Category: Video Games

I must say I can’t think of a better birthday present from EA than for the C&C/RA Remastered Collection to release near my birthday! I spent a good part of this weekend playing the game and I must say it was well worth the wait. I’m working up a quick review of how things look and feel launching and starting to play the game. However a couple of things I will note now is that the graphics look amazing! You can switch between standard and HD graphics in the game (by pressing space bar) to see the difference in real time. The remastered cut scenes definitely look better than the original graphics do at high resolution although you have to remember they weren’t the greatest looking cut scenes to begin with so don’t expect everything to look real life all of a sudden.
Honestly the game play is near identical to the original. There are options to change up how controls and different aspect of the game function but it was easy to set everything to Classic (minus the graphics of course) and jump right in and play like it was the mid-90’s again.
I haven’t played Red Alert much yet but when I do my next update here I will have more info to include about how that game is looking and playing as well. One other cool addition is the Map Editor being included (however it wasn’t wanting to work properly when I initially launched it…) so you can create your own maps in both C&C and RA! More info to come soon but I will end this post with the words I was waiting a long time to hear until Friday morning….. “Welcome Back, Commander”! – Tom S.

I can’t wait until Friday! Are we there yet?!? Yesterday the preload process began for the new Command & Conquer / Red Alert Remastered release. So of course I immediately got that started. Now that the game is installed I want to play it damn it! Unfortunately the game still doesn’t technically release until Friday so I have to wait until then to get welcomed back as the commander by EVA and get a taste of what has been the most anticipated game in years, at least for me anyway!
I still haven’t heard if any of the old hacks/mods will work with the Remastered version or if there will be new hacks/mods available instead. Once I hear more I will post an update with that info here as well as on my Command & Conquer Gaming Zone website. Of course I will also be sharing my feedback about how the game looks/feels/plays along with any other observations I end up having! Please post your feedback and experiences with the game in the comments as well. I will definitely be posting more about the game as the week goes on and have a 4 day weekend starting Friday, so I promise there will be plenty of information to share as I rack up the hours of game play over my birthday weekend! – Tom S.

The anticipation continues to build around the upcoming release of the Remastered Command & Conquer / Red Alert games. I am waiting with baited breathe as it were. Especially with so much insanity currently about in our world, from fear of the COVID-19 pandemic to seemingly meaningless things like masks becoming politically charged topics, the release of this game not only heralds with it numerous hours of gaming enjoyment but also the promise of plenty of nostalgia to go with it. Right now that is something I know I could sorely use between this crazy world we live in and the impact that craziness is having on my life personally now. I know plenty of you are in a similar situation!
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve probably been playing more video games since the stay at home orders went in to effect than I have at any point in the last several years and my video game library has grown by a few titles in that same time period (sadly I can’t say I have completed any games in that same virus time period so I definitely have plenty of catch-up to do to finish up some of these new and old games before jumping in to more… which is easier said than done with all of the game sales that have been going on… but I digress). Some of those games have been new titles that have been a lot of fun while a handful have been re-releases of older titles, whether they be under a Remastered or Definitive Edition type label, and have been as much fun or more so than I remembered them being from years ago (which is my hope with the new C&C/RA Remaster release in a couple weeks). I look forward to firing up my MCV for the first time in 4K and start cranking out some Mammoth Tanks to go after NOD! Or fire up some Tesla Coils for base defense as the Soviets in Red Alert! All of those bring back memories of fighting with DOS to free up enough base memory to play the game well on my 386 along with all of the other hacks and tricks necessary to play games back in those DOS days. There’s a lot of great old memories of days and years past well before any of this pandemic stuff. Each of those re-releases definitely brought with them those memories of video gaming days past and a hope that someday soon we can get back to the corner Gamers Cafe, office LAN parties and video games galore…. wait…. Internet Cafe’s and LAN parties may not be coming back as they were already gone from our previous “normal” but a man can dream still can’t he? – Tom S.

When I first read about a year or so ago that most of the original Westwood Studios team (now working for Petroglyph) was developing a remastered version of the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert games I about exploded with joy. The original C&C and RA were two of my favorite games ever. I still play them on occasion and my first webside (www.toms-games.com) was a C&C Universe gaming page that I worked on constantly and even got some good press for back in the day. Feel free to check it out as it’s still in about the same state I left it in over a decade ago when I got too busy to keep up the site or play the game often. So needless to say hearing that the original Westwood team was putting this game out had me waiting with baited breath.

Fast forward to now… the game is currently slated for a June release (provided the COVID-19 situation doesn’t cause delays), the trailers and screenshots are amazing looking and I am stuck working from home so I want this game to release as soon as possible! I’d love to say I’ll have enough time to bring the old website up to speed but at this point I’m just hoping the game releases on time and that I still have some time available to play it.

If you haven’t already go check out some of the game trailers on YouTube. It looks incredible. The 4K capable graphics upgrade is definitely going to look good! – Tom S.