I’ve been playing Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars 3 when I don’t have a lot of friends online playing Shadowrun or Rainbow Six: Vegas for the last couple weeks and it has really started to grow on me. I’ve been playing the campaign because it will let you save any time you want and then pick up at that exact spot later. For me this is great because some of the levels in the campaign take a while and I don’t always have a lot of time to play.

So far I’ve had a lot of fun playing the campaign. I’ve been playing it on the medium difficulty and it has not been as hard as I expected. Maybe it will get more difficult in the later missions, but in the first portion of the campaign I’ve not had too much trouble beating each missions with all of the objective and bonus objectives completed. I do have some experience playing real time strategy games on the PC which helps me with build order management, but even if I did not I think I would still be doing ok.

C&C3 really seems like a great game to introduce console games to the real time strategy genre. Most avid real time strategy fans prefer to play on a PC because it is a lot easier to micro-manage everything with a keyboard and mouse . While I do agree that real time strategy games are easier on the PC I think that C&C3 has setup the controls in a way that works well for a controller. You can easily access the most common commands and building without actually clicking on them by pulling up the control menu with the right trigger. You can also easily get back to your base on the map by clicking the thumb stick down. They have added other little shortcuts that really help as well. For example holding the left Trigger and clicking A twice selects your entire army. This is great towards the end of the game when you want to rush everything in the enemy base to finish them off. They also provide shortcuts to select all the units on screen and all of the units of a specific type. So far I’ve not ran into any times while playing where I found myself wishing I could use a keyboard and mouse.

The missions run at a good pace. If you take to long to attack the enemy trying to build up a huge army they will come looking for you, but if you send your troops out to attack to early you find them overwhelmed. I find them challenging but not so hard that they are frustrating. One item in the game I’ve really grown find of is using engineer to take over enemy structures. Towards the middle of the game this saves me a lot of resources buying additional power generators and harvesters . Instead of stopping production of my army to build more power plants I just build a couple engineers. In most of the missions the the enemy will have a couple areas they control on the map. I tend to attack the smallest one first and only take out the actual troops. I then use engineers to take over the buildings. This gives me ore power and harvesting resources without the trouble of building them. I’ve found this tactic to be very effective in the GDI missions.

One other part of the game I’ve really become fond of is the cut scenes between missions. They are very cheesy, but that makes them really funny within the confines of the game. To see actors from shows I like playing these roles, being overly dramatic, is great fun.

Overall I would highly recommend Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars 3. It is a lot of fun to play and despite being a real time strategy game it plays really well with the controller. With the release of 5 more multiplayer maps today and news that more are expected C&C3 has a long play life still ahead of it.