Command & Conquer (PC)

If you only took a quick look at the first Command & Conquer game, it would be easy to think this seminal real-time strategy game was grounded in reality. The battles between armies that feature soldiers, humvees, and tanks take place in real world countries and can look like standard military fare at a glance, but spend a little longer watching and you’ll notice vehicles with mandibles like stag beetles scooping up green crystals, motorbikes that fire anti-air rockets, and occasionally corny cutscenes that give the game a much stronger identity and personality. With the creative touches added over top the familiar elements of war, it becomes much easier to see why Command & Conquer would go on to be one of the largest names in a genre it helped establish.

The original Command & Conquer goes by a few names. Sometimes referred to as Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn to differentiate itself from the series as a whole and occasionally going by Command & Conquer: Gold or Command & Conquer Special Gold Edition for the port to Windows PCs that we’ll be covering here, this strategy game does focus on military activities but allows you to pick either side of the game’s central conflict. Set on an alternate version of our planet, a mysterious crystalline substance known as Tiberium disrupts the global balance of power after a meteor brings it to Earth. A supposedly ancient group known as the Brotherhood of Nod outpace the rest of the world in developing military tech with it and quickly use that advantage to cultivate their cult-like faction, elevating third world countries and allying with some large but controversial world powers in a bid for complete dominance. The other countries of the world establish the Global Defense Initiative through the United Nations to combat this rising threat, the GDI clearly meant to be the main story thanks to its greater prevalence of story developments and it having 15 campaign missions to Nod’s 13. Notably though, there is no illusion about who the good guys and bad guys are, the Brotherhood including attacking innocent civilian villages as mission objectives so their claims of trying to elevate the impoverished through a sort of forced peace under one ruler rings deliberately hollow.

Both of the campaigns focus on the faction of choice making pushes against the control of the opposition, GDI trying to retake Europe and Nod focusing its efforts in Africa. While there are a set amount of missions before the story will end, the path to conquering a continent can take a few different routes based on choices made between missions. Sometimes this takes the form of choosing the specific route you’ll be entering a country through, the objective likely to be the same but the exact map layout for the skirmish shifting based on the chosen approach. Other times you can enter an entirely different country and receive different mission objectives to match, although these won’t impact the course of the plot’s events and both campaigns even make sure to include devoted segments to explaining some world history and elements of Tiberium just in case you play their story first. Not every cutscene seems constructed to be purely informative though, Command & Conquer utilizing some amateur actors including members of the development team for roles as important as the Brotherhood’s cruel but charismatic leader Kane, but there does seem to be a good sense for letting the less capable performers be deliberately corny rather than having any serious story-telling undermined by those weaker actors. The broader conflict is still a war with broader stakes, but sometimes you’ll see a scene flip channels between a few odd shows or an expert analyst will be a bit of a caricature, the doses of entertainment beside the relevant military orders and intel making these scenes something you’ll find yourself looking forward to.

In an actual battle during Command & Conquer’s campaign, the enemy will have already established a pretty strong foundation, the computer-controlled opponent playing more of a defensive role in each mission. While they’ll have plenty of units deployed and structures built, they can create more if the situation demands it but often have limited aggression so that the player can set up their own forces and make most of the strategic decisions on how conflict unfolds. When you first begin a level though, most of the map will be entirely black, this “fog of war” requiring you to send units out into it to discover the terrain and locate where important enemy bases lie. Many story objectives focus on wiping out the entirety of the opposition’s forces, this sometimes leading to moments where you have to scour the entire map to locate stragglers but usually it is clearly meant to ensure you aren’t just bumbling your way into a victory as you must completely route the fairly capable AI. Once the opposition is aware of you they will start sending out probing forces and they often start off with a resource advantage that makes it easier for them to crank out reinforcements if you try to pressure them before you’ve really built up a sturdy force yourself. There are some missions though where the objective focuses instead on trying to retrieve a certain item or character, these sometimes allowing for quick completions where you don’t need to think too hard to succeed because of the limited objective scope. It would be nice to find a middle ground between completely wiping out enemy forces and having specific goals, but the rare easier mission certainly doesn’t diminish Command & Conquer’s high level of challenge derived from an incredible focus on smart orders and unit generation.

