Command & Conquer Remastered - One Of The Greatest Remasters Ever Made
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- It may be 25-years-old, but Command & Conquer remains one of the greatest strategy games ever made - and the recently released remaster is a simply exceptional piece of work. Alex Battaglia has the full lowdown on the modernisation of a stone-cold classic.
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Played it throughout the weekend, absolutely love it. So faithful to the original. Lets hope EA give the license to Petroglyph to work on a remaster of Tiberian Sun/Red Alert 2... or even better, a brand new C&C game!
Agreed. Rts gaming has been dead for awhile. It would be awesome to see a new cnc that's actually as good as the old ones updated work strat zoom like supreme commander
Tiberian Sun was my teenage years
I hope EA just gives Petroglyph a permanent license to do CnC stuff
@sal zerilli There is none, or at least I'm not aware of it.
@sal zerilli Looks like it's there in the options menu, 9:24
See Blizzard, this is how you ‘reforge’ something...
They know - check StarCraft 1 Remastered.
They really fucked up with WarCraft 3 Reforged
And only $20.
@@igorthelight the starcraft remaster and the warcraft reforge are wildly different endeavor though, starcraft remaster is literally just a reskin, the new version literally still runs playbacks of games from the original, it has 1 to 1 compatibility in every sense of the word, its the same game. warcraft 3 tried to be much more than just a modern reskin which is why it failed.
Lol
Wait a sec are you praising EA?
I like that trend of super-high-res remasters of old 2D games. It really brings them back to life.
Hell yea and shows a new generation that the classics really WERE/ARE that good and they will never die.
Yes, they basically look like we remember them.
For me, the modernized controls are much more important. I don't mind pixelated graphics, but I can't stand outdated control schemes.
@@waisinet This is the funny part. Looking at the footage I swear I remember it looking in many parts like the remaster does, such as the construction yard. Then again we played these games with CRT monitors which have naturally softer picture so the low res pixelated jaggedness didn't show as much.
@@Jaakko_Ruotsalainen ,
CRT monitors were also pretty small back in 1995 when I first played this game. I had a 15" (closer to 14" viewable). A lot of visual problems get reduced if the image is smaller.
Its late 1995. I am 13 Years old and i play C&C Tiberian Dawn at a friends House.
My Mind was blown away this day.
The combination of Base building,Funding Managment and Strategy was something else.
My Love was cemented that Day and was deepened with Red Alert a year later.😍
Was it a censored version of the game, though? I'm noticing you capitalise all your nouns :p
I will never forget my dad taking me to WH Smiths in 95 to buy this game, still have the big box on the shelf :) Just the installer blew my mind in 95. Definatly checking this out!
It's something Alex didn't mention, but that installer is still here, in a way, just be amazed at your first startup of the game.
@@3dmaster205 Love that they've kept that, the original dos install was all part of the experience. :)
I also remember going with my dad to buy this. 1990s was a great time to be a kid with a computer
i remember getting it from beatties toy shop.
Yes and arriving home for the game to spit a error that the computer needed more 2mb of ram 😂
2020: a year where EA managed to be better than Blizzard. We are in bizzaro timeline people.
EA had nothing to do with developing this game.. they are a Publisher not a Developer.. Fuck people are ignorant.
@@PunxTV123 They still own the rights though and they are the ones deciding if they wanted this to happen and release it.
If they said "no, we are not doing this" then this would not have happened.
@@PunxTV123 This is the same like saying Disney has nothing to do with the Star Wars sequels. And we know how that went.
EA as a publisher has a pretty far reaching hand on their subsidiaries demanding impossible deadlines moronic engine conversion and etc...
Also knowing that this is nothing but a PR move to boost their reputation. Lure customers and developers to a false sense of security so when they feel safe they can get back to money grabbing and repeat the cycle.
Strategy: Buy this pack - - >The'll move on to RA2 and TibSun remaster - - > DO NOT PRE-ORDER, do not show them any sign of trust, don't let them believe they already have the bucks and can push developers to impossible deadlines and poor quality. The remnants of Westwood showed they still care and still deliver if left to work properly. Then if we watched firmly we prob get another great remaster. And maybe we can hold them accountable long enough for quality new products too. Not holding my breath tho
activision blizzard has been dead for quite a while, why are ppl still surprised?
@@PunxTV123 it's like saying WB has nothing to do with the disaster of DCEU since it was produced by Legendary Pictures and Syncopy, and WB "only" distributed it. No, no, WB as the distributor and owner of the IPs has many things to do.
That Westwood logo. Oh yeah
i wonder where the devs are now
@@leoSaunders didn't some original developer return for the remaster?
@@Kyle07 Yep; many of the Westwood guys have founded/went to work for Petroglyph games; and petroglyph games have worked on this remaster. Also, the original composer Frank Klapaki did all the redone music for the remaster.
Westwood lives in death
Petroglyph Games are the spiritual successor to Westwood Studios, it was founded by ex-Westwood Studios employees who went on to work on Star Wars: Empire at War including many other RTS titles and now Command & Conquer Remastered Collection. Frank Klepacki the composer who did all those C&C soundtracks is currently the audio director at Petroglyph, and worked on this remaster as well.
This remaster brought me right back to 1996. I spent so many hours of my high school days with these games. $19.99 is a miniscule amount to recapture something from my teenage years. I'm glad some of the guys involved with the original game were able to help for the remaster.
