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[IMG News]

Inside Mac Games has posted a review of the highly anticipated port of Electronic Arts' real-time strategy title Command & Conquer 3 - Tiberium Wars. The title represents the first of four titles from EA released for Intel Macs using Transgaming's Cider porting technology. Here's a clip from the review:

One of the key elements at issue with the release of C&C3 was the use of TransGaming's Cider to port it to the Intel-based Macintosh platform. This has been discussed on the Web quite a lot, including in an article by Tunzer Deniz here. For publishers such as EA, Cider was expected to offer a low-cost way to bring PC games to the Intel Macs, potentially increasing the opportunities for Mac gamers. But the question in everyone's mind has been how will Cider-ports actually play?

Click the link below to read the full review.

Return to Full Article - InsideMacGames News

[dojoboy]

Oh come on, a 9.25?  That's got to be one of the greatest games ever made.  Guess I should buy it.  

[brahim]

dojoboy, on September 21st 2007, 12:03 PM, said:

Oh come on, a 9.25?  That's got to be one of the greatest games ever made.  Guess I should buy it.  

Well, I really liked it. :-)

[teflon]

its good yes, but i didnt really expect a 9.25 score... perhaps 8.75 maybe??

of course, its simply a problem with the scoring system which averages out gameplay sounds graphics and value... gameplay would be a 9, fair enough, sound, 9 fine. graphics, id say 9 again, not 10, as plenty of people have had issue with tiberium and the shaders involved with that.

finally, value. when you consider that all 3 factions are essentially the same, yes even the scrin (though their base troops are essentially suicide bombers etc. etc. theres just not enough variation for my taste...

i dunno. granted, the game is very well executed, but doesnt really add anything new to the genre, or even the series really, so i dont think it deserves the 9.25 score.

[brahim]

teflon, on September 21st 2007, 12:55 PM, said:

its good yes, but i didnt really expect a 9.25 score... perhaps 8.75 maybe??

of course, its simply a problem with the scoring system which averages out gameplay sounds graphics and value... gameplay would be a 9, fair enough, sound, 9 fine. graphics, id say 9 again, not 10, as plenty of people have had issue with tiberium and the shaders involved with that.

finally, value. when you consider that all 3 factions are essentially the same, yes even the scrin (though their base troops are essentially suicide bombers etc. etc. theres just not enough variation for my taste...

i dunno. granted, the game is very well executed, but doesnt really add anything new to the genre, or even the series really, so i dont think it deserves the 9.25 score.

(Complete disclosure: Brahim is the handle for Charlie Fletcher, the reviewer of the game in question.)

In my view, reviews are supposed to give you an idea of whether you should buy the item or not, be it a movie, a game, or a product. I have read plenty of reviews where I did not agree with the writer's opinion. In fact, often I've read reviews where I completely disagreed with the reviewer's advice. Still, I came away from the review with a better idea of whether I wanted the item.

For example, a review I read of the movie, Poseidon, complained that the dialog was not snappy and developed enough. My thought? How can you expect people trying to escape from a sinking ship to come up with snappy dialog?? I wanted to see the movie so I could be immersed in the reality of escaping from a sinking ship, not to be regaled with silly one liners.

On the other hand, I have read so many reviews of Spiderman movies that talk about how close the productions are to the comics. But if you have ever read Spiderman comics, you would probably notice that the movie character is quite different from the one in print. On screen he's the silent hero, swinging to and fro. In the comics, he's like a stand-up comedian, constantly driving his adversaries crazy with his incessant puns and sarcasm.

Yet, in both of these cases, my impressions from the reviews gave me enough information to decide whether I wanted to see the movies or not.

As the author of the C&C3 review, I can honestly say that my rating of C&C3 was completely my own opinion. I liked the game a lot. Having just played through the entire AoEIII campaign set, including Warchiefs, I have some recent experience with what else is currently on the RTS market. I'm sure that C&C3 is not perfect, nor is the hardware I'm using to run it. In fact, my perception of RTS gaming is imperfect as well.

However, I know what I like, and C&C3 is definitely a horse of a different color in the RTS market. I stand by my lofty rating because I not only enjoyed the game more than any I have played in a long time, but I also look forward to continuing to play it.

If you came away from my review with a better understanding of your own desire to purchase the game, then my purpose has been served. :-)

Brahim

[dojoboy]

Not that I don't believe you enjoyed the game, and still have genuine fun & challenge, I just wouldn't consider a 9.0+ rating for CC3TW possible with how I feel about the genre these days.  Perhaps other member reviews will support it.  Certainly not hoping against it.

[teflon]

i think its possible to do with the lack of game releases on the mac, as theres a couple on PC which really stand out and improve upon the genre, while C&C3 just does what C&C always does.. Theres not much new, and it really doesnt take in a whole lot of what everyone else has been doing in the mean time.

CoH and DoW (both relic) took the squads idea to the next level, but, obviously, had to bring the scale of the game really close in to do so... almost turning it into an RTT with bits of dumbed down RTS on top. but its destructible environments really stand out and tanks are rightfully difficult to kill.

Supreme Commander went the other way and scaled right up to have everything absolutely huge, so huge that a nuke could be pretty much the right size and still only take out a tiny part of the screen, and the battles get so big you have to zoom right out so all your units turn into dots to see whats really going on.

and C&C 3 is stuck in the middle plodding the same course, trying to partly match up to the scale and simplicity of management that CoH and SC have trodden, but feeling a bit awkward when the battles get too big and the sheer volume of effects causes you to crawl for a while.

dont get me wrong, i like the game, and when it arrives in the UK ill probably buy it. I just dont think that its really deserving of the extremely high praise in comparison to whats on the PC. compared to the mac, though, you may have a point... as the main competition is from AoE3, which is literally AoE2 but in 3D. then again, C&C3 is pretty much C&C generals with a bunch of throw backs to the 2D games.

