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Command & Conquer Remastered is a big hit of nostalgia - but will it be a great RTS?You can command a horse to water, but you can’t make it conquer.

You can command a horse to water, but you can’t make it conquer.

I’ve no doubt that fans of these two grizzled soldiers will be delighted that they’ve been commanded back onto the battlefield of PC games. But as faithful as their rearming has been, they’re still working to a set of mechanics that are old enough to join the army themselves. The question, and the reason for this whole tortured allegory, remains: will these very old games have what it takes to conquer new hearts?

From the old to the new: the remastered collection will let you switch between original and remastered visuals on the fly, so you can see the way things used to be.

Watch, in mounting horror, as Stalin becomes larger and blurrier before your very eyes. If you keep watching to the end of the FMV, he stares through the screen for ten minutes straight, and then begins to climb out of your computer.

Klepacki and the Tiberian Sons. Bless their goofy hearts <3

Kia Huntzinger, centre, with Frank Klepacki (left) and Jim Vessella (right)

It’s all heartwarming stuff, and I really get what they’re going for: everything about this remaster makes me smile. But I still can’t help but feel it’s a tiny bit of a wasted opportunity. It sort of reminds me of the new Star Wars movies, which rely on “look, you remember this guy!” moments to do an awful lot of heavy lifting. And while nostalgia is a powerful fuel, it’s a volatile one, that burns out fast. Like tiberium.Remember tiberium? That mineral, from the games you liked in your teens? There it is, in the top right! Good times.

Remember tiberium? That mineral, from the games you liked in your teens? There it is, in the top right! Good times.

You can command a horse to water, but you can’t make it conquer.

And so, for the sake of authenticity, the remastered Command & Conquer will still not have move-and-fire commands, for example, which other games have included as standard for decades. Even production queues, vital in mitigating RTS micromanagement slog, precipitated a massive round of internal debate before they were cautiously included in the remaster. Admittedly, the in-game UI has been rebuilt significantly - the sidebar is tons better, and saves a lot of scrolling, plus camera controls and unit selection have been reworked. Then there’s the new map editor, and the brand new multiplayer system. But all the changes have been madearoundthe actual core of the game. And there’s the thing. Will today’s 12-year-old Vessellas and Crowleys, coming to this remaster for the first time, get hooked as they did in the 90s? Or will they just wonder what all the fuss is about, and laugh at their dads for getting so excited? In truth, I don’t know, because I’ve not had an opportunity to play yet. And because I’m not 12 anymore, I suppose.I mean, working strongly in the remaster’s favour in terms of impressing 12-year-olds is the spectacular tesla tank from Red Alert’s Aftermath expansion. I mean, just seeing it again is enough to make me want to play, to be quite honest.

I mean, working strongly in the remaster’s favour in terms of impressing 12-year-olds is the spectacular tesla tank from Red Alert’s Aftermath expansion. I mean, just seeing it again is enough to make me want to play, to be quite honest.

It could work brilliantly. You’ll all now be sick and tired of me mentioningAge Of Empires 2: Definitive Editionevery time I open my goddamn mouth, but it’s a great example of how to do a remaster. Yes, it made everything prettier, and it collected together all the scattered expansion packs for the original material (which to its credit, EA’s project also does, including the variant missions from console editions). But what drew me in was the new stuff. There were new civilisations to play! New maps! New campaigns! Monthly balance patches after launch, and new features such as auto-scouting and automatic reseeding for farms. The base game was still essentially the same, but there wasjustenough fresh meat to incentivise me into a nostalgia buy.

Vessella certainly respects what was achieved with Age Of Empires 2, and understands the perils of the Praetorian Way. Talking with me, he implied pretty heavily that should the C&C remaster do well on launch, he’d love to get the internal backing to produce new campaigns and the like. But it’s clear that was just too big a risk to take for launch. And while I completely understand the decision, I still wish he’d been able to just go ahead and roll the dice. Indeed, for all my misgivings, I’m rooting for the Command & conquer Remastered Collection to be a resounding success, so he can do just that. Seeing the Petroglyph team let loose on designing new content, with two and a half decades' worth of additional game design experience under their belts, would be an utter joy. And especially when set to a jimmie-rustling cover of Hell March.

♬DUGGEDA-DUGGEDA-DUGGEDA… DUGGEDA-DUGGEDA-DUGGEDA… DUGGEDA-DUGGEDA-DUGGEDA…(theeeese warthogs…they suck!)DUGGEDA-DUGGEDA-DUGGEDA… DOOBEDY-DEEBEDY-DOO! ♬

  • Hell March, 1996

Confession: I have edited this image to include a recursive chain of grinning generals receding into infinity, because I couldn’t resist doing so. Welcome back, commander.