Command & Conquer: Commander’s Challenges

Greetings Commander, your mission is to lead a select army consisting of a gigantic floating fortress in the shape of an ancient demon’s head, some skimpily clothed Japanese school girls, and a ‘Big Daddy’ look-a-like super soldier which sprays bright green corrosive slime… I never thought I’d ever begin a Command & Conquer review with that sentence.

Those already familiar with Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 will feel right at home with Commander’s Challenge, so for those unfamiliar, allow me to give you a two sentence update: The Russians during the cold war invented a time machine to alter the past in order to make them the dominate force, they instead triggered a series of events which led to an all out war between themselves, the Allies in the West, and The Empire of the Rising Sun from the East. It is now your soul duty to complete a sequence of challenges to overcome whichever faction stands in your way using futuristic weaponry in the past, make sense? Excellent.

Luckily for the newcomers Commander’s Challenges is a standalone package, so you don’t need to already own any previous C&C game in order to play it, though I wouldn’t recommend doing it that way. Even though C&C veterans will find the challenges satisfying, the cut-scenes nothing short of art (Ric Flair! Wooooo!), and the controls to be identical to Red Alert 3 – to any ‘n00bs’ there will be nothing more than frustration and confusion as Commander’s Challenges already assumes you’re already with the ‘in’ crowd and wastes no time adding cut-scene based plotlines and missions linked to previous encounters. If however you want to experiment and give C&C:CC a try, I’d definitely recommend going for the whole hog and buying the full retail version of Red Alert 3 before embarking on this gem of an arcade game.

For the already experienced player though Commander’s Challenge is a welcome addition to the family, continuing the proud tradition of creating a terrific tactical battlefield for you to explore, conquer, and totally destroy (all the while having a face meltingly good soundtrack backing you as you form your new world order). The graphics, mechanics, and controls are copied & pasted from Red Alert 3 to keep the already knowledgeable player from having to remember two button configuration, and the only untrodden ground will be when you are exposed to the new units (Giga-Fortress, Cryo-Legionnaire or Desolator) which came right out the PC update Uprising. If I were forced to choose a negative side of the 50 mission extravaganza, it would be that the par times are extremely difficult. I understand the irony given the game’s title, but as a 13 year fan of C&C I found some of them absolutely brutal and near impossible. Still, the most minor of gripes for one of the best 800 Microsoft Points I’ve ever spent on the XBLA.