Contents:
The Intro
Title: Command & Conquer
Release year: 1995
Developed by: Westwood Studios
Genre: real-time strategy (RTS)
Platform replayed on: PC
The mid-90s was a great time for real-time strategy (RTS) games. I spent many hours with titles like Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (1994), Command & Conquer (1995), and Age of Empires (1997).
And then came the sequels and spinoffs: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995), Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1996), and Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (1999).
What a time to be alive! Or at least be playing real-time strategy games.
And this genre also introduced me to online gaming. Of course, we didn’t call it online gaming back then. I remember playing Command & Conquer against friends on dial-up modems. My first experience with the deathmatch! Though I’m not sure we called it that back then either.
Looking back now, it’s quite incredible: mobile phones were still uncommon, personal internet use was in its infancy, and we didn’t use email. But play a computer game against someone in another location? No problem!
Command & Conquer wasn’t the first RTS game, so what made it special? Let’s take a look.
The Game
Command & Conquer is set in the not too distant future (at the time the game was released), and sees the world fighting a war on two fronts. First, there’s the escalating military conflict between the Global Defense Initiative (GDI), a supranational peacekeeping force, and the Brotherhood of Nod, a mysterious, pseudo-religious global terrorist cell.
But as the story progresses, it’s apparent that the world is also facing a global pandemic due to the spread of a mysterious new life form: Tiberium.
Tiberium is a crystal brought to earth by a meteor (I never knew this backstory—but it’s amazing what a little background research can bring up). In gameplay terms, both the GDI and the Brotherhood of Nod harvest these crystals and convert them into credits—the in-game currency used to purchase units and structures on the battlefield.
However, there’s a catch: Tiberium leeches from minerals and soil nutrients, and is toxic to humans.
War being fought over a precious resource? How very human.
Cynical observation aside, Command & Conquer is played out on battlefields in Europe, and follows a familiar real-time strategy formula: establish a base, build up your forces, and take out the enemy. There is the standard progression as well, with new units and base structures added to your arsenal as you advance through the campaign missions.
Occasionally, there are missions that involve controlling forces without the base building. For example, a sabotage mission with a commando unit. But these missions are few and far between—Command & Conquer is mostly about mobilising a base and units quicker and more efficiently than your enemy.
And with the stage set, there’s only one question.
Whose side are you on?
The Replay
For this replay, I’m going to play through one side of the single-player campaign. To set the scene, we get our first look at the cutscenes that drive the story in between missions. I’m not going to bury the headline here: I think these cutscenes give Command & Conquer a unique and memorable charm. They have a campy, B-movie feel to them—and that’s not a negative.
But don’t take my word for it, let’s take a look:
It’s a formula that would continue into the Command & Conquer: Red Alert series. I recall missing this style of cutscene when playing the 2003 release of Command & Conquer: Generals, which deviated from the Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer: Red Alert storylines.
So, which side did I go with?
The GDI—it’s time to cancel Kane!
I decided to play through this campaign using the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, which was released in 2020. Don’t get me wrong, I love the old-school 90s graphics and sound, but whenever there’s a remaster of an old classic, I’m always onboard to see what it offers.
And wow, the developers (Petroglyph Games and Lemon Sky Studios) did a great job—the game looks fantastic. And it’s not just the graphics that have been remastered. All those great heavy metal tracks have been remastered as well.
And for the OG fans, and those curious what it was like gaming in the 90s, let’s take a look at what it used to look like:
Whether or not you prefer the original or the remaster, it’s just great that classics like Command & Conquer are available and compatible with modern hardware. Prior to the release of the remastered version, the previous release had been Command & Conquer: The Ultimate Collection in 2012.
But let’s get back to that first mission! As usual for RTS games, it’s a straight-forward affair. It’s not a tutorial though—you do need to know what you’re doing in terms of the interface and the controls. A point I’ve lamented before on Present Perfect Gaming is about how we used to be provided with in-depth, hard-copy instruction manuals with PC games back in the day. This was how we learned, combined with a lot of trial and error.
The first mission begins as your forces are dropped on a beachhead and left to secure the area (reminiscent of a certain landing in World War II). There’s limited base building required, and this is a mission for your ground troops only.
It wasn’t long until it was “mission accomplished”.
Just when you’re about to get a briefing on Kane, you’re interrupted from the field. It’s time to head straight back into action.
This time, there’s a Nod Tiberium refinery to take out. Not much to do except to build a barracks and quickly pump out as many infantry units as possible before laying siege to the Nod base.
The next mission involved seeking out SAM (surface to air missile) sites, to allow airstrikes to come through.
In practice, it was just another seek-and-destroy/destroy-the-base mission. I was starting to sense a repetitive pattern in the mission design…
In between missions though, the cutscenes were continuing to deliver. The context for the conflict was being filled out, with more information on Kane and his motives being presented to you. The mysterious phenomenon known as Tiberium is also clarified.
Thankfully, the next mission was a real variation. No base building, just navigate your forces through Nod territory to retrieve some stolen cargo—cargo that can be used in the development of nuclear weapons. The stakes have definitely been raised.
While a nice change of pace, I remember these types of RTS missions from other series as well. You have limited forces, and little to no reinforcements. This means it’s usually an exercise in trial and error, pathfinding your way across a map until you hit upon the right path to victory.
In this specific Command & Conquer mission, you also have the added complication of navigating across Tiberium fields, as we have come to learn that Tiberium is a poisonous substance. As such, you will need to load your troops into APCs (armoured personnel carriers), cross the fields, and unload them so you can utilise their firepower against the Nod forces.