I got it for $6.99 on Origin!
@Aryan Toon I used to get the custodian to let me stay after school after he was done cleaning the ESL room. I stayed till 10pm! Got grounded a few times, but it was worth it. Childhood memories.
Preordered this after learning about them having a "Community Council" and open sourcing the entire codebase. Two very promising signs. I'm glad I don't regret my decision . Could this finally be a sign that EA is going to treat C&C with some respect at last? Let's hope so.
Yea they even got the old team back to remaster it
"some respect at last"? ... they are milking a franchise and get a lot of money for games that cost very little to develop for. ... I also would play a Red Alert 2 remastered. But it is what it is: easy money for no creativity, no new ideas. ... It's a shame that there are no new good RTS out there on a Starcraft 2 level. I would love to play a new RTS game with a great story and innovative gameplay mechanics.
@@tomsmolinski9833 If you want to split hairs just to be able to shit talk EA, then, 'sure', they're "milking" it - by delivering a product that is EXACTLY what fans/customers want. We can debate the merits of remasters vs brand new content, but the market has responded extremely favorably to almost all of these remasters(and, frankly, it likely has to do with the utterly bland vanilla quality of today's games in every regard but visuals, with many of these older games, C&C, Halo, offering a much more enriched gameplay experience). Not only are they budget friendly to produce(IF they sell), but that's still reflected in the consumer price. Unless $20 is 'outrageous' to you for two complete titles+expansions that have been remastered.
Weak criticism
@@tomsmolinski9833 ,
I wanted the SAME game with updated graphics and I got exactly that at a very reasonable price. And while I DO also want a new game, maybe infusing them with some cash is what's needed to get that new game?
I'm also confused... you complain they are "milking a franchise" by releasing this, but say you also want Red Alert 2 remastered?
Never played it, but this is the perfect chance to finally play it. Sounds like credit is being done.
I hope EA finally sees that there is still a massive audience for classic style RTS
honestly rts was the best genre before all these crap mmorpg and mobas, now battle royale shitshow
@@DarkP1 *oh no popular game genres i dont like*
You mean fans didn't like the DOTA rip-off C&C 4?
such nonsense, the franchise is dead. But let's dig up the body and shit on it with C&C mobile.
@@DarkP1 all these mass pvp and battle royal games are utter sheep garbage, tired of them.
My theory: I think EA only cares about how much money they can squeeze out of it. And if they determine that they can squeeze an average of 100 bucks out of a free to play game for cosmetics. Or even worse more money on average per player for pay to win, you will get that.
Man... nostalgia hits hard. This was my go to game in the 90s.
Which one
RA2
I've always sucked at Tiberian Dawn, but I loved watching my dad play, lol.
Ya, these games were my childhood and what got me into PC gaming.
@@Aaron-og1pg epico
The good old days when my friend will bring his full size tower over so we can play some lag free lan games. Those were the good times.
lan parties were awesome. Now everyone is stuck in their rooms and the social aspect has taken a massive dive.
Lan parties..... Sheds a tear
I used to always got to my friends and we would set up 2 ps1s and tvs and play all day and night
@@sladey21 God I remember those days... everyone plays online now with consoles and stuff and yes the practicality of it all is at people's fingertips but that what you just wrote was all of our eras when you couldn't wait for a weekend cos you knew it was going to be a weekend of all nighters!
The big thing for me is I can't believe how fun this game still is.
I can't believe how much I still suck at it, lol.
@@CaveyMoth As a kid, some of the missions were a bit too difficult, until I found out you could edit all the unit parameters in the .ini files. The unit health, weapon type, weapon damage, it was all in plain text.
The Red Alert Allied missions became a lot easier when the rocket soldier fired nuclear missiles. I wonder if that trick still works in the remastered version.
[ranty rant rant]
No, no, no, you've got that completely backwards - what you REALLY mean is "I can't believe how much fun games USED TO BE!" - how much BETTER games used to be
That's the entire reason why these remasters are literally top selling games today - they offer substance and quality of gameplay experience that is almost nonexistent today. Modern games are just bland ass vanilla bean mediocrity... "...but, just look at how incredible the graphics are!!!" Meanwhile, I struggle to get much more than halfway through modern games(depending on the game; single player campaigns are often less than only 10hrs long these days, which is just mind numbing compared to 15-20 years ago) - yet, I've been playing the Halo remasters and now the C&C remasters much more than the "newer, prettier, better, superior" modern games.
If you can't tell, I've become rather cynical towards the game industry, and towards publisher-developers in specific(it takes one of them to fuck up a game - it takes both of them to fuck up the industry). Growing up playing these classics in the '90s, the '00s, even going into the '10s we were still seeing qualit, GAMEPLAY FOCUSED games coming out that were absolutely superb. The Bioshock series & Alan Wake are two of my all time favorites, no question about it. But, generally speaking, we've seen the industry as a whole fall off a cliff in regards to pure and utter user focused gameplay experience, with graphics and occasionally audio quality being the only actually modern/new elements of new games.
I could rant for a while on this so I'll just leave it there - but here's to hoping that the absolutely ridiculous success that these remasters are seeing will wake the industry up. Even considering the improved visuals, no one is buying/playing these because "OMG THEY LOOK SO INCREDIBLE!!!" I mean they certainly look great, but these are remasters, not complete remakes, and as such they're still largely based on the foundation of the original, they're still largely visually dated. No, people are playing these games because - like was said - people can't believe how incredible the GAMEPLAY is. It's the GAMEPLAY selling these games(and the fact that they actually work on modern hardware now), plain and simple. I don't even buy the 'nostalgia' argument; if the gameplay didn't hold up, then nostalgia isn't going to keep me playing for more than maybe an hour. No, this is simply what QUALITY GAMEPLAY looks like.
