System Specs:
AMD 6000 dual-core processor
2 GB RAM
Nvdia 8600 PCI-e, 256 MB.
This review will be kind of short, since this is an expansion, and much of the core elements were covered in my C&C 3 review.
LOADING AND INSTALLATION
Thankfully EA didn't cock this up. The expansion obviously requires you to have Tiberium Wars installed first, so if you really want to nitpick you can add that to the time of installation. If you're not sitting there, going over the game with an electron microscope for flaws, then the installation is as short and reasonable as Tiberium Wars. Shorter in fact, as there's less to be installed. There's another, decidedly cooler looking EA logo in the opening screen, that once again you can't skip, but other than that it's straight to the gameplay.
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay-wise not much has changed, which for an expansion, is as it should be. The levels, graphics, and units all still look the same, the bad acting is compounded by spades, and the computer's still using stupid A.I., only now the A.I. seems to have taken a few night classes and isn't quite as stupid as its predecessor. Its answer to providing a challenge is still mostly "beef up the unit count", but there were times when the A.I. actually thought like a decent player, and attacked me on two sides at once, or provided distractions, which since I wasn't expecting them, worked.
There are a total of 13 missions in Kane's Wrath, and each mission lasts about an hour, give or take. From its title you can probably guess what faction you'll be playing, but for those of you who are not in the know, you'll be playing strictly as the Brotherhood of Nod in the campaign, more specifically as some kind of computer/alien/holographic thingy in command of the forces of Nod, (I don't know, the game was never very clear on that), and from the start you'll realize that playing with Nod is a lot less fun this time around.
In my Tiberium Wars review I mentioned that Nod was the sneak thief faction, they accomplished by subterfuge what the other factions could just walk through the front door for. This made Nod fun to play as it encouraged the player to fully understand Nod's capabilities, and look for creative ways to use them.
By contrast, most of the missions in Kane's Wrath seem designed around the standard method of turtling, securing resources, building an army, and attacking. It's kind of a ho-hum tactic that gets boring after a while. To be fair the game never explicitly said that I had to do this, but it's what it always felt like the developers wanted me doing.
"Stop playing around with those Shadow Troopers and start building Harvesters. There's at least three giant patches of the good stuff out there to be mined, and you're behind a narrowly approached, easily defensible position. What are you doing playing sneaky?"
Tiberium Wars spoiled me on Nod. As you can probably tell from reading my reviews, I'm a big proponent of games that encourage creativity and improvisation, so much so that if a creative enough game came along I would have no shame about squealing like a fanboy in public when playing it, and would move to have the laws adjusted in order to marry it. So seeing Nod get dumbed down like this really struck a pang with me, because this type of gameplay, I'd been there before.
The campaign mode is fun nonetheless, and as always it's a blast watching Joe Kucan play the maniacal cultist (this time with a new-age hat!). Kane's Wrath takes the player through the early days of Nod's resurrection after the last Tiberium War, through Nod's return to power and sparking of Tib War III, (during which you'll even play through some of the missions from Tiberium Wars, and see them from a different point of view) and on into the future. But don't go into Kane's Wrath expecting revelations. Continuing the tradition of the previous games, Kane's Wrath answers absolutely jack all about Kane, the Scrin, or any other of the multitude of questions that have been brewing in players' minds for years.
Mostly Kane's Wrath is just more C&C 3. There are a few new units for everyone that while fun to use, don't make a material difference in the overall gameplay, a few new abilities, and no new enemies. One exception to this is the introduction of the new "epic unit", which are basically heavily armed, walking mountains that say "I WIN!" upon completion. You don't get to take much advantage of Nod's epic unit in the single player though as it arrives criminally late in the game, and the other two are only available in the skirmish or multiplayer.
