When Command & Conquer was released on the PC it received high
praises for the unique combination of strategy and action elements in
a real-time war gaming environment. Now this game has made its way to
the playstation. Does it live up to the hype it got on the PC?

In Command & Conquer you have to complete a number of missions
consecutively.  Each level is displayed by a top-down map view and
contains scenery like trees and hills as well as buildings and
military units of your and the opposing army. You play Command &
Conquer by selecting (groups of) military units with your cursor and
issue Commands that they have to execute, eg. "guard this object,
attack this object, move there, invade this building". Furthermore
depending on the buildings your home base consists of you can build
more buildings, assemble or repair new units, and harvest "tiberium",
a strange mineral that can directly be converted to money by your
tiberium refineries.  Usually you start a level by building your home
base, explore the territory around you for tiberium resources and
build an army strong enough to launch a big attack to the enemy base.

Graphics and sound of Command & Conquer are as good as you expect them
from a strategy game these days. Sure, it uses a low resolution that
is no match to the PC's SVGA resolution but apart from that Command &
Conquer is done well. The sound consists basically of explosions and
8-bit sampled speech. All in all, Command & Conquer's interface is
nothing to faint because of but functional and without weaknesses. 
Command & Conquer's FMV sequences deserve being mentioned - they are
both technically very impressive and useful to introduce the level
targets and the "big picture" of the plot.

Weird controls: Why Westwood decided to use the normal PSX pad as the
sole input device for a game that cries for a mouse control system
(with eg. context menus for the various commands) will probably remain
one of the great unsolved mysteries of PSX gaming. And - who might
have guessed - the game controls awkward with the normal pad.

Command & Conquer's gameplay is hectical and intense. At any time you
have to make sure that your harvesters harvest, that you build up your
supply of military units, keep your attacks going, and make sure that
your opponent doesn't attack your own base (or troops) from somewhere
you don't expect it, all simultaneously. Logically the game is very
absorbing - often enough I found myself playing several hours without
noticing how much time had passed.

But haven't we seen all this before?

Yes, we have. Actually I'm a bit confused by the huge success of
Command & Conquer on the PC. Apart from cosmetic changes, FMV
sequences, a slightly improved control system that allows to unite
units to groups and a bit more various missions Command & Conquer is
just a rehash of "Dune II", a game that I played fanatically on my
Amiga years ago. Back then you had to harvest spice instead of
tiberium and to attack the Harkonnen army instead of the Brotherhood
of Nod. And of course being based on a classic science fiction book
the plot of "Dune II" was much stronger than Command & Conquer's. So
if you (like me) have played "Dune II" to death you'll probably be a
bit bored of Command & Conquer despite its improved appearance. If you
don't know "Dune 2" but like hectical real-time strategy games Command
& Conquer is probably _the_ game for you.

A few additional remarks:

* There's plenty of levels: The PSX version includes all missions
  of the original PC Command & Conquer, all 15 additional levels of the
  Command & Conquer "Covert Operations" mission disk and 6 further 
  PSX-only levels. Furthermore you can play the game as the good ones
  or as the bad ones incl. completely different FMV sequences 
  (probably the reason Command & Conquer comes in two CDs).
* There's a special German version that has been done very well - 
  all FMV sequences have been dubbed carefully, nearly all 
  of the in-game texts are in German, too.
* NO MEMORY CARD SUPPORT! What's the point of offering
  a high score table if I can't save it to memory card? Why do I
  have to write down lengthy passwords cleverly including all letters
  and digits? Ok, we all know that making up new creative ways to write
  O (oh) and 0 (zero) differently yields endless hours of fun for the
  whole family but still - wouldn't have memory card been a nice option
  to include?
* No link cable support.

I guess this game could be rated 8/10 points.

Karlheinz

-- 
      Karlheinz  Agsteiner         |  phone: *49/371 513 1667
 Institute  of Computer Systems    |  fax  : *49/371 513 1806
 Department of Computer Science    |  email: kag@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de
Technical University Of Chemnitz   |  http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/~kag
My PSX pages start at http://herkules.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/kag/psx