Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath (PC)

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Coming into Kane's Wrath from Command & Conquer 3 is like rummaging through a toy box of new junk, most of it action figures and plastic tanks, and mostly the same as the old junk, but with a few different shapes or sounds or colors. Maybe this one has a flamethrower and this one has a machine gun. This one's head is a robot head, and this one's head has a cool helmet. This jet plane is orange and this one is red. It helps to be easily amused when you're playing a splashy action RTS like Command & Conquer 3. After all, you're mostly here for the minor spectacle of all these little toys blowing each other up, right? But how deep into this toy box are you willing to dig? You might be both surprised and disappointed by what you find.

The mess of Kane

Kane's Wrath isn't particularly elegant, but that was never C&C3's claim to gaming. The developers could have simply bolted a fourth faction onto the side of the game. Instead, their model is the Zero Hour expansion for Command & Conquer: Generals. Take the three factions, toss some new stuff into each one, and then divvy them each into themed sub-factions. Voila! Now you have a game with nine (nine!) playable factions.

It's a bit of a parlor trick, teasing these three strands into nine, distinct for differences you might not even notice. It's possible to lose a game to a player and never notice which sub-faction he's playing. The overarching impression is still one of GDI good guys, Nod bad guys and alien alien guys. Generals: Zero Hour had real-world factions -- the United States, China and the Arabs -- balkanized into easily sussed out sub-factions -- the Chinese infantry rush, the U.S. superweapons general, the Arabic chemical warfare guy.

Kane's Wrath isn't nearly as accessible. If you play the entire campaign, you'll get a brief introduction to the Black Hand, throwaway references to the new GDI and Scrin factions, and a gratifying reveal about the Marked of Kane, but this plot stuff has no bearing on the actual gameplay. You won't find anywhere a basic overview of each faction's units, powers and upgrades, much less stats and unit values to help you evaluate how effective different units are in relation to each other. EA continues to alienate serious RTS players by treating C&C3 as a throwaway toy or a kiddie action game -- which it's not. Underneath all the speed and flashy graphics and ham-handed storytelling, C&C3 is a serious RTS.

So with a closer look at Kane's Wrath, it's no surprise that there's a method to this merriness. Here is a canny rebalancing of the game and its factions, using factors like splash damage, movement speeds, unit counters, buffing, spell powers and a new endgame featuring expensive "epic" units. The air game is entirely revamped to the point that it's nearly unrecognizable. What looks at first like a cosmetic layer -- "Oh, look, the Steel Talon get a mech in their Predator tank slot and the new ZOCOM Orcas shoot sonic bombs instead of missiles!" -- turns out to be a dramatic reshuffle of Command & Conquer 3. "Expansion" isn't the right word. Try "revision." This is a whole new game, and it's for the better.