GLOBAL CONQUEST
One new major addition that Kane's Wrath brings is a side campaign called Global Conquest, far removed from the storyline, acting, pacing, and combat of the main campaign. You play as your choice of the three factions and the idea is to secure world domination, either by wiping out the other two, or by achieving an alternate means of victory unique to each faction. But don't reach for your keyboards and controllers just yet. While this may sound like a good time at first, the game quickly deposes you of that notion by putting you into a turn-based strategy game.
Uh-huh, you heard me right. Global Conquest is a turn-based strategy scenario, much like the Medieval series. And like Medieval, and most turn based strategy's in general, you have all the time you want to plot out every course of action and variation thereof, which ultimately just results in moving little colored icons, meant to represent your forces, around on a flat world map. When combat does occur, you have the option of either letting the computer crunch the numbers and come up with a winner, or zooming into the battlefield, taking personal command of your forces, and fighting a battle like you would in the main campaign. The latter choice, although tedious, is usually the smarter one, and ends in victory more often than not. Unfortunately, Global Conquest is turn-based lite. If Medieval is a game of chess, Global Conquest is checkers. With three pieces. In a retirement home. Between a pair of corpses. You know, simple. That might an unfair comparison, considering that Medieval is an entire game unto itself, and Global Conquest is an addition to an expansion for God's sakes, but still, the lack of any real options besides "Go here, build this, break that" makes Global Conquest feel like it was half finished, then pushed right out the door.
The experience I took away was largely one of boredom and confusion. The tutorial only covers the basics, there are no training "missions", and unlike in the main campaign, several of the menus and options have no explanation as to what they do, or how to use them.
Which left me lost on at least half the scenario when I started playing, and I could only conclude the designers expected me to get that half by trial and error. This type of gameplay (micromanagement, automatic combat, moving around icons) appeals to some players, but I'm not one of them. Memorization belongs in in school, and having to do it in a video game does not tickle my nether loins. And with the faster paced, more action oriented main campaign only a few mouse clicks away, there was little incentive to explore this scenario further. I played it for about two hours before walking away, and have not been back since.
Still, it's hard for me to flog Global Conquest bloody, because I can understand the idea behind it. EA wanted to at least throw a bone to the other half of strategy gamers, and I suppose they did a good enough job. It certainly doesn't feel broken, just... unnecessary, like a fifth wheel. It's nice to have, but if you're a gamer that likes turn based strategy, there are much better options out there, and if you're not, Global Conquest is probably just going to bore and confuse you like it did me. If you happen to have a sudden itch for this sort of play and nothing else is around, or you just want to try something different to see how it handles, then GC has you covered, but otherwise, I wouldn't mess with it.
CONCLUSION
This is an expansion, so there's not gonna be a whole lot to it. Like Tiberium Wars, the single player offers about the same replayability. Less in fact, because at least with Tiberium Wars you could squeeze a few more hours out of the Scrin campaign. The average player will complete most of the bonus objectives in the course of their first play through and get the intelligence for them, and whatever's left behind only really die-hard perfectionists will probably bother with, as you get nothing for your troubles but a short article about some unit or something. There's no additional endings, cheats, or the like for, say, slogging through the game on hard, or beating a mission within a proposed time limit. There is no real plot exposition or explanation, and most missions, even if you know what you're doing, require at least an hour of commitment to beat, unless you plan to save, forget all about what you were doing, and come back later.
The multiplayer is affected even less by the expansion. If you're someone who likes multiplayer, then you've probably already played Tiberium Wars online, and this is just more of the same. The addition of a few new units, even the epic ones, aren't enough to justify this game by themselves.
Kane's Wrath is a fun enough time, but so was Tiberium Wars, and there simply isn't enough in the expansion to set it apart. With only 13 hours of gameplay where what you see is what you get, there's just not enough here for me to recommend buying this, (especially at the ludicrous price of $30-$40 U.S.) and since I don't know any gaming shops that rent PC games, my recommendation will just have to be to stay away from it right now. If you can find it for cheaper, around $20 or so, I'd say go for it, but otherwise, you won't be missing out by waiting until the price drops.
