Commanding and Conquering

I love the smell of Mammoth Tanks in the morning. A few days ago I grabbed myself a copy of Command and Conquer 3 and I'm currently enjoying smashing, crushing and blasting my way through the Brotherhood of Nod. It was in my student days that I was first introduced to the RTS joys of Command and Conquer; that game, and its Red Alert sequels, were a stable of our student LAN parties and I still have fond memories of creating an alliance with the Soviets and teleporting a submarine into an inland lake to blow the hell out of our opponent's secret wave power plants.

Of course at some point you must put away childish things, which was why, as a PhD student, we put aside our GDI and Nod uniforms and turned instead to the sophisticated intricacies of Total Annihilation :-) Ahh.. the sweet happiness of bombing the seven bells out of the Core Commander.

Sadly the additional unit packs could only extend our obsession by a few hundred games, and so we forgot about our differences ("ergh.. your commander is blue!") and allowed our anger to wane, as the years passed we have gone our separate ways and have forgotten the guilty pleasure of sending hundreds of little pixelly soldiers to their deaths.

That is until now.

Command and Conquer 3 has awoken the tiger, poked the dragon and made silly faces at my inner Mahatma Gandhi. Now I am angry again, and once I have eviscerated Kane and his lunatic idolisers, I will play again, erm.. as Kane, and obliterate the namby pamby forces of the Global Defence Initiative.

Fantastic, bombastic, FMV happiness in a box. Command and Conquer is back.