 20 Mar 2010, 13:06, said:

The Light/Medium/Heavy system sounds pretty interesting. It doesn't sound so bad since it never made sense to me that infantry could take tank bullets by the dozen in all the other games, so yeah.

Then you'll be happy to see that in CNC4, Flamethrowers are useless against infantry, light vehicles can shrug off anti-tank shells, high-powered trillion jigawattzzz Lasers are largely ineffective against armored tanks and soldiers can take a missile barrage right to the face! It makes so much more sense now, it's incredible!

Ok so yeah, that's a little silly.

If flamethrowers aren't good against infantry, then what ARE they good against?

[ĦѦʠʠɵƇҟ Ϣϙɩƭ]

I think buildings. I think it's considered blast, Although I rarely see them, and haven't unlocked them, so I don't know for sure, run on sentance.

[n5p29]

hmm.. from what I've got so far, maybe CNC4 can be more success if it's a new game francise, not a sequel.

[Lizzie]

n5p29, on 21 Mar 2010, 11:06, said:

hmm.. from what I've got so far, maybe CNC4 can be more success if it's a new game francise, not a sequel.

"CNC: Tries to be world in conflict but just isn't as good" ?

[Zeke]

Indeed, this game probably would have been more successful as a completely new non-CnC game

[Anubis]

From the entire review i got only one thing, that i already knew - all you have to do is move up to a point and continue poping out units. As for the light/medium/heavy system ... if they went for this system they could have at least got a few more armor/damage types. The warcraft 3 / starcraft 2 system works aloot better and smarter than just 3 fukin retarded armor types. But then again ... from retraded game designers what else can you ask if not retarded systems. Further more you just proved that the game is so simplified it makes for the most retardedly simplified game ever.

[Zeke]

Well I actually have an update on the armor system.

It seems it actually branches out a bit, heavy unit armor (weakness laser) is different from heavy structure armor (weakness blast). Similarly medium tank armor (weakness cannon) is different from medium aircraft armor (weakness missile).

Also even though some units have the same armor, they have varying resistances (prime example: NOD Commando's "light" armor)

Here's a quick list for reference:

Light Armor = Weak VS = Gun (gattling or machine guns)
Commando Armor = "Weak" VS = Gun, but you need a lot of them...
Medium Tank = Weak VS = Cannon
Medium Aircraft = Weak VS = Missile
Heavy Vehicles = Weak VS = Laser
Heavy Structures = Weak VS = Blast (bombs, flame? and sonic weapons)

[Golan]

There are five armor types in the game with varying degrees of HP as well as five weapon types. That is all.

Armor - Weapon
Gun - Light
Cannon - Medium Ground
Rocket - Medium Air
Laser - Heavy
Blast - Reinforced

[Kris]

RaiDK, on 21 Mar 2010, 22:34, said:

Golan, on 20 Mar 2010, 23:25, said:

RaiDK, on 20 Mar 2010, 13:06, said:

The Light/Medium/Heavy system sounds pretty interesting. It doesn't sound so bad since it never made sense to me that infantry could take tank bullets by the dozen in all the other games, so yeah.

Then you'll be happy to see that in CNC4, Flamethrowers are useless against infantry, light vehicles can shrug off anti-tank shells, high-powered trillion jigawattzzz Lasers are largely ineffective against armored tanks and soldiers can take a missile barrage right to the face! It makes so much more sense now, it's incredible!

Ok so yeah, that's a little silly.

That's not silly, that's undeniably retarded. 

[Zeke]

it might be silly and retarded, but it works

[Golan]

A game has to do more than simply work though, at least for me. The new system pretty much murders immersion and turns tactics into primitive if-then cycles. There's simply not enough room for creative thinking.

[Kris]

Golan, on 24 Mar 2010, 2:12, said:

A game has to do more than simply work though, at least for me. The new system pretty much murders immersion and turns tactics into primitive if-then cycles. There's simply not enough room for creative thinking.

QFT..
C&C games in the past excelled really well in gameplay immersion especially C&C Generals and it's ZeroHour expansion pack. The strategic possibilities are endless...

Having now tried C&C 4 myself, I still back my opinion that this game is horrible as a C&C and as a game as whole...For noobs and retards a.k.a "casual gamers", it works; But for me, The whole thing just doesn't work especially the fact you need constant internet connection which horribly fails.

After playing for 20 to 30 minutes, I freakin' uninstalled it as i can't bare seeing the gameplay of CC4 and just went back playing CCGZH for 2 hours straight just relieve my eyes after getting murdered by CC4. Good thing that i got my legal copy for free .

C&C pretty much died after Zero Hour...

Edited by Kris, 24 March 2010 - 20:13.

[BeefJeRKy]

Also, while C&C3 and RA3 got boring quickly, they were still not that bad. They just couldn't live up to what had been set previously.

[Zeke]

CnC 3 was good, there was nothing wrong with it, it just got boring for me.

RA3 looked like it was going to be bad at the start like CnC4, it got better once I played it, but it still got boring like CnC3.

CnC 4 looked bad at the start, was bad once I started playing, but got better once I got used to it.

It's not bad, though it's not awesome either...

ZH still holds the title for that

[Anubis]

The only reason i still play cnc4 from time to time is to get to that fukin rank 20 so i can build my kodiak and heavy defenses. And it's a pain in the ars cause i always end up doing the same shit, with the same crap looking units, under the same crap looking visuals. Hell i have it for 4 days and i only managed to play it 4 times. I dunno how you did it Zeke, but for me it just gets worse with each game. It's just so fukin limited in terms of strategy by it's extreme rock-paper based gameplay and the fact that you can't do shit except moving around with a unit pumping out smaller units from it. If i would have that idiot designer Sam b-ASS in front of me right now, i'd kick the shit out of him.

[Kris]

Haha wow, not only C&C 4 fails at gameplay...C&C 4 fails at file optimization! I was digging the big files of C&C 4 and 60% of the stuff i found are RA3 gui's, C&C 3 textures and a few hints of BFME 2 assets !