In 1995, a young game studio named Westwood released one of the first real-time strategy games. They had created the genre a few years earlier, but this title took the fledgling genre to new heights with impressive graphics, revolutionary gameplay features and an enthralling story told through the then-young art of full motion video. After twelve successful games spread out over ten years, the venerable Command and Conquer franchise has become synonymous with the real-time strategy genre it popularized, and the entire series is now available on one disc in Command and Conquer The First Decade.
Battle the old-fashioned way with the original Command and Conquer, watch an alternate World War II unfold in Command and Conquer Red Alert or control the modern warfield in Command and Conquer Generals--all three of Command and Conquer's worlds are open to nostalgic gamers and modern aficionados alike.
Old friends await the seasoned gamer in the original Command and Conquer universe, as the fanatical Brotherhood of Nod battles the Global Defense Initiative in a war over the mineral Tiberium. Whether playing as the Brotherhood and obeying the charismatic Kane's every command or taking control of GDI forces as they seek to save the world from Kane's ambition, every detail of Command and Conquer is just as you remember it. The original full motion videos tell the story in what was once cutting-edge and is now quaint, and the gameplay is simple as can be. Gather Tiberium to produce tanks, infantry and more to decide the fate of the world, or try to connect to others with one of the first online game-finding services!
Bring the original storyline to a close in Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun, and determine the fate of the world--or, if you want a break from the strategy formula, take control of a GDI Commando in the recent Command and Conquer Renegade, a first person shooting game set in the Tiberium universe. See the world of CandC up close and personal from Nick "Havoc" Parker's point of view as he fights a one-man war against the forces of Nod armed with a diverse arsenal of weapons and one-liners.
Perhaps the most popular game of the franchise, Command and Conquer Red Alert asks the question, "What if Albert Einstein mastered time travel, then used it to go back in time and kill Hitler?" The answer is a world at war not with Nazi-led Germany, but the rapidly expanding Soviet Union under Stalin's iron fist. Dip into the world of historical fiction as the Allied forces take on the Soviet bloc in a war fought not just by soldiers, planes and tanks, but by time travelers, psychics and giant tesla coils. This more refined and advanced real time strategy game features gameplay innovations that greatly influenced the games that followed, including building queues and other convenient options, providing a nice balance between nostalgia and playability.
While Command and Conquer takes place in the future and Red Alert in the past, Command and Conquer Generals offers its version of the present, as the United States, China and a terrorist group known as GLA battle all over the world. The most game-oriented of the series, Generals contains no FMV like its predecessors, concentrating instead on pure 3D gameplay as well as the wry humor that peppered the previous games.
In all, Command and Conquer The First Decade contains not only the games that defined a genre, but the history of that genre. Players can experience the evolution of the real-time strategy game as they play each game in sequence, and see for themselves how far the technology has come since 1995--but also find out that the old games still have some life left in them.
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