By Alec Meer on February 4th, 2008 at 11:03 am.
C&C was not aflush with the ruddy glow of good health until recently. Tiberian Sun seemed a passionless retread, Renegade bombed, Generals chucked all the characterful babies out with the Tiberium bathwater…
Somehow though, the RTS old hand seems to have a headful of steam all over again. C&C3 went down surprisingly smooth, and, while new FPS Tiberium looks pretty meatheaded, it’s got Xbox Smash Hit written all over it. And there’s to be yet more. Goodness. The latest Command & Conquer Battlecast, an official vodcast so cheese-laden I worry about developing a lactose allergy whenever I watch it, alludes to an upcoming announcement in two weeks time. “You will have one more reason to cheer,” apparently. Whatever could it be?
With both Tiberium and a C&C3 expansion already on the way, this leaves two options, as far as I’m concerned. Generals 2 (ugh) or Red Alert 3 (woo!). My money’d be on the latter, as it’s the glaring ommission in my glass-half-empty round up of early-21st-century C&C above.
Red Alert 2 was bags of silly fun and a reasonable success, see. They’d be mad not to come back to it and its giant squids, tesla troopers et al – especially as the humour is gradually dribbling away from core C&C these days.
There’s just one problem – won’t having Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 on sale at the same time really bewilder the uninitiated? That it’s a Red Alert game is almost a no-brainer, but I won’t be shocked if the name or numeration changes.
(Thanks, Evo).
Cheer Alec :)
Yeah I can only see it being Red Alert 3 if they are announcing a game (which it best be!) and my guess is that it won’t be coming out (if announced) until next year so as to avoid number 3 confusion.
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Vodcast?
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Video/Podcast combo
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Couldn’t they just call it “Red Alert – Vengeance of the Steel Trotsky” or “- Molotov’s Potato Gambit”, something like that?
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I’d so play a game called “Molotov’s Potato Gambit”.
KG
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It wouldn’t surprise me, if it turned out to be a new Generals and not a new Red Alert. After all: clever und funny games have all but died (Portal was the exception of the rule) out since the stupid virus epidemic of the late nineties (yes, stole that from zero punctuation).
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I lost a lot of time to RA2 against my flatmate back in university, much to the detriment to my work and the annoyance of his girlfriend, so I know what I’m hoping for :)
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No one had much time for Generals, and everyone loved Red Alert 2… it’s an obvious decision, isn’t it?
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Also, Red Alert wasn’t really ‘clever and funny’, just batshit insane. Which there’s still room for in gaming.
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@Jim: “No one” and “everyone” in terms of sales figures or in terms of people that matter?
Obviously no one (in terms of people that matter) needs Halo 3 yet I heard it did pretty good saleswise..
And ‘batshit insane’ really describes Red Alert beter than ‘clever and funny’. Thanks, Andrew.
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Even the people who bought Generals had fonder recollections of Red Alert 2. I can’t imagine the sales were wildly different. (Waits for wildly different figures to be posted.)
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Well Generals was always considered to be the MP game of the C&C series, especially Zero Hour.
Red Alert 2 provides the comic relief needed to balance out the Tiberian series.
As C&C3 seems to have taken the role of the competitive MP games, Red Alert should be considered the obvious move for EA.
Then again they have promised big announcements for C&C….and we got BattleCast TV =/
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As long as we have hilarious Soviet leaders and generals again, I’ll be happy.
FOR YURI!
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surely it’ll just be some announcement for the kane’s wrath expansion pack? ive got a date in my head for 25th march on that – either as release or just ‘announcement’.
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I’m confused. Never having played the CandC games (I always preferred the Warcraft series), I was always under the impression that the RAs and Generals were all the same series. Have been living a misguided and deluded life (in another respect)? If I try one of the other titled games will I find it not as rubbish as the first Red Alert?
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I just wrote an article about the various timelines of C&C for PCG, actually.
In short: It’s very complicated.
KG
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Ooh cool Kieron, when is that going to be coming out?
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Games with multiple endings and time travel do tend towards the maddeningly self contradictory and complex if you make the mistake of examining the story too closely – the amount of man hours spent analysing Chrono Cross’ relationship to Chrono Trigger, if reallocated, could possibly have cured cancer.
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EA: “Yes… We’ll make a Generals sequel! If we didn’t succeed the first time, lets just keep making them until we finally get it right piece-by-piece (works for our Sports games). Fuck whether anyone enjoys it, sales are what we want!”
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I don’t appreciate the Tiberian Sun jab. I thought it was a great game!
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I also think this announcement is probably just about the expansion pack. Maybe they’ve signed another actor we’ve vaguely heard of.
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What do everyone have against Generals, anyway? Yes, it had a really poor, un-engaging campaign and not really many fun characters, but it was a great to play against friends in it. I still enjoy it way more then, say, C&C3′s multi-player (which had a fair single-player, though).
But, I guess a Generals 2 would be silly, as generals wasn’t that long ago (yet). A RA3 would be a more fun sequel at this time.
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Timelines eh? I thought it went like this – Russians win Red Alert, Kane timeline. Allies win – Red Alert 2 timeline. Or is it even sillier than that?
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Chris: Next issue, I think. It’s quite silly.
Pete: From what I can ascertain, there’s a controversy over which way the split goes. The Wikipedia entry deals with it a bit.
KG
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There’s still one huge problem with all these new C&C’s.
No Frank Klepacki.
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Kieron – Cool :) Should be coming in my post sometime next week then :D
Yeah that timelines are a cause of much controversy all based on the fact that Kane appears in Red Alert 1….hope EA clear things up if this is going to be RA3!
Chis – yeah no Frank really does hurt the series :(
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I don’t think the confusion is gonna be any bigger than it was with previous C&C games like Tiberian Sun, some mags even managed to call that C&C3 on their cover.
And let’s be honest, if it has weirdo FMV flicks and it’s an RTS then every C&C fan will buy it.
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Zero Hour was their finest, um, hour, multiplayer-wise. It’s the only time the game was ever balanced.
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It’s going to be an entirely new Command and Conquer series, obviously. Probably one centered around grizzled ducks fighting for control of the pond.
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The new game will be called “Command and Conquer Arena”, and will be a free online C&C game supported by micropayments for in-game items.
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What is wrong with you!? Tiberian Sun a “heartless retread.” No way! That game bleeds atmosphere. It continues the storyline wonderfully, too. Red Alert 2 was a bastardization that marked EA’s entrance in to C&C. Before that C&C was somewhat gritty with a layer of crazy technology and science fiction. Red Alert 2 was “lol war.” Also RA2′s gameplay pushed it too far to the ADD side to amuse me. It was the jump off the cliff before the downhill roll. Meh at you, RPS. MEH.
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What KaiserPanda said. The C&C series is dead as far as I’m concerned and most other of the RTS games since they are all (except for very few indeed) the same shit with different names.
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Yeah, the RTS genepool is a bit thin, but between World In Conflict’s multiplayer and Medieval 2 or Company Of Heroes single player there’s more than enough game to keep me happy.
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Well it isn’t for me :P But maybe I only need to take some years off from the genre. Until maybe 2-3 years ago I consumed more than 5 times the recommended dose of RTS and today I can still feel the consequences.
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Ra2 moderately succesful? Bastardisation? ZH the best multplayer?
You people are mistaking your own views with the reality of the situation. There’s a reason Ra2 lives on while the rest died in a heap. It’s just a shame EA are doing away with the relentless multi-tasking action unique to Ra2 which was the very reason it became a behemoth, and are replacing it with a user friendly slow ass yuri turtle fest.
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