@@RyTrapp0 sorry..but no..its really not 'all that'..i remember it being 'amazing' ..turns out nostalgia is sugar coated in your head..graphics are sharper sure..game is dull and boring, pathfinding is still shit.
tornapart75 man CnC pathing compared to other games after and before it is incredebly good
A perfect remaster - it makes it look like how my childhood mind thought it looked. Exactly how it should be done.
Now we need RA2 and everything else - make sure you buy this so that they continue to remaster.
I hope the sales would be good so maybe they could consider remastering Yuri's revenge as well
Like I said above, it is the number 1 best selling game on Steam at the moment.
I spent so many hours playing skirmishes as a kid, love Yuri's Revenge
@Pavel Tikhonov Sadly, the issue with Dune games is that copyright holders of Dune, the Herbert estate, don't want to grant the rights to remaster them; and no game company right now has the license to make new ones. As the estate holder said about remastering the Dune games when people asked: "Everything old should stay old."
@@3dmaster205 Based.
they'll definitely remaster that :) it's an expansion
Watching Kane in the bonus scenes in Red Alert when he would coach and help the FMV actors just made me think even more how Kane is a great leader.
12:27 - ahh yes, the classic APC full of engineers tactic... only to see the APC get blown up and all your engineers killed before they could reach a building...
wonder why he didn't just run those infantry over with it
@@InnuendoXP gotta send in the decoy apc first
That's why you send 5 of them from different flanks when possible lel
At least it isn't the instant unload NOD Subterranean APC. That thing made me rage quit a few times when I first played TibSun skirmish...
X-Key is your friend. use it often and wisely when commanding C&C infantry.
Yes, C&C had a button for social distancing back in 1995.
AoE 2 DE: Finally, A worthy opponent.
Worthy? Dude, this game is just pure nostalgia pandering. None of the gameplay problems is even touched, the same old irritating bugs with harvesters, and they didn't even touch the shitty pathfinding. Unlike AOE2DE which made a solid attempt to deliver a better experience to the player, CNC Remastered is as cheap as one of those Sony remasters.
@@korke_ someone's triggered
@@nasseralharbi5528 yeah someone is very triggered
@@korke_ How mad are you from a scale of 1 to "jorgekorke"?
@@korke_ Dude, you're just fuckin' wrong mate.
Nostalgia pandering? Maybe. The core of the game is fundamentally untouched. The updates that C&CR does make are all visual or UI improvements. The way the game functions at its core is unaltered. This was a *deliberate* decision, and one that was made after some pretty serious discussions with C&C fans: people over at OpenRA, as well as C&CNet (sidenote: if you *do* want to see a C&C remaster that *plays* modern, check out OpenRA).
However, mod support means that fans are able to make those decisions. Rebalance, improve the AI, alter the way the game plays. That's all possible. And remastering the audio from the original samples, upscaling the video, redrawing all of the art assets, working with fans to manage expectations and ensure they were doing right by the people who stuck with C&C, tracking down as many originals assets as possible, pulling in a third-party studio (founded and run by C&C developers who left EA) to get the talent to make sure the job was done right, and updating 25-year-old code to run on modern operating systems, refactoring it to make mod support possible, and going through the legal nightmare of GPLing a substantial percentage of the sources to a videogame (not to mention all of the internal fighting and politics at EA I can't help but imagine had to happen to make that a reality)... all of that is far from low-effort.
They just didn't allocate their efforts they way you wanted them to.
The hours I put into these games back in the day. Now this is how you do a remaster.
It looks as good I had imagined it did in my head when I played them years ago..
Time to put those hours back again
nobody cares get a life
@@bobsagget823 Exactly, so get out and do something actually worthwhile instead of hating.
Shadowsword Mars Pattern oof nice reply!(Really)
They absolutely have to do this kind of remaster with Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge!
Is it over Yuri? No Comrade Premier, it has only begun.
@@donniebentley6813 xddddd
@@donniebentley6813 it is over after a game which we believe never existed called 'command and conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight
TS/RA2 run on win 10 in widescreen with community patches unlike old C&C and Red Alert, which are on some configuration problematic. If they want to do a remaster, then remaster C&C4 into something that is not an utter failure by having hard look at reworking game mechanics and silly unit design. Personally, I do not see it coming unless they give the team the necessary time to experiment until producing something viable and innovative as happened with Warcraft 3 with prolonged development due to experimentation yet created DOTA in the process. Usual, hurry, release it now and you can patch it later in the datadisc if people care enough will not really work with anything other than audio/visual UI facelift as happened with 2020 C&C remaster, and while Generals would be also viable to redone, there is already Generals Evolution mod for RA3 in development, so it likely would not happen due to free competition. Generals was not played for his superb campaign anyway because there was not a great campaign to begin with, so RA3 mod adding skirmish and MP is all Generals needs once they manage integrating dozers into RA game with construction yards and add key shortcuts for fast construction, until then, not so much. C&C fans should not press EA into developing something that has poor chances for good sales because that will kill any chances for a high-budget C&C project in the near future...
