Command and Conquer: Renegade

Many moons ago, Westwood Studios released a little game called Dune II, based on Frank Herbert's best-selling Dune series of books. This game ultimately set the scene for the real-time strategy genre of today, but earlier laid the basis for Westwood's next title - Command and Conquer. Command and Conquer, or as it is more colloquially referred to, C&C, went on to become one of the best selling games of all time, winning several awards for its contributions to gaming.

Since then, the C&C universe has spawned a veritable forest of new titles, including Red Alert, another award-winning, best-selling RTS game. One of the longest running big names in gaming, Westwood has been surfing the tsunami of success that they generated all those years ago with their first title.

The latest title in the C&C constellation is somewhat different from their previous titles. Taking a fairly big paradigm shift from the previous games, Westwood have undertaken a foray into the hugely growing world of first-person action shooters with their latest game - Command and Conquer: Renegade. Definitely an interesting move, and one which no doubt surprised many of the hardcore C&C players and delighted many first person junkies that remember growing up suckling on the teat of GDI and Nod-based games.



Undoubtably, the game will draw many criticisms from both sides of the fence - the C&C fans that just want Westwood to keep making RTS games, and the FPS gamers that want Westwood to stay out of the way and stick to what they're good at. However, no matter what, it is a fairly safe bet to say the game will do extremely well in terms of sales and popularity - the C&C brand name is a very well established one, and this is something that is more imporantant than many gamers realise.

This review will go into quite a bit of detail looking at various aspects of the game, so get ready for a bit of reading!

Next: The Single Player Game...