Currently Playing

• The Darkness
• Need for Speed Undercover
• Canabalt
  

Gotta say, I haven't done a straight blog post in a while. On the review front, Darkness is coming up, and the first few hours have left a very bad taste in my mouth. It's been promised that it gets better, and although I'm a firm believer that if a game doesn't engage you from the get-go then you shouldn't have to wait for it to turn into something special, this time I'm feeling sympathetic enough to keep plugging through. Why? Well, for one, it's near Halloween, and I'm trying to lock down a couple scary/horror games to look at in October, and this definitely fits the bill. For two, it does some really interesting creative things, and steals enough good ideas from other games to make me want to see more, despite having an un-fun time actually playing it.

But, enough about me.

Command and Conquer: Tiberian Twilight is coming out in 2010. Recently they released some promo-type content, including this little feature on the crawler (thanks Giant Bomb):

If you don't want to watch, the so-called crawler is the new appeal for the series. Instead of having a single main base with resources and production buildings like most RTS'es (and, truly, like every other C&C game ever) (except for renegade, but we don't talk about that one), this crawler is a mobile base, essentially. It's where resources, units, and all activity generally center around. It's a whole different strategic angle than just straightforward base expansion.

This fascinates me as Starcraft 2 is all set to come o..ut... ...wait. No, it's not. It's not even set to begin the closed beta. People *might* start talking about Starcraft 2 more next year if Blizzard starts to show it.

As for C&C 4, it seems rushed. The C&C 3 remake only just came out recently, along with a mini expansion. It's rushed-ness may easily have to do with making its own mark on the RTS genre before Starcraft 2 can manage to come out. It'll be easier to one-up Starcraft and by extension Blizzard by promoting this newer, more revolutionary strategic change to the genre with this mobile base concept, while Starcraft 2 is most definitely just like the first game with new units. They aren't shaking up the core gameplay nearly that much. If they did all of Korea would murder them.

So I guess that's pretty much my take; C&C 4 will come out before the next Starcraft, and who knows? It might actually be a lot more fun to play by actually trying something new as opposed to re-releasing the same junk all over again. But, then, maybe Blizzard will trounce all its competition in the genre as it tends to do with all its other games through perfection of tried-and-true stuff. Who's to say.

Let me know if any of that pissed you off! :D