@@donniebentley6813My LIFE for Yuri!
I really wish you guys had done some coverage of warcraft 3 reforged simply because it would have been fantastic to compare to this remastering effort. Night and day. Imagine telling someone in 2010 that EA would be showing blizzard up in terms of rts value and effort
right? it's almost as every company tried to fight for the EA award. pathetic
I'd believe it. I was more off of Blizzard in 2010 than I was EA even though EA shot itself in the foot with tiberium twilight.
No Idea why you're saying it's EA when Petroglyph Games did the work. EA was just publishing.
EA seems to be in some sort of redemption era right now.
Warcraft 3 as a game is fundamentally flawed. The lipstick on a pig or polish on a turd analogies are very true here.
Starcraft Remastered is a way better effort done. Though the Age of Empires 2 Remaster is an even better job still. These two games are not fundamentally flawed either. They were good back in the day and are still good now.
I will never forget how many LAN Parties we had back in the day. How many sleepless nights or/and a whole week playing Red Alert when we didn't have to go to the school that week (for every 2-3 months of school we had 1 week off). I will definitely buy this. The soundtrack alone is worth it. Damn, nostalgia!!!
so much love went into this remaster. I hope we get tiberian sun and red alert 2 remaster too
Never finished c&c1 back in the day.
I guess I can start over again with the remastered 👍🏼
The Nod ending is still one of my all time favourites from any game 👍
YOOooo!!! That Hell March Theme hit me so hard in the nostalgia feels ! Petroglyph Games did some real good work !
Spectacular remaster. Especially the fact they provide the source code. That way, it's now possible to add the scanlines back for example.
Why would you want that? The original DOS game never had those anyway; it was a lazy upscaling method they used to play 320x200 videos in the 640x400 Windows port.
I'm loving this! Best EA release in years
Agreed. The game is fantastic, the 90's in 4k!
@@GodhandPlusOne Relax dude. No one said they weren't giving credit to the devs.
Havent bought an EA release since 2011's Battlefield 3. The devs are to be commended here. Incredible Blizzard fucked up WC3 reforged.
@@GodhandPlusOne Because more than likely they have the power to pull the plug for projects as "niche" as this? It's a miracle this project even happened, considering the last "game" we get in the series in a decade is a stinking, terrible mobile game.
@@GodhandPlusOne Because as the publisher they can, and almost always do, get their hands on in the project because at the end of the day they are the one who bares the financial burden. And we've seen just how wrong that can go. The devs deserve the credit for the majority of the work but you can't ignore the people risking the money, especially since this is the first time in a long time they were smart enough to put the right people in charge and let them do what needs to be done. That's probably the most important part of this whole effort, is that EA let the team do what needed to be done and a kick ass product was the end result. Hopefully they will see this as a sign and branch out to Dune 2000 and Tib Sun, maybe even with some tweaks getting to RA2, but I think more than that EA will see that when a team does a project the right way it can be a huge success.
The soul of Westwood: "I've got a present for ya!"
Hoping we get Tiberium Sun, Red Alert 2 next with all the DLC. Love'd Yuri's revenge and his overpowered faction. Who doesn't like a cloned platoon of Yuri's that can mindcontrol an entire army?
I'm a mechanical man. When I see C&C, I click
"I'm a mechanical, I'm a mechanical, I'm a mechanical man" ...
I wish TotalBiscuit lived to see this game
Ye
Imagine RA2 & TIB SUN remastered! All parties have done such a great job!
Yes let's go and revive this franchise
Don't forget Dune 2000! Should be a bit easier since it's the same base engine and less tweaking than RA2 would need
@@chomp7927 maybe when the new movie comes
@@onelead Amen to that
Yes god please those two are the best.
I didn't even know you guys would be covering this, thank you. The sales figures I believe were way beyond what they were expecting, so even with the day 1 flaws and stuff, we're not only getting continued support, but more remasters I think! I have a few niggles with the review (a lot of the improvements you cited were actually in RA1, The Tiberian Sons isn't Frank Klepacki's band, etc etc) but overall actually having a professional review itself is very nice!
I played so much Red Alert back in the 90's. I'm having a great time with the remaster and I'm really looking forward to TS and RA2
"I'm so lucky growing up with this, not fortnite." -- from Steam reviews :-) I am hyped.
"The future is now, old man" -- Fortnight forum, probably.
Fortnite's creative core and design has revolutionized the gaming industry.... Even though they made the game become shit with all their bullshit, the main idea behind it is genius.
Amen to that!
Oke, boomer
I pity those kids that grow up with either that game, Minecraft, League of Legends, Overwatch, or basically any mainstream garbage that we're now in today lol.
some guy from csi: ENHANCE!
*c&c switches to 4k mode*
Get me a hard copy right there.
This really looks like the gold standard of remasters tbh. I'd love for TibSun+Firestorm & RA2+YR to get the same treatment, whilst I did really enjoy my time with C&C + RA1 - its the further couple titles that I absolutely adore.
I agree, i mean ra1 will always be iconic and i will always be playing it, but TS/Firestorm and Ra2/Yuri are top of the top, by far the best RTS games ever made imo. We need a TS/Firestorm remaster next and hopefully its out within the next couple of years
Red alert retaliation 100%
10:55 The examples you provided are not the remade music. It's the original music, but in CD quality stereo. Remade tracks are available in bonus playlist and sound different.