BTW, i kinda guessed you were the reviewer

[brahim]

teflon, on September 21st 2007, 02:44 PM, said:

i think its possible to do with the lack of game releases on the mac, as theres a couple on PC which really stand out and improve upon the genre, while C&C3 just does what C&C always does.. Theres not much new, and it really doesnt take in a whole lot of what everyone else has been doing in the mean time.

Truly, I never even considered the PC side of gaming. In view of the fact that this site is devoted to Macintosh gaming, I don't really see that a comparison -- especially in review ratings -- is terribly relevant. The review and rating should compare -- literally -- Apples to Apples.

Brahim

[dojoboy]

brahim, on September 21st 2007, 02:59 PM, said:

Truly, I never even considered the PC side of gaming. In view of the fact that this site is devoted to Macintosh gaming, I don't really see that a comparison -- especially in review ratings -- is terribly relevant. The review and rating should compare -- literally -- Apples to Apples.

Brahim

I wonder if that portion of his post was aimed at my reply.  ???

[Janichsan]

I agree that the 9.25 is too high. Sure, C&C3 is well made, looks awesome and plays well. But it's definitely the most uninnovative RTS I ever played. There's literally not a single thing in this game that I haven't seen before somewhere else. In so far it's the RTS equivalent to Quake 4: nice, impressive... and pretty boring. Even AoE III, that isn't the pinnacle of genre, had at least some new ideas. What Teflon said above for AoE III - being nothing but a graphical update of AoE II - applies even more to C&C 3.

Please, Brahim, don't take this personally, but I think your argument that comparison to games on the PC side does not matter is pretty lame: with this argumentation, you could justify an 10.0 for a Mac port of a completely crap game of a rare genre, that only has this single game for Macs but more (and better) representatives on PC.

[teflon]

i was just ranting for a bit really noone in particular.

and i do see your point of reference for the review score, brahim, i just think the system needs to be brought up to date (i follow the EDGE school of rating, where a 5 is average, 7 is good, 8 is very good, 9 is excellent with a few little niggles that innovates but doesnt quite reach its potential and 10 is absolutely revolutionary, going on this, C&C3 would be an 8). Specially seeing as its a Cider game, which means the only people that can play it can quite easily jump into windows via boot camp and play it there...

really its just a matter of preference whether you take windows games into account or not.

i feel like im starting to not make much sense... hmmmm. ill come back to this at some point tomorrow.

[Eric5h5]

Well, leaving aside the score (which seems excessively high to me judging from what I know of the game, but not having played it, I can't really say anything), here's some nitpicky factual errors:

Quote

Many consider C&C to be the original RTS, however Blizzard's Warcraft, which launched in 1994, was the first.

Nope.  Dune II (1992) is generally held to be the first RTS, and even then there's some disagreement with even earlier games, but I'd say it's the first RTS in the modern sense of the word.  Definitely not Warcraft.

Quote

Williams is most famous for his role as Lando Calrissian in Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

He was not in Star Wars.

--Eric

[Riko]

Eric5h5, on September 21st 2007, 11:46 PM, said:

He was not in Star Wars.

--Eric

Oh yes he was.  

[Eric5h5]

Riko, on September 21st 2007, 09:48 PM, said:

Oh yes he was.  

No, he wasn't.  Where in that link does it say he was in Star Wars?  An audition doesn't count as actually being in the movie....

--Eric

[bobbob]

9.25  ??? What room does that leave for recent games like Supreme Commander, Dawn of War, and Company of Heroes? Surely those have more spread than 0.75?

[Aleksi]

Eric5h5, on September 21st 2007, 07:51 PM, said:

No, he wasn't.  Where in that link does it say he was in Star Wars?  An audition doesn't count as actually being in the movie....

--Eric

Go rent the movies, he was in Star Wars.

[teflon]

Eric5h5, on September 22nd 2007, 03:51 AM, said:

No, he wasn't.  Where in that link does it say he was in Star Wars?  An audition doesn't count as actually being in the movie....
--Eric

the confusion here is that people are talking about the original star wars trilogy as a whole, while Eric is talking about the original... episode 4, A new hope, whatever, Lando Calrissian was only in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. he was NOT in the original film.

ok, lets go back to what i said before. Im of the opinion that you should take boot camping for games into account when talking about the performance of a game and also comparing it against other games of its genre. Seeing as theres not many RTS games out for the mac, its kind of silly to just compare C&C3 to those, and then proclaim its the best thing ever (im exaggerating) when you can load into boot camp and play CoH (which is arguably currently the best RtS out there) and SC, which while not perfect at least pushes the genre back in the direction that Total Annihilation took and none since have trodden.

put simply, C&C3 does what it does very well, but doesnt really do anything new or different from the previous games in the series, and so to my mind doesnt warrant a 9+ score no matter how well executed it is.

[Riko]

teflon, on September 22nd 2007, 11:55 AM, said:

put simply, C&C3 does what it does very well, but doesnt really do anything new or different from the previous games in the series, and so to my mind doesnt warrant a 9+ score no matter how well executed it is.

Quoted for agreement.

[Eric5h5]

Aleksi, on September 22nd 2007, 05:31 AM, said:

Go rent the movies, he was in Star Wars.

I've seen the movies several times; he was not in Star Wars.  Like teflon said.  (And it's very clear from the original quote that Star Wars is referring to the first movie and not the series as a whole, which is only right because that's the name of the first movie, and the fact that it was only later also called Episode IV: A New Hope is beside the point.  Just like this post.   )

--Eric

[the Battle Cat]

hehehehe... NERDS!!