Following this mission, it’s at this point where it becomes clear that the war is not just being fought on the battlefield—it’s also being fought in living rooms on TV sets around the world. Yes, that’s right: the war on truth.
“The first casualty when war comes is truth.”—Hiram W Johnson
Kane is spreading disinformation through media channels, trying to vilify the GDI by presenting them as war criminals. The crime? Destroying civilian targets thought to be manufacturing and transporting of Tiberium.
I like this. I think it adds depth to the ongoing narrative. It’s not just about the battlefield tactics. The cutscenes also show the peripheral aspects of the conflict: the political struggle caused by this disinformation and the ensuing fight to control the media cycle, as well as the reports coming out on the dangers of Tiberium.
We can’t just watch the cutscenes though—there’s more work to be done on the battlefield! Let’s see how the second half of the GDI campaign played out for me.
Because of the Nod media campaign discrediting the GDI, the United Nations has suspended your funding pending the outcome of a review. As such, the next mission sees you with limited forces trying to revive a base that had been severely damaged by a Nod attack.
You find the base in a sorry state, and while the setup of the mission is new, the final mission goal is a familiar one: destroy all Nod forces.
I still didn’t even have access to that many units at this stage of the campaign—still mostly infantry, APCs, and some humvees.
And when I say the mission is to destroy all Nod forces, you have to destroy ALL Nod forces. Even after destroying the enemy base, missions often end with search parties going out to track down that one Nod unit in some obscure part of the map.
The next mission involves taking control of a single unit: the Commando. He’s lethal taking out infantry at long range, but can easily get swarmed if you don’t keep him away from larger forces. The mission goal is to get him inside a Nod base for some good old-fashioned sabotage.
What really makes this unit stand out though is the voice, who after eliminating enemy infantry will utter classic lines such as “Keep ‘em coming!”, “That was left handed!”, and “Real tough guy!”. Although if I’m honest, they did get old after hearing them a few too many times.
Unfortunately for the mission itself, it really is just a variation of the type of RTS mission I described above which doesn’t involve base building. Again, it’s a lot of trial and error as you try to determine the correct pathway across the map to your destination.
Finally, I got it right.
Though the next mission slipped back into building a base and wiping out Nod forces, at least I finally got my tanks.
The conflict in Command & Conquer really ramps up from here, on the battlefield with Nod going on the offensive against a resource-stretched GDI, and also in the media with the GDI now being accused of blowing up an orphanage (disinformation) and developing and testing orbital laser cannons capable of mass destruction (truth). Tiberium poisoning is also rampantly spreading through GDI forces, and across the world in what has now become a global pandemic.
Kane also stops by for a visit, hacking into your comms channel.
It wasn’t looking good on any front: under attack from an empowered Nod, losing the media war, and suffering the effects of Tiberium poisoning.
Well, it wasn’t all bad though. Are you ready for the plot twist?
It turns out the GDI hadn’t lost all United Nations funding—it was a ruse to lull Kane into a false sense of security. The GDI is now going on the offensive, and this time you get to take to the skies.
With your new aerial toys to aid you, it’s not long until the endgame arrives. Kane is surrounded, so it’s time to go in for the kill.
And it wouldn’t feel right to end the campaign in Command & Conquer without another mission requiring you to destroy all enemy forces.
The final mission is epic in scale, on a large map with a large Nod base to take out.
In the end, it again came down to that last Nod unit standing:
With the job done, given how much I’ve enjoyed the cutscenes and ongoing narrative of the conflict, did the final scenes in Command & Conquer deliver?
Well, no, to put it bluntly. Kane is missing, assumed dead. So, it’s effectively a cliffhanger, and those wanting absolute closure will be disappointed.
However, my Command & Conquer replay experience has really been more about the journey and not the destination.
Let’s see what I made of that journey.
The Verdict
I was hesitant to replay and write about Command & Conquer. And this is the first time I have featured an RTS game here on Present Perfect Gaming, as I find the genre a challenging one to tackle. First, I was and still am more comfortable playing turn-based-strategy games (see my blog on Heroes of Might and Magic II). I never really learn the keyboard hotkeys to be effective under pressure in RTS games, and I don’t invest much time in devising winning strategies. As such, I never get very good at RTS games. Second (and related), I find the large number of units in RTS games and the asymmetry between sides to be challenging to detail, explore, and explain. In Command & Conquer, the GDI and Nod have quite different units at their disposal, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Long story short, I would have to invest a serious amount of time to be able to describe the gameplay in Command & Conquer in depth.
But I didn’t want to do that, and I didn’t need to do that. Command & Conquer tells a story, and that’s what I was interested in. What really makes Command & Conquer stand out is the medium through which the story is told: the cutscenes. These are the military briefings, the media reports, and the fake news. There are even random TV channels.
The choice of using full-motion-videos (FMVs) in the cutscenes (there is some animation used as well) adds to the realism, despite being amateurish in feel (there was only one professional actor used, for Kane). If the cutscenes were fully animated, or voice overs or text boxes, Command & Conquer wouldn’t be the same for me. And after reasonably repetitive missions on the battlefield, I believe it’s these campy cutscenes that elevate Command & Conquer from a forgettable, generic RTS experience, to a memorable one.
I’m not surprised by my experience with replaying Command & Conquer. I know as a gamer that I enjoy the interactive fiction aspect—I want to be told a story. Playing video games isn’t about mastery for me. I’m never going to play an RTS with the aim of getting better and better.
When I do play an RTS game, I’m expecting there to be a good story to go along with it.
And in that sense, Command & Conquer delivered.
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