Are they the same quality as the OST on Spotify?
Yeahh, kind of a weird example. At least the music is in stereo, without having to modify the .mix files like you'd have to do in order to get higher quality music into the original games.
@@aaron1182 Yes, but I think Spotify version is limited to a few tracks. In the remaster everything is available in high quality.
I think one of the original expansion packs included extra songs and even new lyrics or extensions to the original soundtrack.
His whole explanation about the music was off. The Tiberian Sons music was purely a bonus, and unrelated to the normal remastered music.
When this game came out I was 9 years old, and it was my first foray into strategy, and I was hooked immediately. I have always wanted to know what the Commando unit looked like! He made me want to see the Arnold Commando movie, so I always pictured the unit as an Arnold! Me and my friends would quote his dialogue everyday in school, so when the teacher would turn her back, my best friend would yell out "I GOTTA PRESENT FOR YA!" then launch a waded up paper ball at me, then everybody would burst into a fit of laughter with the teacher in confusion.... Ahhhh the good old days!
Also I couldn't not mention the only strategy game that I could implement my ultimate cheese move of loading up 5 APC's with 25 Engineers and charging into the base, whenever an apc would blow up I would just start grabbing engineers and making mad dashes to the Construction Yard/ Barracks/ Garage and if I got them just start pumping units out in the middle of the base! It was glorious!
Damn, I remember playing this game back in 1996 oh how far games have come. I'm definitely buying the remastered.
I legit shed a tear of pure joy when I first loaded this remaster, GDI Mission 1...and heard the first few riffs of Act on Instinct play. I was instantly teleported back to 1995 and I was playing C&C on my dads old Compaq PC. Not even C&C Gold....the original DOS version...
LAN option is back in this!!
0:23 Nice haircut, Alex :P
I played Red Alert and og C&C to death on Playstation 1 with my friends. We spliced the pathetically short link cable (my friend was a Radio Shack enthusiast) to 60 feet so we could play in different rooms. Probably one of my favorite gaming experiences in my life. This remaster is a love-letter to the original!
I love this game, bought it when it came out in 95. Now I have the Collector’s Edition pre-ordered, it comes out in the fall. Been playing NOD campaign and it’s just superb.
How much did you pay for it back in 1995? I was 7 years old
@@Sam-pn2kc It was 400 Finnish Marks (our currency before the Euro) which is now about 95€ if counting inflation. Games were expensive back then. I was 14 years old and had to save for a long time to be able to buy it.
12:10 those flamethrower infantry though, god those things are insane.
Indeed just spread them out though cause if one explodes they all explode when too close together
They force players to take a more tactical approach than "rushing in tons of units". Too bad Red Alert just completely lost that, and was nothing but tank spam.
I still remember buying it in 95, played hundreds of hours. One of the best games of all time. I had no idea this would also include Red Alert 1, I thought it was just C&C1.
it also includes all expansions... and all the exclusive content from console versions :)
Do a comparison to the PS1 version! I had it back in the day
They used the cutscenes from the PS1 for this AI-upscaling, because they're higher in colour quality, and slightly higher in resolution.
Though honestly, overall the PS1 versions were pretty bad. Big battles caused serious slowdowns due to not enough RAM, the buildings had vastly reduced animations, and no build-up animations, the units and structures had no shadows... in Red Alert they even removed roads on the maps just to save some memory.
@@Nyerguds yea bro I completely agree with you. But my childhood was forged around this game and the two ps1’s my dad had in which he went around the country (Canada) to find the cord (what I think is one of the first versions of an HDMI type cable, idk tbh) which allowed two player capabilities. Idk why but apparently it was a hassle to find. But yea as soon as I heard this was coming out I knew I was getting it.
I still play this on a PlayStation regularly.
@@Nyerguds Yeah, the final missions in PS1 were a stutterfest!
It's never too early in the morning to learn.
@Mike UK "one of the first" does not mean, "the first"
@Mike UK english will do you so much better once you learn it.
5:14 I was never a fan of the scanline approach in the Win95 version of the games. It looks jarring and dark. My theory is that the only reason they did it this way was because PCs back then were not fast enough to do bilinear interpolation to 2x the resolution on both axes so they only did the interpolation in the horizontal direction. They used an extra, pregenerated color lookup table file for each specific video to quickly get the palette color index that best matched the average between the two neighboring pixels and doing it in the vertical direction as well would have required yet 2x more lookup operations. Maybe the better Pentiums at the time could have done it, my 486DX2 certainly couldn't.
There's a bit of useless trivia I'm sure only diehard fans of the originals and coding afficionados will appreciate...
Not sure if the interpolation speed even matters that much since they use that table anyway.
(ugordan? Is that you? We need that VQA encoding goodness, man!)
@@Nyerguds Not sure if you had something like a 486DX66 back in 1996, but, yes, every table lookup did cost you. If you only did the interpolation in the horizontal direction, the table lookup cost was manageable, doubling the horizontal pixel resolution. If, however, you wanted to interpolate the vertical lines inbetween as well, that was 4x more pixels to look up *and* draw on the screen. I can, with conviction say, that my 486DX66 was not up to that task, either for the lookup of the blit operation afterward. It's been a long time, I don't rember anymore. Back then HW blitting was still not a standard so you relied on raw CPU power to do it. I actually think only the higher-end Pentium machines of that day would have managed 15fps interpolation without screen tearing due to the table lookups and blits.
