Command & Conquer Multiplayer Preview Page 2

16 Nov 2009 at 17:00:18 by Tim McDonald

Our team was entirely comprised of the Offence class, one of the three C&C4 Crawlers that dictates which units and abilities you have. Offence is all about brute firepower, with plenty of tough armoured units that complement each other nicely. Building a varied group of units (the game's fast pace combined with a lack of knowledge as to what each unit did meant that I couldn't really sort through them to work out the best units for each firefight), I charged into the fray.

Despite the fast pace, there's plenty of scope for tactics. Individual units are hard to kill, giving you plenty of time to micromanage your own forces, or request help. You'll certainly lose some in a well-planned ambush – and it's more than likely that a force composed specifically to destroy yours will succeed – but you don't need to worry that all of your units will be dead before you can fight back.

Despite my lack of experience, it was also clear the specific units could be ludicrously effective. As the Offence class, we had gigantic Mammoth Tanks at our disposal. The rest of my team teched up to these quickly, and there's no doubt that they're useful - with a variety of high-powered weapons and huge armour layers, in addition to “reflective armour” that sends some incoming fire back at the enemy - but I'm all about the Sandstorms.

Sandstorms are hovercraft with gigantic missile launchers on them. They can be swapped between faster-firing single target missiles, and slower missiles that do area-of-effect damage. Putting eight of them onto area-of-effect mode and strolling them up to a pitched battle to bombard an enemy force usually results in a quick explosive death for whatever targets are chosen.

The Defence class is an entirely different beast, focusing almost solely on infantry. Vehicles are a thing of the past here, with a variety of different Zone Troopers for each occasion. Some are anti-infantry, some are anti-air, others are anti-vehicle, and others still are anti-building. These are the mainstay of the Defence class right the way through, with the higher-end units adept in more specific roles, acting as huge artillery emplacements or gigantic fire-sponges.

Top of my list here were units that, uh, weren't actually much use against the massed Nod hordes. Specifically, Zone Captains, who have the best attack in the world: they call down pin-point Ion Cannon strikes on their targets. This does considerably less damage than you'd expect to most units, but I don't care, because it's a unit that calls down Ion Cannon strikes as a basic attack. Ahem.

I took away a few things from my short time with C&C4's multiplayer. First, it's chaotic as all hell: if you're not communicating with your team (if, say, you're trying to work out how to play) then paying attention to what's going on around the map and responding to hotspots is doable, but tricky. Secondly, it's varied: three different classes, each with a different emphasis, mean that there are plenty of different options and that teamwork is required to be truly effective. If you want to field air units, for instance, someone's going to have to play as a Support class. If balanced correctly, this could make multiplayer matches very, very interesting.

Thirdly, it's a hell of a lot of fun, and that's quite important in any game.

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