Command and Conquer the First Decade

You know when I picked this up the other day, it was incredible because I never had all of these titles at one time and here it is early Saturday morning and I slaughtered 5 hours without even knowing it. Although I have a bad headache now. Anytime I ever played these games, I always played for the skirmish. You know what though, I am getting into the storyline playing. The generals is pretty cool but I have to still go with Yuri's revenge. Although, they fixed the bug on that which I liked. Have your MCV's captured by yuri and he just built countless dominators and what not. But oh well. Still rules all. I am not complaining. If it's a cold day out like it has been here in Chicago and there is nothing on tv, pop this game on and your time will just melt away. Great fun.

This review pretty much writes itself. You get the first 12 games from the "Command & Conquer" franchise for about 20 dollars. If you bought these at original asking price, it'd cost you about $500. Quite a steal, don't you think?

If you're not familiar with this series, I'll give you a quick breakdown.
"Command & Conquer" is what's called a real-time strategy series. Basically, you control a military base, collect resources, build bases & armies, and take out the enemy. Once in a while, you'll have a unique mission like capturing an enemy building, or trying to survive without any reinforcements. The reason this video game series has been so successful (I think) is because it's easy to use. A lot of these games have a lot of menus to scroll through, and complicated features to learn. But "C&C" is easy to learn, but deep enough to stay fresh as you play along. When the games start, you only get to have basic soldiers & buildings. Later, you get advanced tanks & aircraft, and all kinds of weird upgrades to even your money-gatherers.

There are basically 4 kinds of games in this First Decade collection:
* The original "Command & Conquer" and "C&C 2: Tiberian Sun" focus on a world where the Brotherhood of NOD (self-righteous terrorists) and the Global Defense Initiative (world peace military) duke it out. These games are meant to take place in the not-so-distant future.
* "C&C Renegade" is a weird one. It's a first-person shooter that takes place in the world of the first two games. I haven't played this one much.
* The "Red Alert" games are my favorites. The first one portrays World War II as a Soviet-vs-Allies conflict, because Einstein time-traveled to kill a young Adolf Hitler. Yes...you read that right. "Red Alert 2" is a more modern tale, with the Soviet Union being mind-controlled into invading the United States.
* The last entry is "C&C Generals" which depicts a 3-way war between China, United States, and the Global Liberation Army (aka Russian territories). This is the newest game from this collection.

Now, if you're counting, you've noticed I've only mentioned 7 games so far. The other 5 games are expansion packs. Basically, this means additional content for a cheaper price. Most of the expansion packs are kinda worthless (mainly the "Covert Missions" for the original "C&C"), because they're just more missions.

But the newer expansion packs (like "Yuri's Revenge" for "Red Alert 2") add more story, more weapons, and are worth the investment. I usually hate expansion packs, but ""Command & Conquer" has some good ones.

All of these games are solid, with half of them being great. I love the "Red Alert" series the most, because the characters are the most interesting, and the Cold War come to life is just awesome video gaming. The original "C&C" still holds up, but it definitely shows its age with its movie cutscenes and its AI issues. Some of your soldiers in the original "C&C" are real morons. Plus, I'm not as interested in self-righteous terrorism as I am in the national pride gone haywire.

"C&C Generals" is a great game, but takes a while to get used to, because the 3 armies are very different. Plus, it uses a more three-dimensional perspective than the rest of the "C&C" titles.

"Renegade" is fun, but not required gaming. To be honest, I haven't much interest to plow through it. If I do, I'll re-edit this review. But, it's unlikely I'll finish it anytime soon.

I could talk all day about the little differences between these games, but the bottom line is that this is a great set of games for a too-good-to-be-true price.
One thing I want to warn Vista (and XP) users about is that there may be a little difficulty getting a few of the games to work. Because this is all crammed onto one DVD, there's a lot of data to consider. However, if you're computer has the required specs, there are simple solutions to getting the games to work. Most of the time, I just had to go the Control Panel and tweak a few of the games. It was usually something stupid like, "Tell the program I'm using XP", or "Tell the program I want this kind of color set rather than this other color set." Some people have had problems, which is common in computer games. But with a little online search, you should be fine. Also, it's nice that the game lets you decide which games you want installed, rather than requiring the full package.

Other than that word of caution, buy "Command & Conquer: The First Decade" in good confidence. Have fun!

It's a great deal: 5 classic RTS games and all their expansions, plus one FPS, all for $20. One issue is that the games are somewhat buggy, but there's an excellent fan-made patch that restores everything to how they would be had you bought them separately. It takes care of just about any issue people have with these games.
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This package is a must-have for RTS gamers. All online capabilities still work (though sometimes a little finagling is required), and there are still plenty of people playing RA2 and Generals.

If you like the C&C universe of games, then this is for you! All the C&C games up to Generals with their expansion packs! Installation was easy for me and the dll error mention is covered in the read me and once you finish installation, all games run great. I had Red Alert, C&C95, C&C: Tiberan Sun, Renegade, and Generals, but this was such a good buy that it was really worth it. The only complain I have is they still have a problem in the original Red Alert that causes the game to crash under even XP with a invalid page fault at times so that hasn't been fixed, otherwise a great set of C&C games for a good price. (You can even play the bonus games without the original CDs. Read the readMe.)

I have allways loved the C&C line of games and this has realy made it a lot easier to play ,having all of the good ones in one place.