Supreme Commander vs C&C - PART 1

I thought of writing my thoughts about these 2 franchises because of the huge ongoing debate about whether EA has ruined the C&C franchise. The reason i chose to compare this with supcom is because it is one of the games that i have played that roughly matches the tech levels, base building and resource gathering of C&C series.

Way back in early and mid 90s i got into RTSs through westwoo0'ds dune and later got hooked to tiberium dawn and RA titles. Surprisingly i never played or heard about star craft or TA until i got access to internet which was a good 10 years later :(. The early RA and tib dawn games had a special attractiveness to them that i still adore. The units, the voice acting and especially the mission design was so unique and fun. The campaigns used to be quite difficult and long. Also almost all the games had a wide variety of missions which i thoroughly enjoyed. Even now i play RA2 from time to time through the first decade.

Then i was introduced to more eye candy games such as tib sun and ra2. Both games were quite good and fun. I have played the tib sun campaign almost 2 times over and the RA2 campaign countless times.Tib sun was probably due to the lack of other games i played during that time and also a good deal because of my likeness to the tiberium universe. But for RA2, Its mostly for fun and game design. Playing RA2/Yuri's revenge would always put a big smile on my face.

Then came C&C generals and C&C3. Generals is one of those games that people love or hate. Most people shun it as a black sheep in the C&C franchise. But for me it is C&C in its heart and soul. True, it does not have the humor of RA or the dark sci fi universe of Tiberium, but in terms of game play its all C&C. I am yet to play a game that really gives the player a true feeling about the power of weapons they are using. The nuke strike, the carpet bombings, the scud storms , the MOABs to gunships ripping apart tanks all feel quite satisfactory and bad-ass. True, the game could have been better, but still its one of those games that i still play. Also it has a very strong modding community. Its quite ironic that ZH has more mod teams than C&C 3. Some of the mods (Shockwave, ROTR, VGO and Contra to name a few) are simply brilliant and totally badass.

Then came C&C3. I was very excited. I can still remember following up its release and counting fingers till the release date came. The demo was exciting and i played through the GDI campaign in a breeze. Then me and my friends got together and had all day LAN parties to roll out the GDI war machine against Nod and Scrin. I have even played all the the campaigns twice or so. At the time i enjoyed it alot.

Then came the RA3 announcement. I was excited again. It was obvious by this time that EA was cranking out C&C titles on an yearly basis and milking the franchise. RA3 campaign was good but not great For the first time i was a bit disappointed about C&C. I played through all the campaigns played a few lan games and then, it was uninstalled. All while i was playing more ZH than any other RTS. By the time the uprising announcement came, i was not interested. The gameplay was feeling shallow and the mission designs were repetitive or perhaps lacked the depth and imagination of the old titles. RA3's dissapointed only resulted in me playing more ZH and other games. Something somewhere has terribly gone wrong and most people point the finger at EA and the disbanding of Westwood studios. However, we must not forget that Westwood guys later formed Petroglyph studios and came up with some RTS titles that were crappy. I feel C&C nowadays have lost the strategic depth, coolness and more importantly innovativeness. I do not expect C&C titles to be genre changing anymore, its too difficult nowadays but there could have been small improvements, better unit design and balancing all within the characteristics of the C&C universe if developers hav payed more attention and time.

At this point i am supposed to write about supcom and how i came to compare it with C&C. But after all the typing i feel tired and sleepy. I will write the second part later.