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| | Publisher: Electronic Arts  Genre: Strategy & War | | | Min OS X: 10.4 CPU: Intel @ 1830 MHz RAM: 999 MB Hard Disk: 6000 MB DVD-ROM Graphics: 800x600, 128 MB VRAM |
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Considering that this is a review of one of the most anticipated games for the Mac of the year, I’ll just cut to the chase and let you know what I think from the top. EA Games’ Command & Conquer 3 — Tiberium Wars is an excellent game, and it ran wonderfully on my iMac Core Duo. I had absolutely no problems with it and enjoyed playing very much.Now let’s break it down by the numbers C&C3 is a the third installment of a video-game story that dates back to 1995, when it was first published by Westwood Studios. The franchise was taken over by EA Games in 2003 when the company purchased Westwood. Over the years, most of the C&C games have been set in the real-time strategy style.An RTS is a subset of the war game. For example chess is probably the oldest war game in existence. Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft, which launched in 1998, is an example of a modern war game played on a computer. However, in chess, the players take turns moving. In an RTS, there are no turns. Both players execute their moves at the same time, dynamically implementing their ideas simultaneously on the battlefield. Many consider C&C to be the original RTS, however Blizzard's Warcraft, which launched in 1994, was the first. Another popular example of the RTS genre is Ensemble Studios' Age of Empires. If you're not familiar with it, C&C is sort of a merging of StarCraft and Age of Empires. Since AoE's debut in 1997, its stories have been rooted in the past. Most updates to the game have brought the story nearer to current history. Although the play is strictly RTS, even the most recent version of AoE still has players using flintlock long rifles and horse-drawn artillery. On the other hand, StarCraft has always been every inch a futuristic sci-fi battle between terrans, humanoids and sticky, icky bugs, with weaponry ranging from rifle-toting marines to a variety of airborne weapons. Live-action cut scenes are outstanding What differentiates C&C — especially C&C3 — from any other game is its detailed and engrossing storyline and its realistic cut scenes. Unlike most any other game, C&C3's cut scenes use real, live actors working on very believable sets. In fact, the cut scenes are so lavish that the game resembles a sci-fi action film. I found myself wanting to go back and watch the cut scenes over and over and trying to buttonhole family members to watch them with me. They were quite a departure from the usual computer-generated actors and sets, and are an effective way to draw the player into the story.C&C3's story pits United Nations Global Defense Initiative, or GDI, against its arch enemy, The Brotherhood of Nod. This third installment of the story introduces a new element, the Scrin. The GDI is a fictional military wing of the United Nations. Nod has ancient roots in the game's storyline, purportedly being an Abrahamic cult dating back to 1800 B.C. The Scrin are an alien race that seem to be using Tiberium to colonize the Earth for their own use.
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