While some missions will provide you with every soldier and vehicle you can use for that level (this being one of the more effective deviations from the typical “kill them all” mission format), most begin with you finding or establishing your one and only base. Once it is up and running, you need to start focusing on harvesting Tiberium that will pay for building vital structures and training units. You’ll need something like a barracks for the GDI to create soldiers while the Brotherhood of Nod must construct an airstrip to fly in vehicles, there being a range of structures and unit types that grow in number the deeper you get into the campaigns. Oftentimes a battle can swing based on the condition of the base, both armies needing to ensure their own structures are safe while balancing time spent on offensive measures. Lose your construction yard for example and you literally can’t add any more structures to your base. If you build yourself a repair bay, you can conceivably keep vehicles repaired rather than needing to frequently replace them. Cost analysis one which sacrifices to make is key to victory, especially with the Tiberium harvesters being slow and expensive besides the one you get for free when a refinery is established.

All units take some time to manufacture, so while you can have a Minigunner out almost as quickly as you can pay for them, others can take considerable time to produce. A nice touch allows you to overspend a bit, the structure or unit not produced if you can’t afford them but they will be manufactured up to a point so they can be finished up once some Tiberium comes in to wrap up the work. Unfortunately you can’t queue up multiple units of one type to be produced in a row, but there are some other smart elements in place to help you control your increasingly large army. While the mouse already allows for the player to highlight multiple troops quickly by dragging and expanding a rectangle over them, you can also designate specific groupings with a few key presses, able to make multi-faceted squads that can be better micromanaged. Troops usually have a good sense for the right path to a destination or target as well, but you can expect heavy casualties no matter your strategy and being able to ensure you aren’t just charging in everyone at once makes more advanced strategies viable. For example, the Engineer unit is useless in battle, but escort it properly into enemy territory and they can take over enemy buildings, not only taking a resource from the opposition but sometimes allowing you to utilize new troop types since GDI and NOD both have exclusive structures and units to set them apart.

Most missions in Command & Conquer will definitely require thought and experimentation to succeed, the player thankfully having a generous save system on hand to ensure they can gradually learn the mission and what dangers to expect. You can save anytime and make multiple files, this not only useful for giving you some room to test out strategies but also a way to make some mild randomness easier to swallow. Units aren’t 100% accurate, so sometimes you might have a situation like a pack of grenadiers all hurling explosives at a flamethrower-wielding soldier only for every explosive to miss and your squad quickly goes up in flames. Usually though there is a good deal of counter-play that can ensure you won’t have to take potentially disastrous gambles. The Brotherhood of Nod has an incredibly powerful laser obelisk that can zap even tanks to dust in a flash, but the GDI’s Orca aircraft can fire on them without being detected by it. Nod might want to build SAM sites that can easily blast down an Orca if it hangs around too long, but these are in turn unable to defend against ground troops. There is definitely a web of unit relationships to consider when you’re building up your army for the next assault, but also it seems in many situations,  if you can afford it, a pack of tanks can tear through enemy forces fairly well with just a little support from something that can handle the all-to-weak tank counters like the soldiers wielding rocket launchers.

The occasional bit of imbalance certainly won’t turn Command & Conquer into a cakewalk. Once you’re out of the introductory missions, there are definitely levels that can take hours to figure out as you poke and prod at the entrenched enemy to find out what they’re working with and the best means for approaching their bases. An unusually funky and varied soundtrack does help the time go by quickly while lending some energy even to quieter moments of merely building up your forces, but the ability to adjust the game’s speed also help to cut down on the time you might spend on a single level. You can slow things down a lot if you need to handle many troops quickly in a given scenario or, if you’re basically just sweeping up, you can bump up the speed so you can more easily survey the land and find the stragglers. On the other hand though, if your game speed is set a bit too high, the AI opposition can become far more bold, likely because they’re actively recalculating their plans and since you’re not keeping up with their new speed boost, they can more easily identify vulnerabilities and quickly overrun you. It feels less like punishment for trying to abuse conveniences and more about knowing when to utilize such options, and even if you do become comfortable with multiple saves and game speed adjustments, multiplayer matches can remove that assistance to make it more about effective tactics. You have to live with bad judgment calls and some misfortune in battles against a human player, but the fact both sides can choose when to be aggressive also means there’s a different feel since it’s not like single-player where you’re working up to close the power gap rather than starting on even footing.