Also, yes, this is ugordan. Why would you want VQA encoding after the remasters release, though? I thought they used a more modern codec nowadays so there was no point in working with the old executables?
@@ugowar Why would you run the Win95 version on a 486DX66 anyway? Would win95 itself even run properly on that?
As for the vqa encoding... come now. You really think remasters are going to stop us from messing with these old games? Though, on a more serious note, my patch upgraded C&C95 to such an extent that existing extensive mod projects like Dawn of Tomorrow are actually really hard to port. I added loads of extra mission making features that would take a lot of work to reimplement in the code, and might not work at all in the remaster because of its closed-source GlyphX side (like mission-configurable extra colour schemes). Not even going into the whole "remaking all modded graphics in high res" detail.
C&C remaster is so damn good , please I hope this done well I would LOVE to see C&C 2 and Red Alert 2
i rarely, ever buy a game at full price the day it's released, but this, this i had to. the love, car attention and focus on community is absolutely amazing. this is an absolute love letter to the fans of this game. I played it this weekend and was in absolute shock that i remembered the lines to so many of the cut scenes. i had a smile ear to ear and was in awe playing it. great review!
The GDI watchtower machine guns don't make me go deaf anymore. 10/10 remaster.
I LOVED the old sound...and the following scream :)
EA gave more love and care in this remaster than they ever did for Westwood Studios itself. Sad...
Petroglyph Games (Westwood 2.0) make this remaster.
^ this. Along with Lemon Sky who did the remastered visuals
@@channe3049 some Westwood employees are still in EA, though. Most are now in Petroglyph.
This is a great step towards the pinnacle of the genre, Red Alert 2.
Buying this if for no other reason than they might remaster RA2 like this
The pinnacle was Warcraft 3, but yeah RA 2 was great.
@PirateCat91 Based.
A RA2 remake won't sell well, and it wouldn't be worth the cost. EA knows this very well. The game is far too dated for younger players, while it only offers a fraction of the nostalgic value to older gamers the original C&C and Red Alert do. Generals has it even worse in that regard. Tiberian Sun has the highest chance to see a remake as well at some point, but even that's far from certain.
@PirateCat91
I'm not sure why you think that lead to the death of RTS' but Warcraft 3 struck the perfect balance with strong hero units and large armies. No other RTS comes close to what it achieved.
i brought and installed this less than an hour after it came out, thank you Steam. I blew hours on this after school, as did my brother. If you played the original, you won't be disappointed!
I remember playing Red Alert on CD-Rom in 1996 the year it came out, Red Alert was the game everyone was talking about. It was a big game-mechanics improvement over C&C, while keeping what made that game so memorable
I’ll be getting this. So many memories of LAN gaming red alert in my uni halls when I started there in 97. We strung up a network using coax between our rooms, out of the windows and spent far too many hours skirmishing. Introduced my 10 yr old to Generals and he is a bit obsessed - so will enjoy showing him this.
I never played C&C back in the day. I had Dune 2000. I am LOVING this remaster though. I hope we get a Dune remaster, however, I think the rights are tied up somehow.
Absolutely. I even like the underrated Emperor sequel to Dune 2000.
@@Aaron-og1pg same here
Oh man, that would be amazing!
I wonder if Frank K would remaster the music. ...It's kind of perfect, so I don't think he could improve it at all.
I think you mean a re-remaster. Dune 2000 is already a remaster of Dune 2.
You know how movies and tv shows in the 80s and 90s would have some blurry image on screen and say "enhance!" to zoom in, and magically the video would look cleaner? That's what these remastered visuals look like.
Seeing how nice this turned out, i can't wait for Tiberian Sun which is my favourite C&C.
And red alert 2 these two games are a must please god ea do itttt.
This is really good for the series. This masterpiece is only 20 euros on steam too! It's awesome value.
I can scarcely believe EA put this out.
EA are showing signs of improving, Jedi Fallen Order, Apex Legends, EA/Origin Access, rereleasing their library on Steam, committing to overhauling Anthem and now excellently remastering Command and Conquer. Show them this is the way with your wallet.
Maybe they now are realizing that their shitshow is no longer welcome and their stocks were all time low from last year. Reports suggest that Stakeholders are angry on EA management for shits like MEA. So, now attract customers they are doing all sorts of rhetoric. I will not be surprised if ME Trilogy Remake with maybe more improved ending comes in market in future.
Fear not people still on Windows 7: it works. It works just fine. As long as you meet the relatively easy requirements otherwise. I was worried but I went ahead and it's working perfectly.
Yea, the only quirk I noticed on win7 is that dragging the border in the map editor to change the map size doesn't update visually until you let go of the mouse button.
>Starts with Act on Instinct.
Ah, memories.
There is a very unstable situation on the ground, that is unfolding very quickly.
Move towards more ideas that will actually help, uhh, bring this thing to an end.
The IRQ settings being obsolete just made if for me :D
Father of the realtime-strategy genre, huh?
Herzog Zwei and Dune II: Battle for Arrakis would like to have a word with you, Alex ;)
Those are the grandfathers 😏
I worked as a designer on Dune II. Joe Bostic was the lead guy on Dune II, C&C, Star Wars and C&C remastered. Everything has come home. As for Herzog Zwei .. we were all huge fans of the game back in the day.
@@FYYTWYFN "Those are the grandfathers"
Yeah, that's it. CnC is the genre-defining game, rather than being the first.
