Command & Conquer Renegade

"This is perhaps the best game you could play if youre a fan of C&C"

Once upon a time, fans of the RTS were thrilled about creating an army with machine gun trouting soliders, harvesting this material called ''Tiberium'', and making very strategic plans to ''Command and Conquer'' with military might. If you were one of the many who enjoyed this a few years back, then you are in for a treat! So you say you never played Command and Conquer? Well no need to worry for you either, Renegade explains itself very well and you need not of played any of the previous RTS(Real Time Strategy)games in the past to enjoy the lush plot and graphics.

Renegade in every sence of the word is a First Person Shooter. But, unlike past FPS; Renegade makes you feel as if you are in a war. With Jets and Orca's flying over head literally blowing each other up, to being able to hijack and take over tanks and buggy's it's a gritty war between the GDI and Brotherhood of NOD.

Now lets get to the review itself, now that I've set some basics.

As always with my review I'm going to list my key System Specs, you can compare them to yours, I'll also write my own personal ''recommended'' requirements for this game.

AMD Athlon XP 1600+(1410Mhz)
256 DDR Micron
Ati Radeon 8500(OEM 250/250)
Asus A7V-266-E (Motherboard)
40gig 5400 Hard Drive
Sound Blaster Audigy(mp3+) on Klipsch 4.1
Windows 98SE

Graphics-

You'll notice I gave this game a 9, and probably wonder why since I've done nothing but rave about it. This game DOES INDEED take a MONSTER of a system to play properly. Even on my system I noticed serious slowdown during in=game cinemas and at the start of levels.. I would recommend playing this game with at LEAST 384 megabytes of DDR to play this game properly.(more on that later). Outside of the monseter system though, THIS GAME does indeed have GREAT graphics. I enjoyed the amount of on screen artifacts rendered at once. Everything from Orca jets to Tanks are beautiful to watch. The solider animation is superb as well as the ''weapon'' animations. I really think this game ranks up there with the Eliete games as far as graphic quality. The graphics are definatly are right their with recent AAA titles.(You know what they are:-)

Sound-

In my opinion Renegade has a VERY good sountrack(Most Westwood games do). The Command and Conquer series also has historically sported some of the vest voice overs, and Renegade is no exception. The music is very technoish; however, it goes VERY well with the game play. The sound effects were equally well done with guns a blazing. This game does take advantage of EAX 2.0(and HD if you have an audigy) if you have a surround sound system, it sounds EXCELLENT! If you are lucky enough to own the Klipsch Promedia 4.1 or 5.1(I worked my butt off for mine..) you were be in heavin(seriously..) great sound effects. I also give kudos to Westwood for making the amount of voice used. Renegade sports a serious amount of voiceovers all well done.

I really won't touch the story, as I really don't even want to hint at giving away spoilers. Just realize that the levels are long and drawn out, but in the end it's just a bit over 11 hours all together(first time though). The Muliplayer is an excellent addition to the game as well. I won't really touch the Multiplayer as that is NOT my field of expertise, but for those Multiplayer fans, the multiplayer is very well done, and ranks up there with MOH:AA and RTCW.

In conclusion, I think if you like Command and Conquer you might as well give this game a try, it's awe shocking to see a hand of NOD up close and personal. It's also very nice to be able to piolt many vechies from a buggy to a light/medium tank. Well worth the money for the fun factor, yes it's a FPS, but something is ALWAYS blowing up. Give it a whirl, won't dissapoint.

ClearwaterCCHS's RECOMMENDED SYSTEM

AMD Athlon or Intel Pentium 1.2 gig processor
512 DDR PC 2100
A 7200 RPM HD
64DDR based videocard

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/03/02, Updated 03/03/02