Twenty-five years have passed since one RTS came into our lives, and for me, it was my very first RTS. That game is Command and Conquer Remastered Collection. Created originally by Westwood Studios, this title has been given new life over at Electronic Arts with newly updated graphics, remastered music, and updated video cut scenes. Let’s take a look at this new version.
When it comes to really old games that we loved growing up, we wish for someone to come and remake them so that we can play them again with our current PC capabilities. The great news is that some companies listen to the fans and take the next step. With Command & Conquer Remastered Collection the old was reimagined to be new with the graphics, the music, and they even did what they could to enhance the original video cut scenes. The new models for all of the buildings, units, and the map itself look like night and day versions of the originals. You can choose if you want to be nostalgic and play with the older graphics or you can hit the spacebar and switch to the new graphics. This was the one thing that made me want this update so badly. When you play the original it is very pixelated and the map size was very limited due to the PCs of the time, now we have much better resolution monitors and this allowed the developer to add a scroll feature. This feature makes you zoom in or zoom out so that the game is easier to see.
The musical tracks for Command & Conquer were remastered by the same person who originally created them, which makes it that much better. Songs like Mechanical Man and the Hell March are well produced and played. All of the music is so clear and clean, it’s hard to imagine the game before this remaster. A game really comes together when the music is right. Another thing that brings a game together is the story, and between the first C&C and Red Alert, there are plenty of video cut scenes full of story. The developer did the best they could to enhance the video quality but it was a hard thing to achieve due to the original video files were lost. They had to increase the viability of the images with copies of the originals.
There isn’t much you can say about the state of the game with how it was remade. Everything seems to gel just fine between the gameplay, the graphics, and the music. The only thing that is not very good is the video cut scene quality. Once again, however, these videos were not the originals so they had to make do with what they had.
Overall, Command & Conquer Remastered Collection is a great remaster that is worth the money to pick up. With the updates and all of the extras like a map editor and milestones to achieve, you will spend lots of hours playing through the stories for both games as if it was the first time. Normally I am skeptical when something gets remade because I don’t want the original to suffer, but this one does well with the remake.
Note: Our copy was reviewed on Steam with a code provided by PR.