AMD 6000 dual-core processor
2 GB RAM
Nvdia 8600 PCI-e, 256 MB.
This review will be kind of short, since this is an expansion, and much of the core elements were covered in my C&C 3 review.
LOADING AND INSTALLATION
Thankfully EA didn't cock this up. The expansion obviously requires you to have Tiberium Wars installed first, so if you really want to nitpick you can add that to the time of installation. If you're not sitting there, going over the game with an electron microscope for flaws, then the installation is as short and reasonable as Tiberium Wars. Shorter in fact, as there's less to be installed. There's another, decidedly cooler looking EA logo in the opening screen, that once again you can't skip, but other than that it's straight to the gameplay.
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay-wise not much has changed, which for an expansion, is as it should be. The levels, graphics, and units all still look the same, the bad acting is compounded by spades, and the computer's still using stupid A.I., only now the A.I. seems to have taken a few night classes and isn't quite as stupid as its predecessor. Its answer to providing a challenge is still mostly "beef up the unit count", but there were times when the A.I. actually thought like a decent player, and attacked me on two sides at once, or provided distractions, which since I wasn't expecting them, worked.
There are a total of 13 missions in Kane's Wrath, and each mission lasts about an hour, give or take. From its title you can probably guess what faction you'll be playing, but for those of you who are not in the know, you'll be playing strictly as the Brotherhood of Nod in the campaign, more specifically as some kind of computer/alien/holographic thingy in command of the forces of Nod, (I don't know, the game was never very clear on that), and from the start you'll realize that playing with Nod is a lot less fun this time around.
In my Tiberium Wars review I mentioned that Nod was the sneak thief faction, they accomplished by subterfuge what the other factions could just walk through the front door for. This made Nod fun to play as it encouraged the player to fully understand Nod's capabilities, and look for creative ways to use them.
By contrast, most of the missions in Kane's Wrath seem designed around the standard method of turtling, securing resources, building an army, and attacking. It's kind of a ho-hum tactic that gets boring after a while. To be fair the game never explicitly said that I had to do this, but it's what it always felt like the developers wanted me doing.
"Stop playing around with those Shadow Troopers and start building Harvesters. There's at least three giant patches of the good stuff out there to be mined, and you're behind a narrowly approached, easily defensible position. What are you doing playing sneaky?"
Tiberium Wars spoiled me on Nod. As you can probably tell from reading my reviews, I'm a big proponent of games that encourage creativity and improvisation, so much so that if a creative enough game came along I would have no shame about squealing like a fanboy in public when playing it, and would move to have the laws adjusted in order to marry it. So seeing Nod get dumbed down like this really struck a pang with me, because this type of gameplay, I'd been there before.
The campaign mode is fun nonetheless, and as always it's a blast watching Joe Kucan play the maniacal cultist (this time with a new-age hat!). Kane's Wrath takes the player through the early days of Nod's resurrection after the last Tiberium War, through Nod's return to power and sparking of Tib War III, (during which you'll even play through some of the missions from Tiberium Wars, and see them from a different point of view) and on into the future. But don't go into Kane's Wrath expecting revelations. Continuing the tradition of the previous games, Kane's Wrath answers absolutely jack all about Kane, the Scrin, or any other of the multitude of questions that have been brewing in players' minds for years.
Mostly Kane's Wrath is just more C&C 3. There are a few new units for everyone that while fun to use, don't make a material difference in the overall gameplay, a few new abilities, and no new enemies. One exception to this is the introduction of the new "epic unit", which are basically heavily armed, walking mountains that say "I WIN!" upon completion. You don't get to take much advantage of Nod's epic unit in the single player though as it arrives criminally late in the game, and the other two are only available in the skirmish or multiplayer.
