Welcome to Thunderdome

EA is looking for feedback.

I'd like to see RTS games make a return, but EA sucks and the last few C&C games REALLY sucked. Plus, I don't want microtransactions in RTS games.

If it's pure, I'd buy it. If it was that homeworld remaster debacle, pass.

It's on sale on Steam right now so I bought it. Haven't installed or tried it yet, but looking forward to doing so.

WELCOME BACK, COMMANDER.

I'm genuinely excited to dive into those memories. Just got to finish Pillars of Eternity first.

Fired up the original game, remastered.

They made some cool, new opening sequences, in the style of the original game, as it determined your audio and video specs.

The opening cutscenes were all in high-res.

Then the game itself was super pixilated, like how it must have looked in 1997 or whenever it came out. Bit of a disappointment.

I take it back. I found a button that turns on the better gameplay graphics. Weird that they think you'd want to play 640x480 on a large screen.

I think there have been some changes since Gordon played. I oddly didn't see high res cutscenes? I should note, I've only played the original so far. The storyline is worse than I remembered, but still very nostalgic. I played through both the NOD and GDI campaigns.

It was a fun ride down memory lane. I had forgotten how dumb the AI was because...holy shit. I also did not recall the sandbag trick. Once you get the Orcas and can put together a strike force of 6, you win.

I tried the dino levels, but was underwhelmed by the third one, which is a stupid pixel hunt. That got me to stop playing those levels. I did not attempt the other hidden bonus levels. There are other challenge levels, but meh.

Red Alert is next.

I had a lot of of fun with C&C Generals. The early multiplayer matches were always chaotic and fun.

Beat the Soviet missions in Red Alert tonight.

Oddly, I liked the overall look and feel of the original C&C better. This seemed to have a much faster pace, which is fine, but was more "cartoony".

The story was better, but still weird.

One thing I had forgotten was the importance of getting your base in the right spot and then figuring out where the attacks would come from. That last mission will have you cursing.

Pathfinding AI is still profoundly stupid, especially your ore trucks.

One thing I didn't like was your units' intelligence. I would routinely have subs sitting in the water doing nothing as enemy ships floated over the top of them. Or they'd fire on my objective and fail the mission for me.

Onto the GDI campaign.

FYI, your time for Allies mission 10 B is how much time you have left from Allies mission 10 A. This is never told to you.

This is one of those old school design decisions that used to make people break keyboards, uninstall games, and never touch them again.

Beat the Allied missions. Fun, but the original game is far superior to Red Alert. The AI wouldn't stop making ore trucks there.

Now I want to play Red Alert 2. Isn't that the one with Keri Russell?