Give me a dune 2 remaster and I'll shell out money instantly. My favorite game as a kid.
Dune 2 brilliant game and loved both games on the Amiga. By the way in terms of first RTS games released, were War of Nerves by Magnavox on the Odyssey2 in 1979 and also Sea Battle by Mattel in 1980 on the Intellivision and Utopia in 1981 on same system. These were home consoles. Apple2 system then had in 1982 a game called Cosmic Conquest on a home computer. 😉
when the music hit, it hit my SOUL.... wow, i need this
Frank remastered all the songs but only re-recorded some of them. And the Tiberian Sons aren't "his" band: they're collaborating.
this was my childhood, in its remastered glory.
The most amazing thing about this is that it is coming from EA. And I’m sure most people have been borderline scammed by them.
Sweet! Now I can hear "Unit lost." repeatedly on remastered high quality 🙂
In all seriousness, this looks awesome and will pick it up!
so it simply looks just like how we imagined it back in the day, awesome!
The scanlines were only added in the Windows 95 port of the game. The original DOS version didn't have those. It was just a technique used to stretch the 320x200 content to 640x400.
Also note that they did NOT AI-upscale these original PC videos; they used the Playstation versions, which have slightly higher colour quality and slightly higher resolution, but are mpeg-compressed, meaning they do have some visible compression artifacts.
Note that the differences with the CGI cutscenes are not due to the AI scaler; they are really just not upscaled as much in the remaster, probably to save some space on the already 25 GB bundle.
Still my favourite. Hell March, the opening theme to red alert.... amazing!!! Headphknes on and slam up to max volume!! Then click Tanya for ages to 'shake it bay-bee' 🥰🥰🥰
OMG, you didn't even said it but I can hear her laugh in my mind.
The original Tanya is a character engraved in my memory forever. Heheh. "Cha-Ching"! BOOM! So many memories from a time when life was much simpler and the world more stable.
@@pedrofelck awwwww tho! I just heard a German shepherd!
@@eirikmagnuslarssen4242 if only we could send Tanya and a couple of dogs in.... not sure where yet though hahaha
Man I bought this game just now, I used to play this game so much with my friends growing up. It was in a small town in Sweden, back in '98. I was 10 years old, hanging out with my friends who were all 3 years older than I am. We linked in 1v1, two others were spectating and then when game was over we swapped players and went on again.
Holy hell, I didn't think EA would allow for something like this anymore. This does really look great. One aspect I would really like to see added to videos like this is a short mention about proton. I know linux gaming isn't super common but if anyone is willing to set up a system for that, I bet it would be DF. :) Great video anyway. Keep it up!
I grew up with Command and Conquer. I remember going through each game as it came out. Tiberiun Sun was the epitome of the series for me. This remaster looks amazing...instant buy for me!
Now they just need to remaster Legend of Kyrandia: Book 1 and my Westwood time travel fantasy will be complete.
Couldn't agree more - this was one of the first PC games I ever got into and it's bringing back so many memories yet sounding, looking and feeling great the whole way!
I still have fond memories of downloading the demo over dialup. It took me around 8 hours or more. Somehow it worked on the first try.
When I saw the updated installation routine and heard E.V.A.'s voice ... I got something in my eye :)
@Eru Clusivus that means: i solve problems :)
They even kept the secret dinosaur and giant ant missions. 10/10.
If there was ONE thing I'd change about this remaster (and there is only one thing), it'd be to have a toggle in the gameplay optionsa to enable modern unit pathfinding. Tiberium harvesters are wee bastards when they're getting stuck in a loop of "no no, after YOU" when more than one is assigned to a refinery.
Love this remaster, just started the GDI missions and goddamn it's just as imbalanced as I remember it.
Flame troopers melt away your infantry in one shot, obelisks lazor your tanks like it's nothing and frigging SAM sites and rocket infantry are placed everywhere to mangle orcas.
Oh, you want an airstrike? You just have to search out and destroy every damn half-indestructible SAM site on the map, two of which are in the nod main base so when you destroy them the mission is basically over anyway.
Oh and the computer can instantly rebuild everything everywhere because reasons.
Also that mission where you're supposed to protect Mobius and some civilians but the dumb bastards mindlessly kill themselves by running through tiberium fields... *gah*
Absolutely love the remaster but *goddamn* it's frustrating at times :D
Hahaha, %100 feel your pain. I've been playing the GDI and thinking "how the hell did 9 year old me do this!?" Answer: easy difficulty and most likely cheats lol. Good Lord it's hard because of exactly what you describe, and the missions are just like "oh you can only produce infantry, good luck lulz" (incoming flame tank). And if I remember correctly NOD is even worse since you almost never get a base!
Here's a hint: since the AI cheats, no reason you can't too. Something that has not changed since the original release is that the AI considers sandbags as impassable terrain. It will never attack them. You can build a chain of sandbags to anywhere on the map and plug up any passages you want. Even the entrance to the enemy base.
"Flame troopers melt away your infantry in one shot"
I minimize building infantry, prefer APCs for infantry-style work-better RoI imo.
Grenadiers are the anti-flame troop, but you must spread them out-in an emergency hit the X key to scatter them.
"SAM sites and rocket infantry are placed everywhere to mangle orcas"
~4 Orcas can take out a couple of SAMs with only one loss. Agree Rockets are a pain, but otherwise Orcas would be unstoppable. Use the S key to get Orcas out of trouble quickly.