GLOBAL CONQUEST
One new major addition that Kane's Wrath brings is a side campaign called Global Conquest, far removed from the storyline, acting, pacing, and combat of the main campaign. You play as your choice of the three factions and the idea is to secure world domination, either by wiping out the other two, or by achieving an alternate means of victory unique to each faction. But don't reach for your keyboards and controllers just yet. While this may sound like a good time at first, the game quickly deposes you of that notion by putting you into a turn-based strategy game.
Uh-huh, you heard me right. Global Conquest is a turn-based strategy scenario, much like the Medieval series. And like Medieval, and most turn based strategy's in general, you have all the time you want to plot out every course of action and variation thereof, which ultimately just results in moving little colored icons, meant to represent your forces, around on a flat world map. When combat does occur, you have the option of either letting the computer crunch the numbers and come up with a winner, or zooming into the battlefield, taking personal command of your forces, and fighting a battle like you would in the main campaign. The latter choice, although tedious, is usually the smarter one, and ends in victory more often than not. Unfortunately, Global Conquest is turn-based lite. If Medieval is a game of chess, Global Conquest is checkers. With three pieces. In a retirement home. Between a pair of corpses. You know, simple. That might an unfair comparison, considering that Medieval is an entire game unto itself, and Global Conquest is an addition to an expansion for God's sakes, but still, the lack of any real options besides "Go here, build this, break that" makes Global Conquest feel like it was half finished, then pushed right out the door.
The experience I took away was largely one of boredom and confusion. The tutorial only covers the basics, there are no training "missions", and unlike in the main campaign, several of the menus and options have no explanation as to what they do, or how to use them.
Which left me lost on at least half the scenario when I started playing, and I could only conclude the designers expected me to get that half by trial and error. This type of gameplay (micromanagement, automatic combat, moving around icons) appeals to some players, but I'm not one of them. Memorization belongs in in school, and having to do it in a video game does not tickle my nether loins. And with the faster paced, more action oriented main campaign only a few mouse clicks away, there was little incentive to explore this scenario further. I played it for about two hours before walking away, and have not been back since.
Still, it's hard for me to flog Global Conquest bloody, because I can understand the idea behind it. EA wanted to at least throw a bone to the other half of strategy gamers, and I suppose they did a good enough job. It certainly doesn't feel broken, just... unnecessary, like a fifth wheel. It's nice to have, but if you're a gamer that likes turn based strategy, there are much better options out there, and if you're not, Global Conquest is probably just going to bore and confuse you like it did me. If you happen to have a sudden itch for this sort of play and nothing else is around, or you just want to try something different to see how it handles, then GC has you covered, but otherwise, I wouldn't mess with it.
CONCLUSION
This is an expansion, so there's not gonna be a whole lot to it. Like Tiberium Wars, the single player offers about the same replayability. Less in fact, because at least with Tiberium Wars you could squeeze a few more hours out of the Scrin campaign. The average player will complete most of the bonus objectives in the course of their first play through and get the intelligence for them, and whatever's left behind only really die-hard perfectionists will probably bother with, as you get nothing for your troubles but a short article about some unit or something. There's no additional endings, cheats, or the like for, say, slogging through the game on hard, or beating a mission within a proposed time limit. There is no real plot exposition or explanation, and most missions, even if you know what you're doing, require at least an hour of commitment to beat, unless you plan to save, forget all about what you were doing, and come back later.
The multiplayer is affected even less by the expansion. If you're someone who likes multiplayer, then you've probably already played Tiberium Wars online, and this is just more of the same. The addition of a few new units, even the epic ones, aren't enough to justify this game by themselves.
Kane's Wrath is a fun enough time, but so was Tiberium Wars, and there simply isn't enough in the expansion to set it apart. With only 13 hours of gameplay where what you see is what you get, there's just not enough here for me to recommend buying this, (especially at the ludicrous price of $30-$40 U.S.) and since I don't know any gaming shops that rent PC games, my recommendation will just have to be to stay away from it right now. If you can find it for cheaper, around $20 or so, I'd say go for it, but otherwise, you won't be missing out by waiting until the price drops.
