RTS Command & Conquer Remastered Collection from Petroglyph

[Cat Headed Eagle]

i liked how you could go crushing foot soldiers with your vehicles

 

[markec]

Anyone played that 3D Dune RTS that came out a bit later? The FMVs look great, but not sure about the gameplay and visuals.

It's pretty good and well worth playing. One thing I really liked was the neutral factions you could ally with during campaign. My favorite was Sardukars which had best infantry in game including an Officer unit that had long range anti vehicle attack which on max veterancy one shots most units.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Is that even being sold anymore? Or is it abandonware and up for grabs?

 

[markec]

Is that even being sold anymore? Or is it abandonware and up for grabs?

Abandonware only, but I don't know how well it plays on modern systems.

 

[CyberWhale]

Is that even being sold anymore? Or is it abandonware and up for grabs?

Abandonware only, but I don't know how well it plays on modern systems.

Works fine it seems (1.09), but there is no truly functional widescreen fix, as far as I could figure. Bordered, stretched or dysfunctional true screen (with fucked up UI selection). Also, Duke Atreides is a negro.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I love these games. I would love to see more remasters and source code releases. OpenRA would hugely benefit from it. I would love to see more indie RTS piggyback off that

 

[Hellraiser]

Also, Duke Atreides is a negro.

He's not a negro, he's a klingon.

 

[CyberWhale]

He's not a negro, he's a klingon.

Ah, Worf. I was actually wondering if it is Sisko, but I've rejected it, despite doing the test run pretty late. Never seen Dorn without his Klingon makeup.

 

[ghardy]

There are a number of options to play the first games nowadays:

• The Remastered Collection (Steam)
• The Ultimate Collection (Steam)
• OpenRA
• CnCNet
• CnC Comm versions with disc images and installers

I've played with OpenRA. But would you suggest one of the others for a better or truer experience?

 

[cvv]

I played the Remaster but it didn't age well, just like Dune 2 or Warcraft 1, all the pioneers of the genre. Played about five, six missions and shelved it.

Playing Tiberium Sun now on and off and it's so much more fun. The mission design, the new tech, QoL changes... yeah. Back in the mid-1990s I thought Dune 2 and CC1 are the bees knees but today it's just a venerable museum exhibit.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

the peak it's red alert 2 and generals.

 

[cvv]

the peak it's red alert 2 and generals.

P. much in line with what I remember from 20+ years ago. IIRC I liked RA3 and CC3 a lot too.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I played the Remaster but it didn't age well

False. TibDong still holds up well due to how different the two factions are.

 

[Black]

and CC3

Stop with the gaslighting.

 

[Storyfag]

and CC3

Stop with the gaslighting.

CC3 ain't half bad. RA3 tho? Ugh.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

RA3 is only good for the soundtrack, Tim Curry, Gemma Atkinson and Carano.
The actual gameplay is some gaudy shit with too much emphasis on flashy unit abilities, because every bloody corporation wanted to cash in on the moba craze.

 

[Hellraiser]

I played the Remaster but it didn't age well, just like Dune 2 or Warcraft 1, all the pioneers of the genre. Played about five, six missions and shelved it.

Playing Tiberium Sun now on and off and it's so much more fun. The mission design, the new tech, QoL changes... yeah. Back in the mid-1990s I thought Dune 2 and CC1 are the bees knees but today it's just a venerable museum exhibit.

The only part that feels aged in TD remastered is the mission design and of course the AI. Core gameplay is fine, especially with the QoL UI improvements of remastered introducing improvements from later games like sidebar tabs and queuing units.

Also comparing the TD campaign experience to TS is plain unfair, TS with its mission variants/optional missions and storyline is at or near the apex of RTS singleplayer campaign experiences. You might as well say "the mutliplayer is not as good as Starcraft" or do some other ridiculously high bar setting to try to prove a WRONG point.

Generals is meh, seems for everything good (garrisoned infantry counters, air unit improvements, the generals in zero hour) they did 2 things wrong (aping Blizzard where it was unnecessary for one, crappy missions, no FMVs/weak storyfaggotry in vanilla) especially the campaign. Also it was another example of EA management being shit for the franchise, just like RA2 had obviously cut mission choices mechanics in the campaign, here it was visible they cut the different generals feature from the vanilla game (cutting it down to just powers) and pushed them to the expansion.

 

[lvl 2 Blue Slime]

Have they patched it to increase the growth rate of ore fields yet? Last time I tried playing multiplayer it was pretty bad because the ore fields would be depleted very fast and then the matches turned stagnant.

