Command & Conquer: Where To Start?

When I was younger I enjoyed StarCraft and a few other RTS games, but I completely missed the Command & Conquer series. I'm curious as to what the best way to experience the series nowadays is. The Remastered Collection? The Ultimate Collection? OpenRA? What do you feel is the best way to play now? What's the best entry in the series?

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I haven’t played Remasters, but heard they are good. Ultimate collection was fine. Open RA is like taking C&C games and making them more like SC or AoE, so pretty different experience.

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I would recommend the Remasters. They look great, the core gameplay is pretty much unchanged and they have a number of UI upgrades and conveniences whose lack would annoy you if you went back to play the originals.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >a number of UI upgrades and conveniences whose lack would annoy you if you went back to play the originals
      And you can turn them off anyway and play the games as they were, graphics included, so it's a win-win.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        I would recommend the Remasters. They look great, the core gameplay is pretty much unchanged and they have a number of UI upgrades and conveniences whose lack would annoy you if you went back to play the originals.

        20GB of bloat just to play a smoothed out version of the old games is somewhat silly

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >he cares about a game's size

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          is the price of being faithful, big hd spritework is heavy

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Tib Dawn and Red Alert 1 are played fairly straight and come off as serious. After that the franchise gets more and more goofy and dumb. Play them in chronological order and you'll know when to stop.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Tiberian Sun is also pretty serious, and CnC 3 tried. It's the Red Alert part of the franchise that gets goofier with every game. But yeah, I agree with this advice.

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Tib Sun and RA1 are the best games in the series in my opinion. OpenRA plays nothing like the original and should be disregarded if you're looking to play the original properly.

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The Remasters are good, but play them on normal difficult and be ready for bullshit if you're playing the campaign - sandbags are your friend, the AI won't try to shoot through them and they extend the build zone. In TD the AI is also flagged to pretty much instantly rebuild everything while ignoring build zones and the harvester has such an obscenly high credit modifier that a single run can refill the AI's silos. You either need to somehow emass such large force that you can steamroll the AI's bases all at once, or camp the tiberium long enough for the AI to finally run out of money - and one harvestor load just undoes all that progress. RA1 significantly tones down that bullshit by having most buildings not have a their rebuild flag set for the AI on most maps.

    Tiberium Sun is decent, definetly more tech-forard and amibitious.
    RA2 is pretty much universally considered the best game in the series. RA1 is a prequel to TD, but RA2 takes place in an alternate timeline from the other games. RA2 is also signifcantly easier than the games that came before it.

    All four of them suffer from mechanics that only work in online multiplayer like stealth units and gap generators.

    Not retro past this I guess but-
    Generals is fun, need to replay it.
    Tiberium Wars is good, though you need a mod to rollback the version to make one of the missions in Kane's Wrath not a fricking nightmare.
    RA3 is where C&C basically just starts to an-hero. It apes the goofy aspects of Red Alert 2 too much while forcing a co-op mechanic. Liked building big bases and tactically dismantling the enemie's position? Well better hope you have a friend that wants to as well because otherwise frick you- your AI partner is attacking.
    The less said about C&C 4 the better.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >You either need to somehow emass such large force that you can steamroll the AI's bases all at once, or camp the tiberium long enough for the AI to finally run out of money

      Or just sneak in a couple of apcs on a suicide run with each one having one engineer, make sure you start deploying the apc near buildings, engineer can insta cap any building. If you grab the MCV and war factory/airstrip, it's GG for the AI, unless it has multiple MCVs (only in the final missions).
      Also when you attack, change the game speed to slow so you can micro better and you don't just end up with your units getting meat grinded.

      >mechanics that only work in online multiplayer like stealth
      Stealth tanks are a godsend in campaign since you can scout the entire enemy base unseen. AI won't attack unless you unstealth from going close to a turret or running over infantry.

      [...]
      20GB of bloat just to play a smoothed out version of the old games is somewhat silly

      The original games came out on 3-4 CDs at a time when a standard HDD was 340MB to 1GB. 20GB is peanuts compared to that.

      >you need a mod to rollback the version to make one of the missions in Kane's Wrath not a fricking nightmare.
      Horse shit, all the missions are easy even with the latest patches. The one annoying part is where you have to build a turret but you start with a crane, so you have to get an MCV out first (it was changed that cranes can't build turrets).

      RA3 has fricked up economy and every unit dies to two shots against its counters, but on the other hand, I'm escaping to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism... SPACE!

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >Tfw hearing of Curry's current status following his stroke.
        It's not fair ;_;

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >having to rollback for one mission is horseshit
        >except for the one mission that's specifically the problem

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Start with the Remaster then the classic RA2.
    If you have the patience, try RA3.

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The remasters are basically the old games with pretty graphics - including the moronic AI.
    OpenRA plays very differently. It looks the same though.

    Play everything chronologically up until Kane's Wrath and ignore everything after that.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      RA3 is worth playing for the single player campaign, plus the music wasn't bad either. RA3 Uprising has some pretty fun new units, a short campaign, and a really nice Challenge mode with some crazy maps.

      definitely ignore c&c4 though, everyone univocally agrees that it's best to consider it a game that does not exist.

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    C&C 1
    Red alert 1
    C&C generals
    The rest isn't even worth pirating

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    when you play one don't forget about the secret campaign

    also it's always fun to set a comp game or whatever with every team set to 1 unit and see which infantry dukes out it to the top
    2 is still fun to do but allied units bunker up and takes the fun out a little bit

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