Command & Conquer Renegade

"So much wasted potential..."

I remember the good old days of Command and Conquer (C&C) the original. When I first got that game I used to spend HOURS at a time playing it, just one more mission and I'll quit I kept saying, then 5 missions later I'd look at the clock and it would be 2 in the morning. For the time it was an amazing game, strategic and great fun. One of the most favored units from C&C was the Commando, a unit who could kill most enemies in just one shot.
Riding on the popularity of this character, Westwood, developers of C&C decided to make a stand alone game based around the commando, using a first person perspective.
The concept is great, C&C has such a rich environment it just seems RIGHT for a shooting game. Unfortunately C&C Renegade doesn't live up to the hype that surrounded it when it was first announced, and has many flaws that stop it from being the great game it should have been.

In C&C Renegade you take the role of Havoc, a commando in-listed in the GDI or Global Defense Initiative. For those of you unfamiliar with C&C; the world has changed from what it once was. A strange poisonous material known as Tiberium has sprouted around the world. When refined this chemical becomes worth LOTS of money. Now, the GDI fight with the evil megalomaniacal brotherhood of NOD for control of this substance. Makes no sense does it? Well, C&C never really did. It's just down to a good old fashioned battle of good and evil.

The graphics in C&C Renegade are a mixed bag. In some parts they just look great, such as the second level, which has you defending a damaged GDI base then destroying a NOD base. But then there are other levels which just look downright shoddy, such as one which involves a mansion that is so devoid of furniture it's not even funny. The texturing can also get rather bland, as there's only so many times you can look at the same dirt texture. There is also much repetition in the character models, most enemies early on look exactly the same as each other, and many of the civilians look alike. I guess that's the way C&C was, but would it really hurt to give each troop a different face? It may sound like a minor complaint, but when most of the game looks the same, there's no real feeling of progress.
There are some good special effects though, such as when you shoot down a helicopter dropping in enemy reinforcements.
The gun models in Renegade are average, and unfortunately none of them seem to look like any of the guns from C&C.
Luckily, the trade off for these monotonous graphics are the vehicles and buildings. Walking up next to a mammoth tank really gives you a sense of awe as you look down its twin gun turrets and admiring the tusk missiles on the side. The buildings also look great on the outside, especially the Hand of NOD which just looks amazing in 3D. Again though, there is a downside to this, some of the classic C&C units are missing from the game. Whatever happened to those Recon bikes? Also saddening is the lack of artillery (you can actually find a couple of these, but you can't drive them) and the MRLS are only available in multi-player, further detracting from the single player experience. Luckily though, most of the other units are there, even the stealth tank!
To add even more to the flaws of this game, Westwood has made one major omission sure to anger fans of C&C everywhere, they have replaced the live actors in the cut-scenes with computer rendered characters. Sure, the live actors were tacky and corny, but that was just the theme that C&C had, and I can tell you now I loved those cut-scenes. While the FMV's are good, they aren't great, and they fail to capture the same feeling the live actors had in C&C. I guess I can see Westwood's side on this though, after all who would play the role of Havoc, the commando you play as?

As for sound, well C&C does deliver in many regards, the sound effects are fairly faithful to the original C&C, including the grunts of the troops as they take a bullet to the head. Voice acting is rather horrible, but then again C&C has never had good voice acting so that's half the fun! Some of the originals music is here, albeit remixed to a point where it is only just recognisable. Not that I really care, just a new soundtrack would have been even better. The sound is good for the most part though, as it gives the feeling that there is a war raging on around you, and that you're not just the lone hero. Hearing a helicopter zoom overhead is VERY cool, as is the sound effect when you shoot it into oblivion! :)

C&C Renegade does have many redeeming features in its gameplay, such as the ability to drive around some of the classic C&C units. There is nothing like running over a NOD soldier in a mammoth tank, it's truly something special for fans of C&C. But again, for every positive point about C&C Renegade there are negatives. One of the biggest downsides to C&C Renegade is its length. It's just too short! I managed to complete it in a weekend. Another thing that annoyed me was the difficulty settings. You have 3 settings to chose from, east, medium and hard. Each setting has an affect on the number of enemies, their health and your own. But strangely Easy mode has an auto-aiming assist option. Well, it's not so much an option but more of a feature. I thought, fair enough, I'll try medium mode cause I don't want any aiming assist. Got into the game and it was all good till about halfway through when the game started becoming MUCH harder. I decided to start over on easy mode and was annoyed to see that I couldn't turn off aiming assist. I don't want to be patronized by my games, I am capable of moving my mouse over a point on the screen. I tried shooting the enemies aiming for their heads (I'm somewhat of a sniper in FPS) but auto-aim just made the bullets hit their torso, resulting in lower damage.
Some of the vehicles are questionable too. I understand that the mammoth tank was a slow unit in C&C but I never recalled it to be THIS slow. Honestly, the speed of some vehicles is so slow you can literally get out and walk faster.
Blowing up enemy bases is also different from what it was in C&C. No longer does the commando just place C4 on the side of a building and detonate it. Now you must go INSIDE the enemy structure and destroy its control panel. You can blow it up from the outside but this takes a large amount of firepower. The buildings inside are a mess though, illogical map design makes trying to find where you're going a pain, and getting lost is not uncommon.
As for weapons, on offer we have the usual array of weapons, but unfortunately, none of them look anything like those in C&C. Your character carries with him a pistol with unlimited ammo, only useful for the lowly grunts. Later on you get bigger guns, from a machine gun to a chain-gun, flame thrower, rocket launcher, tiberium spray, electricity guns and more. But when you get these weapons is also rather illogical. For example, I never obtained the shotgun while playing through, and all the really good weapons you got on the last few levels when they were of no real help whatsoever. After completing the game I was tempted to cheat from the beginning just to be able to use some of the cool guns you get later on. Why get the most powerful at the end when you don't get to use them much? Also, the pistol seems rather unbalanced as I was able to get to the halfway mark just dropping each grunt with a shot to the head. In fact I didn't even use the machine gun to that point except on larger enemies.

Overall, C&C Renegade is disappointing, and hard to recommend to anyone. Fans of C&C will most likely be disappointed by this one, and those new to C&C won't have a clue what's going on. And with so many better shooters out there including UT2003, Halo and even Half Life, I find it hard to recommend this game to anyone at all. It's worth a try for fans, if just for novelty value, just don't expect too much from it, or it is bound to disappoint.

Pros
+ Great Concept
+ Excellent vehicles
+ Varied weapons

Cons
- Limited single player mode
- Too short
- Little more than just a novelty

Graphics: 7 Bland and boring, although there are some good vehicle models.
Sound: 9 Faithful to the original, and one of the high points of the game.
Gameplay: 6 There are many better games on the market these days, and novelty aside, there is little to C&C Renegade.
Longetivity: 4 WAY to short, and rather repetitious, in both design and structure.
Replayability: 5 Multi-player may draw you back into it, but once you complete single player mode there is little reason to go back.
Overall: 7 Disappointing to say the least, it could have been so much more, but as it is, it's little more than just a novelty.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/30/02, Updated 10/30/02