Admittedly, some of those missions that take a long time to figure out can be quite draining, the time sink rather immense and potentially even requiring a reset if you’re not smart where you make your save files. At the same time, it’s likely going to be a matter of forward progress as you learn the layout of a single-player level and which strategies actually afford you advantages. Save for the stages you can cheese a bit by charging in towards the objective, when you do finish a level you will definitely feel that success was well-earned and not at all a fluke of fortune. It’s not without some occasional fumbles, the harvesters often collect Tiberium in strange patterns rather than going for the nearest sources, footsoldiers sometimes run right through Tiberium fields if you don’t actively manage them and the mineral is poisonous to them, and some missions don’t introduce their objectives well and in the case of the mission select screen you won’t even know the differences between stages unless you start them. Learn the little quirks and figure out how to work around them though, and you likely will find most situations feel like they appropriately value tactics over chance and victories are worth pursuing because you know your hard work is valued in achieving them.

THE VERDICT: A surprisingly catchy soundtrack and some creative fictitious twists to military conflicts make Command & Conquer into a war game with character on top of complexity. Missions can take a considerable amount of time to figure out with the right barriers in place to avoid the process from becoming tedious, so while the occasional bit of randomness or the rare easy objective do mean it’s not always consistent, you still get a lot more time spent with engaging experimentation and strategy formation. The different units allow for a variety of scenarios that can feel wildly different just because of the placement of structures and environmental barriers, Command & Conquer sure to provide some strong tactical tests for players looking to get absorbed in a strategy game.

And so, I give Command & Conquer for PC…

A GOOD rating. Command & Conquer is the type of game where even the sound effects become unforgettable as attempt after attempt to take down the enemy forces cements all of the aesthetic touches into your memory, but it’s not because you’re ramming yourself against a wall. There are clear strategies to pursue, multiple approaches to attempt, and yet you’re not expected to heavily micromanage your forces much of the time and thus you can make your own way through a good deal of the levels. As mentioned previously, some missions can fold a little too easily if you notice their objectives aren’t restricting you enough to playing intelligently, but it feels like the easy solution to this issue would be to tack on more than one goal to those levels while also potentially reducing the scope of other stages that focus a bit too much on wiping out the heavily scattered enemy forces even after the point you’ve clearly achieved victory by wiping out a base. It is nice the game gets a bit experimental, levels where you have all the units you’re allowed to use provided from the start having a different feel to them since losses are harder to weather, and across the campaign missions and their variations you are doled out new ideas and units often enough that it doesn’t feel like you’re being thrown into overly similar scenarios. Tanks probably do need a less costly or vulnerable counter, an addition like anti-tank mines could limit the tank squad rollout strat that can avail you quite well, but at the same time that tank surge often must be built off earlier preparations and isn’t risk-free if you misjudge what the enemy has up their sleeves.

Overall though, Command & Conquer has a lot of important ideas in place to help you manage your troops and utilize them in varied ways while also supplying situations that will test both your long-term planning and short-term management. Command & Conquer Remastered would tidy up some elements like letting you queue up unit production, but as the first entry in the series, Command & Conquer 1 does a lot right out of the gate not only in honing a smart balance in the then-young RTS genre but giving itself some personality and appeal over top the shape of the action. This is partly because Command & Conquer comes after developer Westwood Studios helped lay down the groundwork for much of what is expected from the genre in Dune II. That mix of experience and forging a new path ahead makes Command & Conquer something that is enjoyable to return to today provided you’re ready to have your tactical mind tested against a game that isn’t afraid to throw you in the fire knowing that you’ll relish the cool air once you’ve clawed your way to victory.