Command & Conquer 4 Hands-On Preview [PC]

02 Sep 2009 at 16:30:09 by Tim McDonald

You've read our previous preview of Command & Conquer 4, I presume. It's about a billion words long, but I'm hoping you've read it – not just because I modestly reckon it's a half-decent summary of what we know about the game so far, but because it's very relevant to this.

The last part of that particular preview detailed a mission shown off to us, with the commander – in that case EA's own Jim Vessella – trying to defend, repair, and ultimately relaunch the GDI's crashed Global Stratospheric Transport, a gigantic flying base that holds all of the important friendlies in the game. EA gave me an opportunity to play that very mission, but retouched and far closer to the one GDI players can expect to bump into part-way through the campaign.

The desert-like environment from our previous preview was replaced with something far darker and more foreboding, and things weren't going to be quite so simple as capturing one point and then holing up by the freighter, judging by the immediately noticeable presence of mutants. Little amorphous blob creatures that looked a hell of a lot like Visceroids wandered in and out of my map view, and Nod were aware of my presence (unsurprising, considering they'd shot down my bloody transport ship in the first place.) Things were looking grave.

The first thing to do, clearly, was to drop an Assault Crawler right next to the wrecked ship and take stock of the situation. I'm in the middle of a hostile-looking map, evil little Tiberium creatures keep wandering in and out of view, there are a series of crashed escape pods around that need investigating before I do anything else, and I've got 50 command points but no credits, judging by there being no credit meter on the interface. Fortunately, I can build everything I need.

Which took me by surprise, initially. There have been plenty of rumblings that credits might not make much of an appearance in the game, and I'm still not wholly sure whether or not they'll crop in some form as there are still the odd mentions here and there, but the opportunity to see how a mission functions without them was fascinating.

The lack of credits and the addition of command points means two things. Firstly, time is far and away your most important commodity, and the balance between building up a force and teching up is no longer affected by the amount of credits you have. Secondly, a balanced force is essential. The days of building a horde of your most powerful units and charging straight into the enemy base are potentially over. For one, bases – now single units, called Crawlers - respawn; for two, a horde of your most powerful units may be a tad weak to one or two types of enemy unit, and will also not be particularly horde-like because powerful units cost a lot of command points.

So: back to those escape pods. They were scattered around the map, and each was defended by those dastardly mutants, who clearly needed some good old-fashioned firepower to the face. Within a few minutes I'd built up a little force of mixed units with machine guns, cannons, and lasers a plenty, and had toddled them off in the general direction of the nearest escape pod that was pinging away on my minimap. Said escape pod was defended by a couple of those blob-like Visceroids as well as a big robot called a Mutant Gorilla, which resembled the exosuit Ripley wears at the end of Aliens. (As an aside, the name made more sense when I realised that “mutant” probably referred to the faction, and “gorilla” was a nickname based on the loping movements and swinging arms of the robot. Look, it was a long day.)

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