- Kane is back, but who cares?Further playing of C&C3 after my review of it, and continued playing of this can pretty much confirm my feelings.
Kane has apparently returned; twice. Or three times. Maybe seventeen. The campaign is all Nod, and skips twice; once taking place before C&C3 campaign, once taking place during it, and once taking place 5 years later.
As masterfully rapturing as Joseph Kucan is at portraying Kane to a degree where you stare him right in the eyes and never blink, the story he's given here reeks of staleness, as in concert with the C&C3 Nod campaign, you begin to think Kane is a two-trick pony whose plans always consist of preaching to his "children" and making them feel happy and loved, then making them do stupid things to completely eviscerate any advantage over GDI they may have had, or butcher thousands of their own soldiers pointlessly, as nothing more than "tests of faith". It's on display here a few more times from the C&C3 campaign.
Kane seemingly has no real plan in this expansion pack; it changes as frequently and readily as the wind, and there's always someone new to betray him, because apparently all Kane likes to do is push his "children" until they say no, and he kills them for treachery. The plots for the expansion pack are rather like TNA Wrestling booking; neither one has much connection to the other, and seem to have been randomly hatched out of convenience.
The first act of the story is obvious in Kane trying to reunite Nod and strengthen it secretly. The second act involves you, as the computer system LEGION, doing random things in the midst of the original C&C3 campaign, as well as some extraneous work for Alexa.
Spoilers follow.
Act 3 steers wildly off-course, and seems almost to retcon the entire events of the C&C3 campaign. Whereas C&C3 ended with Nod having secured an alien tower to go through and explore the universe, Act 3 here is 5 years after that, and Nod is still on Earth, and Kane is somehow HAPPY that virtually all his generals have been killed and GDI pretty much controls the planet once again.
Also, they apparently lost the tower or something, because it's never even once mentioned. The entire story now revolves around a poorly explained "Tacitus" which I only know what it is because I watched some cutscenes from C&C Tiberian Storm, and a cyborg army Kane had apparently been hiding underground China and Russia for 50 years or so. There is a huge build-up to these cyborgs and how they will be Nod's vengeance and Nod's resurgence and how LEGION will be connected with them to form some kind of insane military force under your command.
The next mission, it's discovered that these cyborgs are little more than infantry soldiers. Soldiers only slightly more powerful than regular militants. They replace the militants and the fanatics, but they're pretty much useless on their own, so as usual they're little more than a wasted novelty, and you'll be right back to your backbone of rocket troopers, stealth tanks, and avatars and the like.
Gameplay is completely the same as in the original, and unlike expansion packs like "Yuri's Revenge", which completely revamped Soviet technology and added a whole new faction, this expansion pack isn't even at the level of "Starcraft: Brood War" in terms of gameplay change.
The only differences thus far have been unit replacements with "beta" versions, or "super" versions (that somehow existed during C&C3 and were more powerful than their original bases, yet never ever deployed), such as a beta version of the Avatar, or a super Juggernaut which is immobile.
Outside of the campaign, the only major difference I've noticed is the addition of infantry transport for Nod, and every faction getting a SUPER DUPER UUPER TRUUPER unit, in something of the same vein as the Titans in "Age of Mythology: The Titans".
This leads to game balance: The game balance is terrible. Simply terrible, perhaps worse. Considering how little this expansion pack changes gameplay, gameplay balance issues also apply to the original game.
GDI is the superpower faction in this game and expansion pack. Period. Nothing else can compete on their level.
The Scrin, for all their doomsday presence and sudden shocking appearance and seeming invincibility, are in actuality the equivalent of the Zerg (from Starcraft) without Hydralisks or Ultralisks; they are a two legged dog with missing teeth. They don't have any heavy units except the Tripods and the Aircraft capital ships, which despite their immense firepower, are ridiculously low on HP, meaning that unless you research shielding for them, they will be picked off against a hefty GDI base defense.
The Brotherhood of Nod has plenty of novelty and expertly wielded stealth technology, though in the end their army is essentially broken, as their only efficient anti-air ground unit is the Stealth Tank, and while the Avatar (and the SUPER DUPER UUPER Titan unit the Redeemer) are big and scary and can soup themselves up by scavanging from friendly units, they are ultimately cannon fodder in comparison to their GDI equivalents.
Despite the massive size and massive cost and massive armor hull for the Redeemer, it is a weak lump of crap compared to its GDI equivalent, the MARV, most especially due to the fact that its fire rate is the slowest of any Nod unit in the game, and only about 3 or 4 times more powerful than a normal Avatar's base laser.
And so in the base game and the expansion pack, GDI is the super-duper-superpower powerhouse, with all the best weapons and best armor and best units for utterly dominating and crushing the opponents.
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