Command & Conquer Renegade

"A good FPS-port of an already awesome game"

Renegade as most of you know is a First-person shooter version of Westwood's Command & Conquer. But is it possible for a strategy game to be made in to a good shooter?

Oh, yes.

Renegade will be a breath of fresh air for Command & Conquer fans, old and new. Renegade, like Command & Conquer, puts you in the middle of a battle between the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the Brotherhood of NOD. You take the role of Captain Nick ''Havoc'' Parker, a member of GDI's special forces. It includes single-player and multiplayer missions, the former of which is very fun and the latter of which has some issues to be taken care of, but I'll cover that later.

Graphics:
The graphics in Renegade are very clean and crisp, although still not up-to-par with some of the other, more experienced FPSs out there, like Unreal Tournament or Half-life. But it still looks very nice, and supports from 640x480 to 1280x1024. All the tanks have their own textures, as do all the weapons and models. From a graphical standpoint, Renegade is great, but it has a little room for improvement.

Sound:
Renegade comes with a superb-quality soundtrack, although you won't really notice it too much in the heat of battle. You will notice the sound effects, however. The second you enter a tank you will notice the sounds it makes as it tracks across the field, and as you fire the turret (or missile). The announcer (unique on both sides) will let you know when your buildings or your Tiberium harvester is under attack.

Gameplay:
This game has extreme re-play value. It comes with many single-player missions for off-line fun. They vary in difficulty and can be challenging at times on the first time through. You will also notice you can fight the good fight in vehicles as well as on foot. Each side has several vehicles you can enter, ranging from the quick and agile Humm-Vee to the Mammoth Tank. There are also a range of weapons to choose from, including the standard automatic rifle, to a silenced pistol, to a sniper rifle (that looks really cool), to C4 explosives. Overall, single-player is a great experience. Multiplayer, however, is a different story.

Multiplayer mode is extremely fun, if you have a broadband connection. Even with a broadband connection, there are some lag issues to take care of. The more the lag, the worse the screen lag gets, and that is a major annoyance. I've had these problems even with a 1500kbps cable modem on a server with a 70 ping. Westwood's servers seem to be better though. If you can find a fast internet connection (or LAN), the multiplayer alone will be worth the price of the game.

Minimum requirements:
Out of the box, they are: Pentium 2 450 MHz or equivalent, 64 MB of RAM, 4x CD-ROM, 3D Accelerator, 16MB VRAM, and 500 megs of hard disk space.

I play fine at 800x600 on an AMD K6-2 500MHz with 192 megs of RAM, a 24x CD-RW, and a 64MB GeForce 2 MX400. Sometimes I'll get a little screen lag, but it eventually calms down.

Old-time C&C fans will love this game, as will First-person fans. It brings back the old C&C days in a new form, and if you have a good online connection, it can be grounds for some very nice battles.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/03/02, Updated 03/03/02