An expansion pack for Command and Conquer 3 was inevitable but like many high profile expansions of the last year, it’s almost like someone missed a memo about how the bar is higher than it once was. New races and new features aren’t quite enough anymore. And if that’s all you offer in an expansion, even a good game can seem disappointing.
Kane’s Wrath introduces six new factions which are really subfactions, specialized versions of GDI, Nod and the Scrin. The differences between the generic GDI and the Steel Talons or between Nod and the Black Hand aren’t significant enough to really change how you play, though you do get some nice new units. One GDI subfaction is heavy on mechanized walkers; one Scrin faction gets a centipede type thing to which you can add custom segments.
Because most of the differences are so marginal, there is a sense that you are being sold a bill of goods; that your experience isn’t as varied as it could be. The best expansions of recent years have been those that introduced small changes to the core game that altered how you approached it. Offering a few new Nod units and superpowers doesn’t feel like an expanded experience, even if the core game is still quite good.
If you hope to familiarize yourself with these new factions through the single player campaign, forget it. It is Nod only, following the further adventures of Kane in his insane quest to bring the truth of Tiberium to the world. It’s full of the usual hammy overacting and scenarios that introduce a few new things here and there. Some of the maps are quite clever, and the opening scenario is a real rush. You’ll get “intelligence briefings” that fill in some of the back story of the new factions, but all you really need to know is that they are trying to stop the Mad Prophet from fulfilling his destiny.
The big addition here is the “conquer the world” campaign, something that seems to have become de rigueur for RTSes. Tiberium and cities are scattered across the map and each of the three sides has a unique victory condition. The GDI must control cities, Nod must disrupt cities and the Scrin have to build superstructures. You can win simply through elimination, but the alternate conditions are more practical. You can fight the battles in the skirmish mode or just auto resolve them if you don’t have the time, and the auto resolve is fairer than you would expect from this sort of thing; much fairer than what you would find in the Total War series for example.
The different conditions do lead to different play styles, too. Since both Nod and GDI need cities, they’ll compete hard for them. The Scrin consume cities, so they can’t be ignored or all the cities will just vanish. The game pushes you to upgrade your bases, unlocking super weapons and better assault forces. The conquer the world campaign is satisfying if not especially brilliant.
The big problem is that the AI is not especially brilliant, either. It is still very weak in skirmish, happy to focus on precisely the wrong weapon at precisely the wrong time. Just as it expands too slowly and too carelessly in the skirmish game, the computer opponent in the conquest campaigns will go for hard targets instead of soft ones or move too slowly to grab good Tiberium sites.
