Customer Reviews

Command and Conquer the First Decade

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

The Command and Conquer series is just incredible. Some of the first walkthroughs I wrote were for the original Command and Conquer series.

These games began coming out in 1995, and it's just amazing how fun they still are to play - and how quickly I remember the missions. They really were a ton of fun. They were great strategy, the plotline was great, and the graphics were very impressive for the time.

Sure, in modern times we might chuckle at the white-square grenade being "lobbed", but after a few minutes you get right into the spirit of things. You run over the enemy troops with your harvester, you go after that base, you build your barracks and are sucked in for hours.

I do have all the original games - but half of them won't run on modern computers! With this set you get the full set of games, all of them run quite nicely, and they are all just as good if not better as far as graphics go.

If you haven't played any of these games, you really have to get this set. These are true gaming classics that are incredibly fun to play. If you HAVE played these in the past, then you owe it to yourself to buy this set so that you can play them on your current system. The price is amazingly cheap for the number of games you are getting.

Highly, highly recommended - a must have for anyone who enjoys strategy gaming.

I got into Command and Conquer quite late, I started playing Red Alert 2, and eventually bought the collection with five games(Yuri's Revenge never worked on my Windows Xp in that version). Then I bought Generals and that kind of lagged on my comp. Now this comes out, 12 games on 1 disc, and all of them run smoothly as ever. It's all updated and gorgeous. These games never looked so good, and for the price the amount of gameplay time is ridiculous. A great buy. AAAA++++

I've always been a huge fan of the Command & Conquer games, and after owning them all individually (and losing some CDs along the way), it is great to be able to get them all back and running flawlessly on my computer.

Playing the orginal Command & Conquer and Red Alert delivers a level of original gameplay just not seen in a lot of newer games. Every game in this 12 pack is worth the price itself, and to get all 12 on a single DVD is just incredible.

As a note, someone mentioned that this bundle does not include the map/terrain editor for Red Alert, when in fact it does. It may not appear in the start menu, but you can still find it in the Red Alert directory.

I would recommend this product to anyone, from the battle hardened players of the C&C series to people who have never played the games and are looking for hours of entertainment.

If you have (like me) been craving going back to the old Command and Conquer games without the glitches that many old games have on new operating systems, this pack is for you. The price is right for six games and six expansions, and it is worth it for the nostalgia alone. The old games have certainly aged well, and it is all bundled together in a very neat little package. Command and Conquer was the game that brought the RTS genre to the masses, and for me, each of these games is as fun as the next. There is a good mix here. Some long drawn-out missions, some quick skirmishes. Some base-building missions, some stealth and espionage missions. There is even a shooter game included, in Command and Conquer Renegade. Each of the universes that Westwood created has its own charms, and stories to support the campaigns.

In summary, if you like real time strategy games, this is a good bargain deal. If you like rich universes populated with heroes and villains, this is full of them. A good set of games to spend your time in.

I've absolutely loved going back and playing Red Alert 2 w/ Yuri - I forgot how much fun it was!!! The Oblisk of light! Those Tesla coils! The ChronoTroopers! Yuri Prime! I had forgotten so much. And I was laughing out loud as I played the original. The graphics are dated, the original C&C overdramatics are there - makes for a very entertaining time. It was a bit of nostalgia, but genuinely entertaining too. If you're anything like me and have never really had an "up-to-date" computer, you'll appreciate now being able to play the games without performance issues and at maximized resolutions & detail!



I never did buy Renegade, and boy am I glad. I'm enjoying it now only because I'm not pissed off from paying full price for it. It reminds me of a Star Wars FPS I played in 1997. Being set in the C&C world is it's only redeeming value. This bundle is a great way to check out a game you missed along the way.



For me, at least, the earlier games with the simpler units boils the game back down to being a *strategy* game - something that I feel has gotten lost as the franchise has pushed the graphics and extra features to compete with other games and keep them new. The newer the game, the more it's about racing to tech up and marching mega-units across the battlefield (either that or just rush - but again, not fun!). It has given new life to these games to rediscover the strategy element.



