Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath is a standalone real time strategy (RTS) expansion from EA Games. What this means is, for those of you who loved C&C games in the past, but were put off by all the expansions you would have to buy every few years, you can just go out and buy C&C3: Kane’s Wrath and begin your futuristic global domination plans without having to buy anything else, install anything, or swap any discs. This is perfect for fans of the old series or those wanting to get into a good solid RTS.

C&C3: Kane’s Wrath was originally released on PC in March as an expansion for Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. As a console title, EA decided to make Kane’s Wrath a standalone title to avoid installations and save precious Xbox hard drive space, a smart move on EA’s part. While I was never really into the Command and Conquer series, I did play them long ago, and from what I can gather story wise, Kane is some sort of self-proclaimed messiah and while he had a large number of followers in his NOD army in the past, the GDI had recently wiped them out and thought to have killed Kane. Now you, as Kane’s only commander in a ruined underground lair, are charged with rebuilding his army, gathering back or destroying all the splintered rival factions that were once part of Kane’s powers and reviving the messiah’s prophecy. Please forgive me if I’m totally wrong about the story but as the instruction manual doesn’t really help and there is no back story within the game, I see this title from the perspective many other gamers out there might with no prior experience.

Graphically the game looks great as an RTS, lighting effects, a lot happening on the screen at a single time, big armies moving about, lasers, bullets, explosions, the whole present-acceptable graphics for this type of game are here and with very little slow down, if any. The big graphical aspect of this title are the cut scenes, real-life actors portray real-life video game characters using real-life film, just like they did in the 90’s, but with crisper, clearer high definition video. The acting itself is crazily overdone, which I feel makes it that much more entertaining to watch, especially if you have no idea what the actors are ranting and preaching about in the first place. Plus, if you’re the type to complain that games aren’t realistic enough, you can’t get much more realistic that real life.

C&C3: KW’s video goes hand in hand with the audio, as almost all forms of voice acting comes directly from the real-life videos, it only makes sense that they would be spot on with the syncing. Otherwise the voice acting from your units are as average as any other RTS, perhaps not as creative in what they say but just as crisp and clear. There’s also apparently some music in the game, while it wasn’t bad music, it didn’t really offer much of anything aside from noise to fill the silence, players may not even notice that music is playing while you amass your army of evil.

When I was informed I would be reviewing an RTS on a console, my first thought was that this would be a pain to have to play without a mouse and keyboard. After fiddling with the controls for a while, I still think a mouse and keyboard would be better, but the way C&C3 uses a wheel based control scheme to easily and quickly access your groups, buildings, and powers makes it as tolerable to play as anything without the preciseness and quickness of a mouse and keyboard will let you. After playing for a little while and getting used to the controls, you can find yourself making groups, sending them to attack, sending a spy to capture a building, start building new vehicles and structures all within seconds.

The game is split up into different sections from the easy to maneuver menus, options, a boot camp tutorial, the usuals, then moving into single player mode we have three modes of play to choose from. Campaign mode is just that, a 13 mission campaign spread out over 3 acts in which Kane rebuilds his army through power and tries to regain his past land. With this mode of play (with all single player modes actually) you can play using three different levels of difficulty and with both primary and secondary objectives, you can replay each mission a number of times differently. The biggest downside to this mode of play is that you can only play as the NOD army, which can feel repetitive at times. We also have a single player mode called Kane’s challenge, here you play through 10 missions in which different types of objectives must be met and you play as the 9 factions involved in the story. Third mode of single play available in this game is your basic skirmish, no rules or objectives just instant war. Once you’ve completed all the missions and feel you have survived Kane’s Wrath, think again as C&C3:KW has online play. Unfortunately the servers have been down all week so far and if they come back up before deadline, I will write about it… otherwise, I guess the fact that you can’t even get online says enough about how it plays against other humans. When I first tried to play online however, I received an email from EA thanking me for registering my game… which I don’t think I did, automatically or not… really creepy. From the manual I gleam that there are five modes of play online: Versus, king of the hill, capture and hold, capture the flag, and siege mode. Until I actually get a chance to play these game modes, I cannot comment on them, but otherwise it’s pretty self explanatory how they work.

All in all if you’re a fan of the past Command and Conquer games, if you’re a fan of RTS games, or if you’re just looking to get into the world of RTS, I recommend picking up Command and Conquer: Kane’s Wrath for the Xbox 360, while it doesn’t have as much content as the original Command and Conquer 3, it is twenty dollars cheaper and doesn’t require any disc swapping or installations.

Graphics: 3.0 / 5.0

Game play 3.5 / 5.0

Sound 2.5 / 5.0

Replay value 2.0 / 5.0

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