My fav gotcha is wondering why my economy just tanked, and discovering my harvesters kissing on a bridge :D
Launching grenades half way across the map (by ctrl clicking on the mini map half way through the throw animation) got child me through a few tough missions. Plus walling with sandbags and sneaking in an engineer. The sound of the pill box still makes me wince!
They AI _only_ cheats with its money, in that it gets more tiberium per load. But even the AI is restricted to silo storage space, so they don't actually get that insanely much money from that. All the rest of the AI quirks are not "cheating" at all; in fact, the fact it can only (re)build on predetermined spots seems like a huge weakness to me. And if they "instantly rebuild" something, it just means you destroyed a building of the same type before and blocked that previous building's rebuild spot. Meaning they simply already had it prebuilt.
The fact that this game came out under EA of all things is jaw dropping, and I thank it to the fact that EA has been hit hard after their Battlefront II since, well, the consumers actually listened and didn’t buy into it until they improved. Complete 180 turnarounds like this are just straight up *impossible* with companies like Nintendo or Disney, so we should count our few lucky stars while we still can…
Good god i hope this sells well. So that it may bring the green flag to remaster RA2. And better, Generals.
We need Generals ZH with no mismatch on multiplayer...
Honestly, I doubt they will dare to remaster generals/ZH with current world situation. IMO generals has the best opening scene.
It's the number 1 best seller on Steam right now.
You mean, and better: Tiberian Sun.
I already bought it just for the sake of supporting remastering the rest of the C&C games and perhaps having new C&C games eventually. Ofc I will replay the campaings one more time eventually, but ye, I just want to see RTS genre back in its former glory. Age of Empires already got revived by MS, now im hoping EA will do the same with C&C (and doesnt fuck it up)....I wish Warcraft would return back to its RTS roots as well, but the way Blizzard screwed up with WC3: Reforged, that seems unlikely now :(
I remember being awestruck with how slick the presentation was...how it went from the opening fmv straight into the gameplay (no loading) with that rockin' theme music.
The remastered version is what I remember the original looking like :')
I remember playing this game for the first time...I was speechless! I hope they have a remake of generals too!!! That was my favorite 👍🏼💯
I’d love to see C&C Generals and Zero Hour remastered.
Wow I didn't realize they did such an amazing job with this. C&C was my first PC game back in the 90s and man it's cool to have this amazing remake out now.
12:15 annnd army is gone. Tries to capture a building and they’re all gone too.
This re-release is a good reminder of how brutal these early games can be :P.
Grenadier + Flamethrower = Ka-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
Oof
@@MinscS2 This is suicide!
GOD DAMM FLAME SOLDIERS
I've been a fan of day one. My dad once brought home a harddrive with a few demo games that ran on DOS. One of those demos was C&C 95. Since then I was hooked, and I played pretty much every C&C game there was. I was afraid this remaster wouldn't add a whole lot to the game, but having played through both the C&C and Red Alert campaign I can definitely say this is worth 20 bucks. Super smooth gameplay, crisp graphics that still stay true to the original design, high quality music, tons of bonus features and the whole game just feels super polished and feels like a total labour of love. This C&C remaster proves two things. 1. That the gameplay still holds up to this day and 2. there is still a big interest in old school RTS games that fly under the C&C banner. Who knows they might actually start remastering other games or make a new C&C game alltogether.
EA trying to redeem themselves, they crawled back to Steam and now they dropped this awesome game... I could not be any happier.
BTW: Kane looks the same in 2020, that guy does not age a bit. Look for Joseph D. Kucan on google and rejoice
Kane is immortal.
Actually in more recent imagery you see his beard has become quite grey. But besides that, yea, pretty much the same.
The harvester from Tiberian Dawn is one of the most iconic unit designs of all time IMO
Good old beetle.
I want a remaster of Renegade. It's so underrated.
You should check out Renegade X
We were in Finland when me and my brothers bought this game, it was in a big cardboard box, with a multi cd case in it, the game felt so big.
"Overlayed scan lines"? Do you not know what interlacing is? 'Overlaying scan line' would imply that it was done purposefully for effect rather than as a side effect of pushing less pixels to the screen to fill the same screen space in order to save performance-- out of necessity.
He also didn't dive into VQA vs Bink video codecs. I recommend analysis videos made by No Strings Prd if you want more details about the FMVs.
nerds
Did you just ask if Digital Foundry knew what interlacing is? lol, you totally misunderstood his point.
Those scanlines are not real interlacing. In fact, the original DOS games never had them. They were a lazy way of upscaling the game's 320x200 videos to 640x400 in the Windows 95 ports of the games.
"I got a present for ya" I loved that line
On a side note, Crysis 3 was just re-released on Steam.
YAY, I CAN FINALLY PLAY CRYSIS 3! Screw proprietary game launchers, man.
@@CaveyMoth steam is a launcher too, i dont get the hate
@@CaveyMoth "Screw proprietary game launchers"
Get the GOG Galaxy 2 launcher, it…
"will show all your games from connected PC and console platforms… even if they are not currently installed"
I've been using it since last year to combine my Steam, GOG, Ubisoft, Epic & Origin accounts into one interface-highly recommended.
best games of all time. the audio upgrade alone. I got chills when I heard the remastered audio from Frank. its just amazing. listen to it on hs8 monitors and it is absolutely jaw dropping