Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Do you see what I did there? Because ‘free’ rhymes with ‘three’ and… I’m so sorry. It was either that or an ‘In Soviet Russia, retro RTS downloads you’ gag.

Yes, the original Command & Conquer: Red Alert is now available for no-pennies, to promote the upcoming RA3 and to celebrate today marking 13 years of C&C all-told. Which seems an odd birthday to make a fuss over, but hey, keep it up. Let’s have C&C3 for free next year, eh?
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Comrades, rejoice! Yes, the next in the Command & Conquer series will indeed be Red Alert 3. Which we pretty much knew. (In fact, did kinda know. Just couldn’t say so before without raining down death and destruction upon ourselves, infuriatingly. One day, RPS will have its Woodward and Bernstein moment, but “inevitable RTS sequel inevitably announced” was not it).
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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? Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting times for fans of what’s usually considered Command & Conquer’s Godfather III moment. In a minute, I’ll politely introduce you to a free game. First though, the bit you probably already know about. C&C: Renegade, the awful-singplayer-but-quite-interesting-actually-multiplayer FPS is, rumour has it, to receive a sequel.

I can well believe that someone at EA has presumably ferreted around in the dustiest dungeons of the spreadsheets and re-floated the idea of a C&C FPS, but an actual sequel to Renegade and its Battlezoney first-person base-building somehow seems unlikely. With Team Fortresss 2 and Quake Wars currently fuelling class-based teamplay fever, and EA already holding tight onto Battlefield’s reigns, I’d guess at that being the likely approach.

That’s dim-and-distant stuff if it even happens, but available right now is C&C Red Alert – A Path Beyond, a total conversion of the original Renegade. Somehow, it’s standalone and free too – i.e. you don’t need Renegade to play it. Its shtick? Why, Renegade but in Red Alert’s alterna-history 1950s universe, with Tesla tanks and everything.

Right now, it’s purely multiplayer, but as that’s where Renegade was always best, this is fine and proper. The basic mechanics – earn resource by damaging the enemy and waiting for your AI-controlled harvester to do its thing, spend resource on changing your character class and buying driveable vehicles – are similar, but it’s now with Red Alert’s knowingly silly units as opposed to Tiberium C&C’s geekier sci-fi. None of Red Alert 2’s mind-controlled squids yet, but here’s hoping.

The mod’s given the Renegade engine a bit of visual upgrade too – it’s still blatantly yucky-old, but some of the vehicles are impressively detailed. More importantly, it’s free, fun, and will start downloading almost as soon as you click on the next appearance of the word ’sausage’ in this post. According to a recent blogpost, the creators reckon only a few hundred installations of A Path Beyond are in the wild, so let’s change that, eh?

Oh yeah. Sausage.