Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars Review

With one Real-Time Strategy title on Xbox 360 already under their belt, and competition coming early 2008 in the form of SEGA's Universe at War, Electronic Arts remains keen to push the genre onto the console. Already a success for the publisher on PC, Command & Conquer 3 finally arrives on the next-gen console hoping to continue adapting the genre to suit the gamepad gamer.

Joining the mythology of the Command & Conquer Tiberium franchise in the third instalment is like delving into the later series of a long-running TV show, but the main highlights are that it features a quasi-fascist religious order led by a bald goatee-wearing leader called Kane, a pseudo-utopian World Order, and a potent parasitic green crystal called Tiberium...

Attempts at bringing the RTS genre to consoles in the past have always failed, due to low-definition graphics and muddy control systems. In an age of next-gen high-definition visuals one of the stumbling blocks has been removed, but what about the other? EA's first RTS title on Xbox 360, 2006's Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth II, was a decent attempt though path-finding issues and a clunky interface meant that it was hardly a classic. Speaking to TVG earlier in the year, C&C3 Xbox 360 producer (and Battle for Middle-Earth II Xbox 360) Raj Joshi admitted that the strategy of burying some of the functionality of the control systems to suit the restrictive number of buttons wasn't the best idea - so the control system has been further refined in Tiberium Wars.

Quick and intuitive access to additional units and resource management functions are important to any RTS title, but is magnified ever more on a console because of the use of a gamepad. In developing C&C3, EALA has streamlined unit selection with vertical and horizontal navigation, and single-button contextual actions combining with the Xbox 360's triggers to offer a solid and fairly intuitive system. A 'sticky' cursor also helps matters, however the system never feels like it could ever be a real replacement for RTS control with a keyboard and mouse - a shame that Microsoft refuses to offer gameplay support for those with USB PC peripherals...

The weakness of PC gaming is its continued and relentless desire for increased power and resources; gigabytes of RAM and the top of the line GPUs cut out a lot of the potential audience that want to play the newest games with the graphical setting up to 'High' - which is where the strength of consoles step in. But regardless of the fact that Xbox 360 is one of the 'next-gen' machines, the visuals aren't up to the crisp and detailed graphics enjoyed on the PC. Even on High-Def screens, C&C3 looks slightly blurred around the edges, though it's a massive improvement over playing the PC version on Low visual settings. Because of its icon and text driven interface, playing C&C3 on a Standard Definition TV may have its issues (unless you're playing on some of the larger sets), but at least it's still playable - which is more than can be said about the likes of Capcom's Dead Rising.

An attempt at expanding the potential audience, EA has also padded out the multiplayer experience in the Xbox 360 version of Tiberium Wars with a small selection of exclusive gametypes usually found in FPS games. But whilst the likes of Capture the Flag and Siege throw in a level of depth to the experience, the main crux of online gameplay remains with a head-to-head versus mode. All of the Xbox Live gametypes offer support for the oft forgotten Xbox Live Vision Camera, where players can see their opponents in a small Picture-in-Picture screen in the corner of the TV. A nice detail that's more about bragging/flaming rights than an in-depth addition to the gameplay, perhaps it's an option for developers to make use of the peripheral.