Genma:TheDestroyer
Arcane
This is more or less a word for word copy of an article in EDGE about the game.
Aside from actually commanding and conquering, it's hard to think of two features more closely associated with EA's realtime strategy series than those that its fourth installment rejects. Base-building and resource management have been consigned to history in the hope that such trimming will make the game more accessible, more immediate.
"In the past, I'd have a base tucked away in the corner and I'd forget about it", says producer Raj Joshi. "I'd be off fighting a battle and somebody would be taking over my base, blasting my critical structures."
Fans might recall this as a fundamental conflict of the game...that your attentions are constantly divided has been a key challenge in the C&C series from its inception to its loopy time travel spin-off Red Alert. But the way Joshi describes it, C&C4 finds greater strategic breadth by introducing crawlers-mobile base units that can unpack at a moments notice to dispense new units.
"You can take it with you or park it wherever you like: explains Joshi. "Or you can let it hang back slightly and have it constantly support you. Your crawler also gets tech'd up so it can have a lot of offensive firepower as well as more armor. You can take it to the front line if you want."
It sounds rather hazardous for the pumping heart of your army to be so exposed-but C&C4's solution is to shift the goal-post's entirely. Destroying your opponent's base is no longer the means to securing victory:they will simply fly another crawler in 15 seconds later.
"Destroying their base gives you a strategic advantage, and you get a lot of experience points and currency with which to buy new units, but it doesn't put your opponent out of the game," says Joshi.
Instead, mission objectives revolve around capturing and holding critical positions on the map and, with the ability to re-spawn, battles prove to be strategically complex than simply racing to build a wall of tanks and ploughing it straight into the enemy. The entire make-up of your force is mutable too, with players being able to switch between three broad classes on the fly-offense, defense and support. Although each is heavily customizable, with seven build slots available, there is a limit to the kinds of units you can pick from the faction's 75-strong roster. Offense has a weighting towards rolling units and its crawler stalks the battlefield on legs, able to stomp on enemies. The heavily armored defense crawler, meanwhile, trundles along on wheels, accompanied predominantly by infantry units. Support's specialization is air combat and its crawler, naturally, hovers.
The number of units seems to run counter to Joshi's claim of streamlining and accessibility, but C&C4 has some tricks up its sleeve to make the process of interpreting the battlefield a bit easier.
When your units are shooting purple, whether its lasers, cannons or rockets, you know you're a proper match for your opponent," says Joshi. The cursor becomes a large rectangle when hovering over units that are particularly vulnerable to your selected craft. And something we're implementing now is that when you select a unit, the other units that would be susceptible to its weapons would get a reticule on them.
Though evidently more direct and transparent in its action, our brief hands-on with the game is not enough to say whether the dynamism of a movable base makes for a thrilling, ever-changing battle, or if it simply makes engagements more nebulous and protracted. Either way its a bold experiment for the final installment. Let's hope it doesn't need to make use of Red Alert's Time Machine.
And here's the little side-column:
Joshi believes the new re-spawns don't make the game a soft touch, they merely perpetuate a different, and more rewarding, game-play loop. "In previous C&C games I've made some ridiculous mistake, like I've sold my mobile command vehicle by accident...and that's it for me. It's over. So with C&C4 I make a big push for two things; one, getting rid of that damn 'sell' button, and two, always let me come back. If I make some kind of critical error let me keep playing. No one wants to put 40 minutes into a mission only to come away with nothing."
So to put it simply, because this guy can't bother to pay attention to the basic defense of his base, is prone to making stupid mistakes like selling off his MCV, and apparently forgets what unit does what...C&C is getting a lobotomy to be 'more friendly and immediate.'
Aside from actually commanding and conquering, it's hard to think of two features more closely associated with EA's realtime strategy series than those that its fourth installment rejects. Base-building and resource management have been consigned to history in the hope that such trimming will make the game more accessible, more immediate.
"In the past, I'd have a base tucked away in the corner and I'd forget about it", says producer Raj Joshi. "I'd be off fighting a battle and somebody would be taking over my base, blasting my critical structures."
Fans might recall this as a fundamental conflict of the game...that your attentions are constantly divided has been a key challenge in the C&C series from its inception to its loopy time travel spin-off Red Alert. But the way Joshi describes it, C&C4 finds greater strategic breadth by introducing crawlers-mobile base units that can unpack at a moments notice to dispense new units.
"You can take it with you or park it wherever you like: explains Joshi. "Or you can let it hang back slightly and have it constantly support you. Your crawler also gets tech'd up so it can have a lot of offensive firepower as well as more armor. You can take it to the front line if you want."
It sounds rather hazardous for the pumping heart of your army to be so exposed-but C&C4's solution is to shift the goal-post's entirely. Destroying your opponent's base is no longer the means to securing victory:they will simply fly another crawler in 15 seconds later.
"Destroying their base gives you a strategic advantage, and you get a lot of experience points and currency with which to buy new units, but it doesn't put your opponent out of the game," says Joshi.
Instead, mission objectives revolve around capturing and holding critical positions on the map and, with the ability to re-spawn, battles prove to be strategically complex than simply racing to build a wall of tanks and ploughing it straight into the enemy. The entire make-up of your force is mutable too, with players being able to switch between three broad classes on the fly-offense, defense and support. Although each is heavily customizable, with seven build slots available, there is a limit to the kinds of units you can pick from the faction's 75-strong roster. Offense has a weighting towards rolling units and its crawler stalks the battlefield on legs, able to stomp on enemies. The heavily armored defense crawler, meanwhile, trundles along on wheels, accompanied predominantly by infantry units. Support's specialization is air combat and its crawler, naturally, hovers.
The number of units seems to run counter to Joshi's claim of streamlining and accessibility, but C&C4 has some tricks up its sleeve to make the process of interpreting the battlefield a bit easier.
When your units are shooting purple, whether its lasers, cannons or rockets, you know you're a proper match for your opponent," says Joshi. The cursor becomes a large rectangle when hovering over units that are particularly vulnerable to your selected craft. And something we're implementing now is that when you select a unit, the other units that would be susceptible to its weapons would get a reticule on them.
Though evidently more direct and transparent in its action, our brief hands-on with the game is not enough to say whether the dynamism of a movable base makes for a thrilling, ever-changing battle, or if it simply makes engagements more nebulous and protracted. Either way its a bold experiment for the final installment. Let's hope it doesn't need to make use of Red Alert's Time Machine.
And here's the little side-column:
Joshi believes the new re-spawns don't make the game a soft touch, they merely perpetuate a different, and more rewarding, game-play loop. "In previous C&C games I've made some ridiculous mistake, like I've sold my mobile command vehicle by accident...and that's it for me. It's over. So with C&C4 I make a big push for two things; one, getting rid of that damn 'sell' button, and two, always let me come back. If I make some kind of critical error let me keep playing. No one wants to put 40 minutes into a mission only to come away with nothing."
So to put it simply, because this guy can't bother to pay attention to the basic defense of his base, is prone to making stupid mistakes like selling off his MCV, and apparently forgets what unit does what...C&C is getting a lobotomy to be 'more friendly and immediate.'
of C&C.
