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| Renegade review at Idle Thumbs [message #162631] |
Thu, 07 July 2005 11:07  |
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Crimson
Messages: 7429
Registered: February 2003
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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General (5 Stars)
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I suspect this review I wrote may bring a couple new visitors, especially since the site it's going to appear on was recently slashdotted for their review of a newer game called 'Facade'.
Anyway, I was asked to write a review for a friend who is writing the centerpiece for a new feature where they review older games. They started this new feature with Renegade as the first featured game. This particular friend is also the reason I am here... he's the one who told me about the beta test that I was subsequently accepted into (and he wasn't  )
So, I wrote the review and it was hacked to pieces. They pretty much used the first and the last paragraphs and none of the meat in the middle. So, for your reading pleasure, or pain, I present to you the full text of my submission. When the article goes live on the other site, I will provide you a link.
Basically, it's lengthy and it's about Renegade, so I presume many of you will skip right past most of this. I don't really care. 
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Thanks to Mr. Tabacco here initially letting me know about the lottery to test and preview this game before it was released, I have been involved in the Renegade community and have been playing the game since the first days of the private beta test. When Electronic Arts closed down the Westwood Studios' office in Las Vegas at the end of February 2003, Renegade was only a year old. Not wanting to leave the community stranded without an official forum, Ted "Virtual Ted" Morris of Westwood Studios requested the community members to apply to take over managing and hosting them. Out of the pool of applicants, I was selected to handle the responsibility and have been running the official forums over two years.
Command and Conquer: Renegade was definitely a huge and exciting change from the RTS classic. The single player mode of this game holds very little appeal, especially for replay value. However, the multiplayer "C&C Mode" play has had thousands of gamers hooked for the three years since its original release. Combined with a number of talented programmers in the community, Renegade multiplayer has skyrocketed far beyond its early days in variety and capabilities, if not player counts.
This game provided a very unique twist not seen before. The classic "Command and Conquer" is known to so many gamers; what a brilliant idea to re-use the familiar vehicles, character classes, buildings, and Global Defense Initiative (GDI) vs. Brotherhood of Nod (Nod) struggle and bring it to the first-person view! Many of us can remember the egotistical "Commando" from the classic game, grunting, "I got a present for ya!" when planting C4, or effortlessly killing a unit with his pistol, saying "That was left handed!". This commando is given the name Nick "Havoc" Parker.
Single player Renegade is tedious at best. Transitioned with amusing full-motion cinema scenes, you guide "Havoc" through 6 single player levels. The maps are often quite large, though sometimes you will locate or be sent vehicles to help you cover the terrain. (And of course experience the satisfaction of rolling the enemy in your tire treads!) Your accuracy and speed of completing your missions, along with three levels of difficulty, give you some replay value, but most gamers will find the multiplayer option far more fulfilling.
The multiplayer game has a broad range of appeal. Not only can you decide whether you'd like to play as a specialized infantry character or drive around in a combat vehicle, but within the character and vehicles are different specialties. Choose an anti-vehicle character to swiftly take out enemy vehicles, a sniper to hide and pick off enemy characters, or an engineer class character to repair your buildings, team vehicles, and characters, disarm superweapons and enemy C4, or drop proximity C4 as an effective deterrent against sneaky infantry. Choose a vehicle with heavy firepower, speed and maneuverability, or high armor (but never all three) to guard your base or pound on the enemy's buildings. Not only can you change tactics depending on your financial and building status, but each map has its own preferred and useful strategies.
Another major plus is that you don't have to be quick with the mouse to be successful. Personally, I have never been stellar at games requiring lightning-fast reflexes and not-so-idle thumbs, but I have certainly made my fair share of points in tank combat, or simply keeping the base well fortified with strategically-placed proximity C4 and slinging a mad repair gun to keep my buildings in the green.
Since Westwood was only given a year of existence after the release of Renegade, much of the responsibility for maintaining the game has fallen on the shoulders of the community. By far the most prolific and prominent group is Blackhand Studios (BHS), formed in August 2003 to develop what was to become "RenGuard" to combat cheating. This product was released in April 2004 and has been adopted by a significant portion of the community. BHS has since released a Core Patch which fixed several bugs left by Westwood both in the server software and the client software, and is currently in the process of producing Core Patch 2 which will further expand the capabilities of the game.
Of course, I could honestly go on about this game for hours. I have always felt that Renegade, like many games, was released with too many bugs, and too much negative corporate pressure and influence to become the hit that it deserved to be. The developers who poured close to four years developing the W3D engine and the game itself were not given the time they needed to fix some important bugs that the fans, to this day, are still working on. There is a vibrant and distinct effort within the community to keep servers running and players playing as long as possible, and it's never too late to take a peek at what you've been missing.
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I'm the bawss.
[Updated on: Thu, 07 July 2005 11:09] Report message to a moderator |
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