It runs great on my system - I've got XP SP2 on an Athlon 2.5, 1gig RAM and a Radeon 9800 (256mb). Hardly a cutting edge system, but every game in the bundle runs fine; and not a single setup snag or issue (no "Catastrophic failures" or "CRC errors" for me). I haven't needed to install any patches (If it ain't broke, don't fix it!). I wonder if others that have had problems are running SP2? I did notice that some of the FMV for Red Alert II was jumpy, but I haven't rebooted in a while.



I haven't (and probably won't) try the online connections. Couldn't say what's broken and what's not in that regard.



I had Generals installed when I popped the 'First Decade' DVD in, and it told me that 'First Decade' would conflict with it and very nicely guided me through uninstalling Generals. I didn't have to remove any disks, dig out the original Generals disks, or reboot - very smooth. When I started the 'First Decade' version of Generals, it was like it had never been touched. All my saved games, awards won, even options, screen resolution and performance settings were still intact! Nice. (Yeah, I know it's all in a folder in "My Documents" - but I feared that had changed with the 'First Decade' version and I was expecting to have to monkey around with it).



Upon installation, 'First Decade' lets you choose any or all of the games to be installed. It's a slight bummer that you have to enter a separate license code for each game, but you only have to do it once. All games (except Generals) are numeric only - at least you can blast through them if you know you way around the number pad. Then you start 'First Decade' and you get a menu screen where you launch any title you installed.



Just like (nearly) everybody else, I'm super-jazzed to be able to go back and play all these games! It's great fun, highly recommended. Sounds like even if you do have some technical issues, there's patches out now to get you going (though I had no problems at all and didn't need any of the patches).

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!

You get all 12 C&C games on a single DVD-ROM. The biggie: The titles have been tweaked/updated to run well on modern Windows XP PCs (hopefully, this will also work fine with the upcoming version of Windows, called Vista).

Not much has really changed from the original titles. The reasonable $39.99 buys you a package of 12 awesome RTS titles on a single disc that runs on modern PCs. Videos/audio have not been remastered/remade. The idea was to keep the games as close to the originals as possible. The games that support multiplayer still do. So there you have it:

Every C&C game in the past 10 years optimized to run on WinXP. Enjoy.

This collection of games is not fully updated for XP. Network play was removed from two early games (C&C Dawn and Red Alert), movies are missing (Red Alert), soundtracks are missing (C&C Covert Ops), bugs that weren't seen before are appearing (game freezing when the mouse is moved to the top right hand corner of the screen), the secret dino missions appear to be gone. The DVD of extras (interviews) is being met with luke warm to negative reception.

Some people that have the original games are copying the code from their old game CDs in an attempt to patch the versions in C&C X. Electronic Arts has been mostly silent about issuing any patchs after days of complaints on their bulletin board.

The games don't really appear to be "updated for XP" at all as features have been removed and there are some bad bugs. This compilation is less than the sum of the old original games.

Read the bulletin board over at www.westwood.com if you don't beleive me.

This disc is a collection of every Command and Conquer game and celebrates a truly great franchise. All of the games on this disc were remarkable at the time of their release and many I still enjoy playing today.

The downfall of this disc is that it doesn't fix many of the glitches inherent in trying to run DOS based games on a windows platform. I won't go into the particulars, suffice to say that I hope you have copies of the older games because its almost as much of a hastle to use this disc as it was to try and get the older game discs to work.

Also, it doesn't include the map editors, specifically for Red Alert which I think makes the older copies much more whorthwhile. Being able to create your own maps increases the life of some of these games indefinitely and it is a tragedy that EA didn't include them on the disc.

If you are an avid fan it is probably worth waiting for the price to drop, yet still worth the buy simply to save space by having 13games on one disk. Otherwise don't buy it.

I guess the worst thing about this collection of games (12, counting expansion packs) is how it will take over your life. The sheer number of hours you will spend taking over Africa or defending Europe, saving or conquering America, and building fleets, armies, and weapons of total destruction will shock you. And I haven't even gotten to the expansion packs, yet. The entertainment value is mindboggling if you consider replay value which is virtually infinite. But seriously if you like real-time strategy games with challenging ai and increasingly better graphics and mind-control squids, this is your cup of tea.