Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight marks the end of the long running series but comes with a lot of new changes and improved features that heavily borrow off ultimately better and stronger titles.

However, C&C4 does bring a new and interesting story to the series in a style that none have previously done, as well as brilliant visual detail and a clean and slick menu system to the RTS genre. This isn’t the game C&C may gamers will have become familiar with; it has evolved into a better C&C game but a worse RTS title. 

Tiberian Twilight follows Relic’s entry into the RTS genre, mostly Company of Heroes mixed in with some Dawn of War 2, allowing you to choose what sort of class you want your ‘hero’ to be. Just replace hero with MCV (Mobile Construction Vehicle) or as the game now calls them, ‘Crawlers’.

You can choose Assault, Defence or Support, which depending on which class you chose, allows you to create units in that category.

Assault has Tanks, Defence has troops (as well as defence towers), and Support has planes (and special abilities). Each of these has a limit on the amount of use - you can only have a certain number of units on the battle, with bigger and better troops/vehicles costing more points. This also applies to defensive buildings. From a multiplayer perspective this works well as it stops players spamming or rushing their enemies’ base, but from the single player it just is frustrating to face all the enemies on the screen that can quickly overwhelm you because of your limited number of troops.

What I worked is that you can easily set your Crawler next to the enemies’ Crawler and spam as many troops as you can, as there really isn’t any cost to you for doing this. This will then destroy their crawler and you can just rinse and repeat.

The games graphics have vastly improved, and somewhat remind me of the look of Tiberian Sun, with great character/vehicle models, although unlike Company of Heroes you can’t zoom in to see the detail, the game presents a bigger scope with bigger units more akin to epic titles like Supreme Commander. This often makes them feel too big however, which ends up making you feel like you need to zoom out a bit to get a better look at them and all of your units.

However there are excellent visual effects upon building/vehicles/the ground exploding and a smooth clear frame rate as well as excellent visual and audio cues telling you what needs to be done and where with the use of a slick and clean and almost minimalist look to all the menus including the in-game and play menus.

The start menu it’s probably like nothing I’ve seen before. As soon as you login through the game you’re immediately also within a gaming lobby allowing you to speak to other players and instantly join them in an multiplayer match. It’s also slick and easy to use, maybe not from the first use as it’s something completely new.

What is left here isn’t the ultimate end of the series, instead it leaves a few things open, probably for that expansion pack 6 months down the road. Sure the game ends and it leaves you with a canonical ending, a massive departure for the series - it just feels a lot of things truly were left unanswered. From Kane’s appearance in C&C Red Alert, to how he has actually lived for so long and why he can’t die.

The production values have greatly increased. The story sees the largest effect from this. It’s a heck of a lot stronger and different than the previous C&C titles. This is probably down to the story being far shorter than any of the previous and all that money for the production hasn’t been wasted on “big” actors.

The live action scenes have now probably reached B-movie class with good set design, brilliant lighting and some pretty good acting from all the cast, especially Joe Kucan (playing Kane).

The game presents a whole new look and feel to the C&C series, which makes the game feel more like a reboot than an end to a favourite series of mine. It’s a little disappointing at this point as I feel the developers need to be asked a question; Why change the series now, on the final game in the series?

The gameplay of the previous titles worked fine for a single player experience, so why now end the title on a gameplay system that limits the player, by splitting elements into different classes. I know this system now simplifies things for the general/new audience that may have never played C&C until now, but this is not a new game that needs a simple mechanic, it’s a 15 year old PC gaming staple.

However I must say for anyone who likes RTS’ in general, I seriously recommend this title has it has a good strong, engaging story as well as solid gameplay that holds up strong against any other RTS title.

For the C&C fans out there, I would still recommend this title as it has everything C&C fans want - just disappointing gameplay from their perspective.

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Reviewed By: Darren Arquette