The Command and Conquer series of games have always had a soft spot in my black heart - just next to my old Nvidia Riva 128 and that girl at high school who showed me she cared by knocking me out with a yearbook (and yes I did deserve it!). It holds a couple of records in my life, the longest game played, the most beer drunk and pizza eaten while playing a game, and of course the only game (before World of Warcraft) to break up the relationship of a friend. "Yer honey, ill pick you up at the end of the game..." eight hours later... he was a single man. I still remember many weekends found sleeping on the floor of a friend's computer shop as his first customers arrived on a Saturday morning, If this didn't happen with at least five people each week, I'm sure the customers would have found it unusual (but they appeared to take it all in their stride). I remember these days as the pinnacle of lanning, we didn't have anything faster than dialup and if you wanted to download something (god forbid), you had to use an FTP client, oh the queues. Of course, to share something with your mates you had to use the latest technology, the 10mbit switch – finally, gone were the days where the first person to die in a Real Time Strategy would unplug the BNC terminator, killing the network and the game so they could start a new round.

Kane is back - back again

We started playing Command and Conquer fairly intensely and played many rounds over the next couple of years, to this day if you see me on a long flight you might witness me playing a round against the PC, or if I'm lucky enough to have a friend near me, playing it across a network. You can imagine I had high hopes for this title, and after the miserable death of Command and Conquer: Renegade after EA dropped support for it, I really wanted Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars to be a huge success. To be honest, I just wanted a remake of the 1995 Westwood title with better graphics. I just couldn't see how they could improve on perfection... saying that, I really enjoyed this new recreation of the title.

Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is set around 16 years after the second war between the Brotherhood of Nod, a religious militant group lead by Kane (whose followers believe has a direct connection to Cain the biblical figure), and the Global Defense Initiative (GDI), a political-lead military group set up to stop any global threat and to keep Nod from spreading. Nod have always had their eyes set on spreading Tiberium (a green energy-producing crystal) throughout the world, and after the suspected death of its leader Kane, has been laying dormant, slowly building up its forces before attacking the GDI to regain the last bits of earth not taken over and destroyed by Tiberium. This is where you find yourself at the start of the game. The game is made up of five acts for both sides, I won't go into what each chapters are as that would be a spoiler - other than saying half-way through the game, you are confronted by a new enemy, an alien life form that nobody knows much about (other than they seem to like building towers). The Scrin enter the game and, like all enemy aliens, just go on a rampage destroying whatever they can find and trying to take over the world.

Mothership goodness

From the start of your campaign you are confronted with a virtual orgasm of geek-idolized actors performing a script out of the best B-grade sci-fi film. For GDI you have Michael Ironside from Stargate SG-1, Jennifer Morrison from House M.D. and Grace Park from Battlestar Galactica and for Nod you have Josh Holloway from Lost and the return of Joseph D. Kucan as Kane. The Command and Conquer series have always prided themselves on having cut-scenes between most rounds and briefings. They have also always run on the same theme: dark, gloomy and red for Nod, and nice military grey for GDI. The scripting has always been fairly average, but has always successfully put you in the correct position to know what your next mission was. Of course, there's always been plenty of eye candy (mmm Jennifer Morrison), but unlike the old days, they are high quality and run smoothly.

The gameplay is what makes a good RTS single player campaign: is the AI smart, does it change its strategy or does it just bombard you with the same over and over again? I'm very happy to say the AI for Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is excellent. It builds up and attacks you in waves, meaning you need to be on top of it the whole time. It also slightly changes its tactics each time, making it very hard to guess what will come at you next. The only real fault I can pick on is that it has a tendency to send a lot of infantry when it would be much better off sending a larger mechanical force to an attack - using the correct defences will just blow away any infantry force with it doing minimal damage. I just don't think it used the force's strengths or weaknesses as well as it could. It did however, make my life difficult enough on many occasion attacking my weaker vehicles such as Harvesters while I wasn't looking (damn those free thinking Harvesters).

Each side has strengths and weaknesses: the GDI being a fully-funded army has much larger and more expensive weapons that can deliver a much harder punch, while Nod relies on speed, stealth and martyrs, as well as a much stronger air force. The Scrin has most of its strength in defensive buildings and an exceptionally strong air force.