The franchise timeline since then is pockmarked by unsubstantiated rumors, cancellations, and studio closures. But my misunderstanding led to disappointment as Renegade was nothing more than a good-but-not-great FPS game.ĮA’s decision to switch it up rather than double down on what made Command & Conquer great definitely halted Westwood Studios’ momentum and, ultimately, most of the Westwood team left to form Petroglyph Studios. When I first heard about Renegade, I was so excited to play an RTS/FPS hybrid in the Command & Conquer universe. Perhaps intimidated by the success of Blizzard’s Starcraft, EA (who acquired original Command & Conquer producers, Westwood Studios, in 1998) pivoted the franchise in a new direction with the 2003 release of the first-person shooter, Command & Conquer Renegade.

That franchise managed to squeeze every drop out of real-time strategy’s heyday while, in the meantime, Command & Conquer sort of stumbled about like a lost sheep searching for a safe home.

This satiates the demand from kids like me who grew up playing the series’ early entries and who now want to play them on modern hardware. Microsoft and Xbox Game Studios continue to pump out new Age of Empires releases and repackage the old games in HD and ‘Definitive’ edition formats. I loved Age of Empires (and still do), but you have to admit that a Chrono Miner is infinitely more impressive than a couple of rumpled villagers and Tanya was, well… Tanya. It quickly became apparent that this new game was, by some distance, the coolest thing to have happened in my life up to that point. I was still in dire need of some tips on how to get better at strategy games but the fast-paced gameplay, B-movie cutscene acting, iconic art design, and crunching guitar soundtrack all helped make Red Alert 2 unique, endearing, and, ultimately, engrossing. With the Statue of Liberty rather comically ringed by GIs doing absolutely nothing in deployed mode despite the imminent arrival of several Dreadnaught cruise missiles, this was pure chaos from the get-go. It was something different altogether when I eventually sat down to play Red Alert 2 and established battlefield control in Lone Guardian – the opening Allied mission.

The opening moments of Lone Guardian – the first mission in Red Alert 2‘s Allied campaign

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