If reports are to be believed, then after 15 years the Command & Conquer series is coming to an end. With the release of Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, EA has decided to lay one of real-time strategy gaming’s forefathers to rest. Unfortunately for us, Grandpa C&C decided to get a little cosmetic work done for his last outing, and the areas of injection are all too noticeable. After years of proudly delivering its own RTS style, C&C4 has gone and aped the finer elements of games around it, forging some only slightly enjoyable mishmash of a game.

Starting with the thoroughly excellent Dawn of War II, EA kindly borrowed a few ingredients from that recipe and brought them into its own. Base building is removed entirely with the exception of defenses (more on that later), and there is no resource gathering whatsoever. Yes, while the word Tiberian appears in the title of the game, it is virtually absent from the rest of the product. In lieu of resources, you are instead granted Command Points. Typically, you are allowed somewhere between 50-70 points, with each unit costing some number of points to build. Once the unit dies, its point-worth is returned to the pool. As is imaginable, this tends to keep your army rather small. So if you preferred the old method of amassing some hundred units and throwing them at your opponent’s base, you will most likely be disappointed.

The goal, of course, is to create a smaller, more unit-focused experience. In this version of C&C, each unit is important, and retreating for repairs is always a valuable tactic. Or at least, that’s the idea. However, in practice, it is much easier to let your units fight to the death while pumping out more back at base, and this is because of the removal of resources altogether. Even Dawn of War II featured some resources that were needed in order to build new units, so it was always important to keep as much of your army alive as possible, for rebuilding would take precious time and resource, both of which might be unavailable. EA missed that element entirely, and instead of playing with a small, valuable army, you are forced to play with a small, very expendable one.

The generous borrowing of ideas doesn’t stop at Dawn of War II, as C&C4 also takes a crack at Call of Duty’s leveling system. Typically in C&C, higher-end units and abilities become available as the match progresses and buildings are erected to push further into the tech tree. You may be wondering, then, how more advanced units come into play with no base building. This is where the most asinine feature comes into effect: the player’s level. Yes, as you take part in the campaign or in multiplayer matches, you will gain XP. After so much, your level increases, and you are granted access to new units and upgrades. To paint a picture of how much XP is needed exactly to play with a full arsenal at your will, once I had completed the entire GDI campaign, I STILL resided at too low a level to access the third, and highest, tier of units. Even better, there are two experience bars to fill, one for GDI, and the other for NOD. So, after completing the GDI campaign, if I were to jump into an online match as the NOD, I would only have the first 3 or 4 units available to me. I can’t even begin to understand how such a feature was allowed into the final product.

The final, fairly radical change to discuss is the selection of a Crawler at the beginning of a match. This is a change that I’m actually rather happy with. There are three Crawler types to choose from, Offense, Defense, and Support, and each allows for different strategies. An Offensive Crawler gives access to the more hard hitting units, while the Defensive Crawler grants weaker units alongside the ability to build base defenses. The Support Crawler features an array of air units and allows for the use of Support Powers, which may heal all your units, reveal a portion of the map, etc. Furthermore, you are able to scrap your current Crawler and pick a new one at any time, though there is a limit to the amount of times you can do this in a match. This allows for some interesting strategies. Say you start with a Defensive Crawler and build a formidable defensive system around a control point before scrapping the Crawler for an Offensive one. Now, your defenses are still in place while you also command the most powerful units available. Kudos to EA, as this change impacts the game in a positive way, unlike the others.

Disappointingly, the one element of C&C4 that refused to evolve are the campaigns. After a few tutorial missions, the player is offered the choice to play either the NOD or the GDI campaign, with the Scrin noticeably absent. The missions are fairly linear and typical; destroy a base here, protect a location for X amount of time there. The campaigns are all by the book, and are over before you know it. It’s a bit odd that while so many things were changed, the 15 year old campaign progression remained the same. Even the live action cutscenes fail to impress, though Joe Kucan does again deliver as Kane, leader of the NOD.

It is worth noting for those who may be thinking about purchasing C&C4 that in order to play the game, a constant internet connection is required. That’s right, constant. Even if you log in to the game with your EA account, you must stay connected at all points of playing, or your progress will be lost. So if you planned on playing this game on your laptop away from home, you may want to rethink it. To learn more, check out CFD!’s article on the matter.

It’s hard to imagine that this could be the end of the Command & Conquer series. It’s even harder to imagine who allowed its core to be hacked at so fervently in order to bring this final chapter to life. The familiar units and sights of the universe are there, but they are imprisoned, forced to play within a set of rules unbefitting to them. I don’t doubt that expansions and updates down the road will help bring the game closer to what longtime fans expected, but I do believe it will be too late.

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Things We Liked: The new Crawler system and the music during the NOD campaign. That’s it.

Things We Disliked: The unit-focused gameplay just does not fit with C&C. The player leveling system is the absolute worst. The campaigns are the only things I would have liked to see evolve since the original, yet they are they only things that don’t. The elements borrowed to make C&C4 are better left where they came from.

Target Audience: Really, only die-hard C&C fans who want to see how the series ends.

(Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight – Developer: EA Los Angeles. Publisher: Electronic Arts. Available on PC. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. New to CFD!’s reviews? Read our explanation here.)