The Vault Dweller
always looking for water.
First let me remind you of a few things...I'm been playing games for half of my life and mostly on PC. I play games of all genres, but I strongly prefer worthwhile ones. You've known me as a consistent and informed poster on these forums for years now and I'm hoping you'll all keep this in mind so I can get my point across before you all try to hang me.
Command and Conquer Renegade is the best multiplayer I've ever experienced by far in a FPS. There I said it. Here's why I think it's great and also an offering of agreement on why it's ok to think it's otherwise a terrible game:
First let me tell you I've seen too many great series either die or force fans to deal with occasional bad sequals to changes in game design to appeal to the masses. In this case taking a RTS series and making a spin-off FPS. I like all of you would never support such an idea and wouldn't buy any game in order to avoid giving support to any company that would try this. However I didn't buy Renegade...it came with the "C&C The First Decade" pack which I bought since I missed out on some of their old RTS games. I decided to play it just to see if it was as bad as it supposedly was.
The single player is a mixed bag. One the one hand it is pretty badly designed and generic. However it is very fun to see alot of stuff in the C&C universe from first person. The story telling is...dependent on personal opinion. Taken by itself it's atrocious...however taken into account the nature of the FMV's from C&C Tiberian Dawn I get the impression the storytelling was meant to be campy and somewhat off-serious which in my opinion makes it very good.
Really what I want to talk about is the multiplayer. It is very different in a way that is simple enough for a newb to understand yet complicated enough to take a long time to master.
It all revolves around the fact that completely unlike any FPS your goal isn't to score points with kills or flag captures. Your goal is to destroy the enemy base while also preserving your own. I know sounds simple doesn't it? Actually it's very, very deep.
You see every building you destroy not only brings you closer to winning the game...it also creates hardships for the opposing team due to the fact that the structures themselves provide certain things. Like this;
-Refinery: Gives you money through the processing of Tiberium (a tiny amount of credits every second). Also serves as a drop-off for the harvester (which brings in 300 credits a load for each player).
-War Factory/Airstrip: Allows players to order vehicles. Also replaces harvester for free if it's destroyed. (You need both a harvester and a refinery to gather tiberium so you need both the refinery and wf/air.)
-Barracks/Hand of Nod: Allows players to upgrade from the free infantry they start as to more powerful forms. Like this "light infantry<medium infantry<heavy infantry<hero".
-Power Plant: By itself it does nothing, but if destroyed any base defenses stop operating (if they need power) and all other buildings operate at half-efficiency. This means that all things bought cost double and also the refinery only produces half the credits.
-Obelisk/Advanced Guard Tower: Shoots quickly and powerfully without missing. Allows you to defend with less players.
-Guard Tower/Turret: Weak base defense. Uses no power.
-Repair Pad: Repairs vehicles without player assistance.
Now your all wondering just what matters with credits and stuff to buy. You see as long as you control a refinery you gain a small amount of credits constantly as well as a large amount on occasion if your harvester survives. As well you also gain large to small amounts of credits for damaging/killing enemies. You use these credits to buy vehicles or infantry allowing you to gain such advantage that you can go from fighting for control of the field (area between bases where tiberium is harvested) to fighting to destroy a base. This can get very complicated. One example:
-
My team has alot more experienced players and we manage to gain control of the field in the first few minutes. With our harvester gathering tiberium safely and theirs getting destroyed we earn about 1/4 mroe credits. When they buy some decent vehicles and medium infantry we then buy heavy vehicles and heavy infantry. We then keep the field and take the fight to their base. Our vehicles attack their structures so they have infantry become technicians and engineers to repair them and types of infantry to kill vehicles. We counter by having infantry such as techs and engineers to repair the vehicles and snipers to kill their anti-vehicle infantry. While all this is going on however our team is scoring more since were attacking expensive structures and their is making less. Eventually we replace all we lose, but they are forced to replace their infantry with weaker types (mostly light). Then things get more interesting.
With them so weak we only need a few vehicles and hitting them to keep them occupied. The rest of us either get heros and break into the structure and plant explosives on the main control terminal (takes double damage from attacks) or kill the techs/engineers who are repairing it to get the structure destroyed or we buy heros and one of us gets a targeting beacon instead. The person with the beacon is escorted by the heros/vehicles and plants the beacon near a structure. If we defend it for 30 seconds (techs and engineers can disarm them) the beacon targets a nuke or ion cannon (if your Nod or GDI respectively) and kills the building with one attack even if from the outside.
-
Games can get very complicated depending on whether the teams are coordinated and how they play. Sometimes they all get vehicles and try to stomp you out. Sometimes they get a squad of heros and try to infiltrate your base and break into a building. Usually both of these with one group distracting while the other actually succeeds works.
Also the maps can be very fun. Some servers have the simple company made maps and others have the unique player modded maps which often take place in very interesting and canon appropriate environments. Also while the Nod attack cycle was removed due to Nod having one more vehicle and having a vehicle that was early game anti-vehicle than GDI modders added it back in then compensated by giving GDI a humvee with a missile launcher. Although GDI didn't have that in Tiberium Dawn it makes the vehicles even and gives both teams early game anti-vehicle vehicles just like how they have early game anti-infantry vehicles with the GDI humvee and Nod buggy.
I doubt you can find the game for sale since it's so old (from 2001 I think), but I'm certain some of you bought the recent C&C collection and probably have Renegade, but never bothered with it.
I hope you respect my opinion and try to consider what I said or even try the multi-player before you bash me.
Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
*EDIT*
I can give alot of interesting gameplay scenarios if anyone asks, but I won't write them until then since it seems I've already written way too much.
Command and Conquer Renegade is the best multiplayer I've ever experienced by far in a FPS. There I said it. Here's why I think it's great and also an offering of agreement on why it's ok to think it's otherwise a terrible game:
First let me tell you I've seen too many great series either die or force fans to deal with occasional bad sequals to changes in game design to appeal to the masses. In this case taking a RTS series and making a spin-off FPS. I like all of you would never support such an idea and wouldn't buy any game in order to avoid giving support to any company that would try this. However I didn't buy Renegade...it came with the "C&C The First Decade" pack which I bought since I missed out on some of their old RTS games. I decided to play it just to see if it was as bad as it supposedly was.
The single player is a mixed bag. One the one hand it is pretty badly designed and generic. However it is very fun to see alot of stuff in the C&C universe from first person. The story telling is...dependent on personal opinion. Taken by itself it's atrocious...however taken into account the nature of the FMV's from C&C Tiberian Dawn I get the impression the storytelling was meant to be campy and somewhat off-serious which in my opinion makes it very good.
Really what I want to talk about is the multiplayer. It is very different in a way that is simple enough for a newb to understand yet complicated enough to take a long time to master.
It all revolves around the fact that completely unlike any FPS your goal isn't to score points with kills or flag captures. Your goal is to destroy the enemy base while also preserving your own. I know sounds simple doesn't it? Actually it's very, very deep.
You see every building you destroy not only brings you closer to winning the game...it also creates hardships for the opposing team due to the fact that the structures themselves provide certain things. Like this;
-Refinery: Gives you money through the processing of Tiberium (a tiny amount of credits every second). Also serves as a drop-off for the harvester (which brings in 300 credits a load for each player).
-War Factory/Airstrip: Allows players to order vehicles. Also replaces harvester for free if it's destroyed. (You need both a harvester and a refinery to gather tiberium so you need both the refinery and wf/air.)
-Barracks/Hand of Nod: Allows players to upgrade from the free infantry they start as to more powerful forms. Like this "light infantry<medium infantry<heavy infantry<hero".
-Power Plant: By itself it does nothing, but if destroyed any base defenses stop operating (if they need power) and all other buildings operate at half-efficiency. This means that all things bought cost double and also the refinery only produces half the credits.
-Obelisk/Advanced Guard Tower: Shoots quickly and powerfully without missing. Allows you to defend with less players.
-Guard Tower/Turret: Weak base defense. Uses no power.
-Repair Pad: Repairs vehicles without player assistance.
Now your all wondering just what matters with credits and stuff to buy. You see as long as you control a refinery you gain a small amount of credits constantly as well as a large amount on occasion if your harvester survives. As well you also gain large to small amounts of credits for damaging/killing enemies. You use these credits to buy vehicles or infantry allowing you to gain such advantage that you can go from fighting for control of the field (area between bases where tiberium is harvested) to fighting to destroy a base. This can get very complicated. One example:
-
My team has alot more experienced players and we manage to gain control of the field in the first few minutes. With our harvester gathering tiberium safely and theirs getting destroyed we earn about 1/4 mroe credits. When they buy some decent vehicles and medium infantry we then buy heavy vehicles and heavy infantry. We then keep the field and take the fight to their base. Our vehicles attack their structures so they have infantry become technicians and engineers to repair them and types of infantry to kill vehicles. We counter by having infantry such as techs and engineers to repair the vehicles and snipers to kill their anti-vehicle infantry. While all this is going on however our team is scoring more since were attacking expensive structures and their is making less. Eventually we replace all we lose, but they are forced to replace their infantry with weaker types (mostly light). Then things get more interesting.
With them so weak we only need a few vehicles and hitting them to keep them occupied. The rest of us either get heros and break into the structure and plant explosives on the main control terminal (takes double damage from attacks) or kill the techs/engineers who are repairing it to get the structure destroyed or we buy heros and one of us gets a targeting beacon instead. The person with the beacon is escorted by the heros/vehicles and plants the beacon near a structure. If we defend it for 30 seconds (techs and engineers can disarm them) the beacon targets a nuke or ion cannon (if your Nod or GDI respectively) and kills the building with one attack even if from the outside.
-
Games can get very complicated depending on whether the teams are coordinated and how they play. Sometimes they all get vehicles and try to stomp you out. Sometimes they get a squad of heros and try to infiltrate your base and break into a building. Usually both of these with one group distracting while the other actually succeeds works.
Also the maps can be very fun. Some servers have the simple company made maps and others have the unique player modded maps which often take place in very interesting and canon appropriate environments. Also while the Nod attack cycle was removed due to Nod having one more vehicle and having a vehicle that was early game anti-vehicle than GDI modders added it back in then compensated by giving GDI a humvee with a missile launcher. Although GDI didn't have that in Tiberium Dawn it makes the vehicles even and gives both teams early game anti-vehicle vehicles just like how they have early game anti-infantry vehicles with the GDI humvee and Nod buggy.
I doubt you can find the game for sale since it's so old (from 2001 I think), but I'm certain some of you bought the recent C&C collection and probably have Renegade, but never bothered with it.
I hope you respect my opinion and try to consider what I said or even try the multi-player before you bash me.
Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
*EDIT*
I can give alot of interesting gameplay scenarios if anyone asks, but I won't write them until then since it seems I've already written way too much.
