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Command and Conquer have long been one of my favorite games for the PC. I remember taking lunch time to beat various players in our office and each game led to more strategies and better game play. I was excited to hear that EA was releasing a version for the iPad.
Granted at $12.99 this is one of the more expensive games currently out for the iPad, but if your a fan like me and know your going to play this for a long time to come, its definitely worth considering.
We bought 2 copies for our office so we could challenge each other on two different iPads.
There are a few really nice things about this game on the iPad. First, the graphics and animation are super smooth. There is never a hiccup and the iPad seems like a natural for handling the smooth scrolling and movement. The colors are awesome to see (but I think thats more a function of the iPads really nice screen than the game).
Navigation and interaction with the interface takes a little time to figure out since its mostly about finding where everything is located. Once you get the general layout of the interface and locations of the buildings and characters in the interface, you can quickly move around to create your build tree.
Navigating the troops around is very intuitive since you simply click on the troops and then on the area you want to move your troops to. Selecting buildings and enemy troops that you choose to fire on is as simple as clicking on them. I am not sure about having to click on a button to tell the game if im going to select all players or if i want to drag my finger around a group of them to select a portion of my troops, but i guess its more intuitive than creating some new gesture. I like how you can use the iPad to zoom into a particular area to get a better look at the graphics and whats going on (especially when there are a lot of troops and managing the engagement is important.
Game play is identical to the PC version, including the solo play where you are sent out on simple tasks to learn how to manage game play. The tasks are short lived however so once you complete the initial set of challenges you’ll need to find someone else to play this game with. There is a skirmish mode that pits you against the computer, but i’ve found that after beating the computer a few times, its definitely more fun with an actual player.
There are a few things that I wish this game did better.
The first and I think most important is the fact that there is no way to connect to a central server to challenge other players across the web. The game allows head to head through blue tooth and wi-fi, but thats it. That also means that you’ll have to find someone else who not only bought an iPad, but was also willing to dish out $13 to play against you (there is no way to share a single copy). It is for that reason that I think a network option would make a lot of sense.
The other small issue i found was that the explosions were very choppy, the quality there could definitely have been improved.
Other than that, if your a fan of this sort of game (can’t wait for Starcraft on this device), then I think you would absolutely enjoy this version!
Get COMMAND and CONQUER RED ALERT for iPad From App Store
