The very first RTS I ever played was the very first Red Alert, when my brother showed it to me while he was still around in school. I used to play that all the time after that, and until I firmly wore that game out, every time I played felt like something completely different was happening. Even when the expansion packs for the game came out, i felt like it gave me enough reason to keep playing, enjoying every last minute of battle between the Soviets and Allies.
While the Command and Conquer Series has not really evolved all that much, it has still proven to be enjoyable, if not flat out great to play. Well, that is once it gets to a critical point - the repetition factor and unrealistic battle features.
I started to play this game and everything just seemed new and improved, like i got something straight from Santa. As time rolled on, however, I noticed plenty of things about it that just didn't seem all that improved. Sure, the graphics are a substantial improvement over the previous installments of the Command and Conquer series, but the engine is more or less the same as before. What never stood right with me is the physics engine.
For one thing, when I'm on higher ground than my enemy, I expect that my units would have some kind of ground advantage over the ones on the low ground, but instead, they are the ones who have the advantage, where as my own have to damn near go right up to them to get a line of sight to attack. No destroyable environments (or fixable ones for that matter like when buildings are still standing but can't be garrisoned or fixed) exist in this game either, which is something of an amazement to me, especially when all it takes to fix most buildings is the click of a button. Between my units moving everywhere other than where i want them, infantry moving right through tiberium fields where they lose so much health, and glitches where for some reason my units can't move anymore for no apparent reason, i see and experienced a whole mess of problems that turned an otherwise enjoyable game into something that can extraordinarily frustrate the average gamer.
I'm not going to mention anything about the acting, since its obvious that no game of this nature ever puts in a substantial amount of effort to actually get good acting direction - just enough of a script to convey the story that the original creators had in mind. It was pretty obvious that the target audience of this game were the science fiction nuts, what between Billy Dee Williams (Star Wars), Michael Ironside (Starship Troopers, Total Recall), and others from shows like Battlestar Galactica, outside of the already established fan base. They did a good enough job getting the point across, although I didn't feel any heart to their acting (or overacting).
Besides the technical flaws and bad acting, the game is otherwise solid. It stays true to its design, bringing back some old goodies and inventing some new ones. Good graphics, plenty of ways to bring down enemy armies and new tactics, and three different armies each with their own unique charm (even when that charm just seems rehashed in different ways across them) keep Tiberium Wars going strong, but I wouldn't exactly have it spearheading the campaign.