 

[cvv]

The actual gameplay is some gaudy shit with too much emphasis on flashy unit abilities

 

[cvv]

Also comparing the TD campaign experience to TS is plain unfair

My point was TD aged badly while TS aged amazingly. In that specific context, not sure why it would be unfair to compare the campaigns.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I've 100%ed the Remastered Collection early last year and I don't think the standing of those games really changed much compared to the original releases. The gameplay isn't stellar or inclined, but the presentation, the atmosphere, the cinematics and the amazing music work really well together and make an enjoyable experience. Other than the technicalities (goddamned pathfinding), my problems were:

Too many units/structures are a placeholder that you will never use.
I got a rather painful reminder about how much I dislike no base-building missions in classic rts.
Speaking about mission design, a lot of expansion pack missions go way too hard for quirky and/or puzzle-like approach.

Overall, despite initial doubts I had enough fun to d1p all over RA2/TS remasters if they ever get to them.

 

[Hellraiser]

My point was TD aged badly while TS aged amazingly. In that specific context, not sure why it would be unfair to compare the campaigns.

Because as far as the genre is concerned TS's campaign being way better is not a sign of age as such. If you use TS as a campaign benchmark almost everything aged badly because fuck all RTS games bothered doing anything more with the campaign than just mix up the same 3 types of scenarios (tech-limited skirmish, commando/dungeon raid or time limit) to form a string of missions and add the bare minimum of plot to link it together.

TS is an outlier here, in particular due to the good level design (story is good, but later games also had a good story/presentation of story). The little scripted events you could trigger if units explored some parts like with the mutated wildlife, branching, the map design, you see they really cared about the details there both in gameplay and the fluff (decoration object placement) of the map, and every mission map was like that.

Now compare the TD campaign to even much later games like AoE III or Dawn of War 1 base game's campaign or even Starcrafts base campaign (BW is at least an order of magnitude better for various reasons), about the only part where those games edge out and "innovate" over how TD did things in the campaign is due to cutscenes during missions. The genre as a whole did not progress much in this area, the particular big new features TS' campaigns were never emulated or evolved by other developers (or even the same ones).

Notably as far as exceptions go, starting from BW Blizzard RTS are the only ones that tried to evolve RTS mission design, their formula showed signs of burn out after WoL IMO, and at times it was too gimmicky/gamey anyway. SC2 (probably because it did have former Westwood staff onboard) also experimented with campaign mode meta mechanics.

There's also a few cases where different campaign level mechanics were tried (persistence, risk-style map, whatever the fuck the DOW2 disconnect between campaign and multiplayer gameplay can be called, the main base gimmick from Warzone 2100, as well as some other things which I mentioned in a different thread) and that's it. Campaigns have been in a rut for almost as long as the genre exists, apart from the storytelling/presentation of the narrative side.

 

[Zeriel]

I played the Remaster but it didn't age well, just like Dune 2 or Warcraft 1, all the pioneers of the genre. Played about five, six missions and shelved it.

Playing Tiberium Sun now on and off and it's so much more fun. The mission design, the new tech, QoL changes... yeah. Back in the mid-1990s I thought Dune 2 and CC1 are the bees knees but today it's just a venerable museum exhibit.

Dunno what you're talking about here, C&C is far more modern than Dune 2 or Warcraft 1. It has selecting huge groups of units, hotkeys for multiple groups, the works. It was the game that pushed RTSes into the "easy usability" era, if anything. Maybe you just don't like C&C, or you had your fun with it back in the day and you're over it. Sure it may not have all the bells & whistles of, say, SC2, but I think it's about as "modern" as you can make it without ruining its essence.

Oh, okay, I read more. Campaign design. That... really is not something I would complain about as the game not aging well, it's just something unique to the games themselves. Like the campaign in AoW 1 is way better than AoW 2, or any other AoW after it, but that's for reverse reasons of aging. Likewise, are we going to say the C&C games after TS aged WORSE because they had a mediocre campaign to start with? Just seems like a weird way to say "I like the campaign more" to me.

On a personal level, I also can't agree. I don't remember anything from TS... at all. I vividly remember multiple plot points from C&C and how cool they were at the time.

 

[Hellraiser]

In my 'sperging about TS' level design being so damn good, I forgot to mention one particular impressive game design achievement nobody copied, mission design with slight "branching" (seperate from the "connected optional mission done" boolean flag) and having mission objectives evolve depending on how you perform (if you are fast/sneaky enough etc.).

Take the "retrieve the tacitus" mission with the train in the Nod campaign that has a soft timer allowing you to grab it before Vega or having to steal it from his base if you are too slow. Or the mission with the disruptor crystals in the GDI campaign has the same thing. Or the "failstates" in the mission where you need to capture Jake McNeil, or that one where you free Slavik and zoom around with the subterrenean APC.

Nobody even tried to do the same ever again AFAIK. I want 1999 game developers, as they were back then not that into which they aged, back.

 

[Caim]

I don't know if stuff like that is actual genius design due to smart developers or accidental genius design due to engine limitations.