I bloody love Command & Conquer. Again within the day I used to play disgusting quantities of Pink Alert 2 and Tiberian Solar. Slightly later, I all the time get pleasure from boasting, I spent extra time sustaining a rank within the high fifty or so on-line in Pink Alert 3 than I did learning. Whereas I’ve quite a lot of respect for the classics, a part of me really feels that on steadiness Pink Alert 3 is without doubt one of the most well-rounded actual time technique packages ever launched. It’s one in every of my favourite video games of all time, in one in every of my favourite collection of all time.
Anyway. Command & Conquer is again, child! A brand new sport has simply been launched. Command & Conquer Legions is now out there in a beta type. I ought to be ecstatic. In actuality, I can really feel a bit of my soul being ripped from my physique.
I gave Legions an opportunity. I wish to be clear on that; I gave it a good shake. Just a few hours of my time was poured into this on my cellphone. I might’ve been proud of a sport that might give me a bite-sized little bit of C&C that I might play on the bathroom, to be trustworthy. I’m clearly not anticipating Pink Alert 4. However this… not like this, yeah? Not like this.
Possibly that is simply me coming at this from the angle of somebody who doesn’t play that many cellular video games – perhaps it’s the norm. However I might scarcely consider how tough the on-boarding means of stepping into this sport is.
Tightly hand-held tutorials information you thru the fundamental mechanics, which attempt to meld the visible and elegance of Command & Conquer with the trimmings of the opposite ubiquitous base-building and sieging cellular technique video games. Its best sin is that it’s a boring opening.
It’s largely involved with introducing you to what seems like 100 totally different currencies and ideas. Hero-style characters known as Officers, an Stock together with issues like Oil, Ore, and Gold, plus buffs and bonuses. A base to handle, a reside chat with different customers, presents, the store, restricted time occasions, energy, a radar, some pulsating icon that received’t go away it doesn’t matter what I do… it’s all right here.
You log into this sport and it’s absolute icon vomit: there’s stuff all over the place, bombarding you with issues to do. Keys jingle-jangle louder and louder till my eyes glaze over after which roll into the again of my head. You’ll be able to inform it desires you to really feel engaged so desperately that the reply is seemingly to only flood you with notifications each time you log in.
The sport suggestions its hand shortly, clearly: you get a few Officers without spending a dime, however if you need famed C&C commando Tanya, the quickest means is to open up your pockets. There’s a spread of different named heroes, besides few of them imply something to the C&C franchise because the collection doesn’t have sufficient really recognizable characters to pad out a 30-strong hero line-up.
Nonetheless, this can be a sport the place Albert Einstein can come out of a gacha loot field – so it’s acquired that going for it. I’m envisioning him coming out of the loot field and searching the participant within the eye to ship one in every of his most well-known barbs: “Two issues are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I am undecided concerning the universe.” Arguably his best concept is confirmed right here, by individuals who put cash into stuff like this.
You’re deploying outposts, or one thing, then ready for timers to tick down so you may choose up rewards. You improve a persistent base, although within the earliest phases there’s no company to this base constructing as the sport fastidiously instructs you of what to construct and when. The simplicity of C&C, which was constructed on two assets – Ore and Energy – is crushed down into infinite different assets, every of which must be mined and obtained both by ready out timers or utilizing boosts which, in fact, you pay for.
There are real-time technique battles, too. That is what leads all of the promoting. However by the point I get to that, the distress of the cellular grind has demoralized me to the purpose that I simply don’t care.
It’s a disgrace, too, as a result of the battle bit appears alright. And the idea of an alternate-universe C&C story the place components of each the Pink Alert and Tiberium storylines coexist is fascinating, at the least. However greater than something, I simply can’t fairly consider that this is the subsequent step for this franchise.
When EA launched the Command & Conquer Remastered Assortment again in 2020, an EA Producer went on the document saying the sport had “exceeded all of our expectations”. I, like many followers, thought the subsequent step could be remasters of additional video games, or maybe even exploring the thought of one thing new. I suppose they did discover one thing new – however that one thing new was this depressing, cynical factor.
The humorous factor is, I don’t even assume Legions’ cynicism is well-placed. I feel the folks with fond recollections of C&C are broadly talking older and extra discerning, and even when they’ve fallen away from gaming they’re prone to bounce off this busywork ‘quantity goes up eternally’ form of sport design. In the meantime, the type of people that do often play this form of sport – the tens of millions who get fleeced by whole guff like Cell Strike – most likely have completely no thought what Command & Conquer is, depart alone why they need to be hyped about an alternate universe the place Yuri continues to be alive.
I hate the form of rhetoric I’m about to deploy. I strongly consider that, for probably the most half, any given sport franchise is regardless of the builders say it’s. Last Fantasy 16 could be an motion sport first and an RPG second, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a Last Fantasy sport as a result of the individuals who made Last Fantasy say it’s. With that stated, let me take pleasure in a second of peak hypocrisy: this garbage isn’t a Command & Conquer sport. It’s an ordinary cellular technique factor draped within the skinned visage of one in every of PC gaming’s best ever franchises.
It’s garbage. I’m off to reinstall Pink Alert 3.
