Command & Conquer

Stoked from their success with Dune 2, Westwood went back to the drawing board with the aim of creating their own Universe from scratch. In 1995, Command and Conquer was born. Following the exact same format as before, the game wasn’t far off being a heavily polished carbon copy of Dune 2. Suddenly however RTS games were firmly in the limelight, with a popularity boom which secured the genres’ success for years to come. Westwood also introduced a feature which has now almost become tradition, much to the appreciation of a lot of C&C fans: Utterly cheesy FMV cut scenes. Who can forget the first time Seth appears on screen? “From God to Kain to Seth, I am his right hand” soon to be, followed of course by Kain appearing and putting a bullet solidly through Seth’s brain several missions later. Despite all the hamming it up, it was this that made the C&C universe feel believable, and with Kain Westwood had created a character who would remain a favourite for years to come. 

C&C had a semi-realistic tone, and an utterly brilliant soundtrack.

While Blizzard beat Westwood to the multiplayer punch line, C&C’s multiplayer was far more enjoyable, with GDI and NOD providing differences that ranged far further than just simple aesthetics.  Westwood also treated us with one hell of an easter egg: Dinosaurs VS. NOD, which included a special extra FMV scene and a mission which gave you control of an army of T-rex’s and Raptors with which to kill poor soldiers in extremely violent ways.

Mmmm... Sandbags.

A now classic fault of Command and Conquer is fondly recalled by many as ‘the sandbag trick’, a manipulation of the fact that the enemy AI would not attack walls. Essentially you could simply build a massive wall leading right the way from your base all the way over to theirs, blocking off their flow of resource collection by simply sealing off the base entirely. The final contribution C&C made to the RTS genre was the introduction of the now commonplace expansion pack. Entitled Covert Operations, the expansion proved ridiculously challenging and made no attempt to add any story elements; simply giving you a list of missions to choose from.