command-and-conquer-4 posts

While we wait for Electronic Arts to tell us how they plan to revamp the Command and Conquer RTS game franchise, the last game in the series, 2010's Command and Conquer 4, now has a free single player map to get via automatic download.

The map, Night Moves, was previously available only to folks who pre-ordered the game before it was released but the map is now available for everyone who buys the game. The map can be found via the automatic updater if you registered your game copy by March 2011. If you registered your copy after that you will need to post that info on this message board thread. EA will then be able to free up the map manually.

[Via Blue's News]

The Command and Conquer franchise is in a bit of a limbo state following the poor sales of the RTS game Command and Conquer 4 that was released in 2010. Now a newly discovered CGI trailer shows the premise for a canceled game in the series that seems to take the game in a new multiplayer direction.

The game was called Command and Conquer Arena and based on the trailer (first seen on the web site of the CGI film company Richard Taylor Design) it seems to take some inspiration from the Battlefield series game than an RTS title. You can check out the trailer after the jump:

[Via C&C Saga and Blue's News]

2010 was a solid year if for PC gaming. A game that some have been waiting 12 years to play finally was released and some other titles surprised us from left field. All in all there was no shortage of titles that were worth your time paying for and playing.

But what games were the absolute best of the past 12 months? Ultimately there will always be lots of debate over which games were chosen and why. But after much deliberation among the Big Download staff, we our settled on our picks 2010 Best PC Game Awards. These are the games that impacted us throughout the year and will probably keep gamers going well into 2011.

So which categories do we have this year and which games are worthy of our humble attention? Check after the jump to find out:

Editor's Note - Steven Wong and James Murff contributed to this feature

According to a recent interview at Gamasutra, the next game in the Command and Conquer RTS series will be made under the Visceral Games label of its publisher Electronic Arts. The article states that Visceral's general manager Nick Earl will be supervising the "action and strategy" game genres at EA under a new development structure in the EA Games section of the company. Other unnamed general managers will cover the MMO and the driving-first person shooter genre games for EA.

While Visceral Games is based in Redwood Shores, California the article states that this new structure will let the studio share resources with other EA game developer studios in Montreal, Shanghai, Melbourne, and Los Angeles where the Command and Conquer franchise has been based for the last several years. EA released Command and Conquer 4 earlier this year to poor critical and sales response and much of that game' development team either was laid off or departed the studio. Before C&C 4's release, EA announced in November 2009 that it had hired Might and Magic creator Jon Van Caneghem to lead a team to revamp the Command and Conquer franchise. In the new Gamasutra chat, Earl said only that the new C&C game is "pretty far out" although it's not clear if that means the game is still a long way from being released or, well, "far out, man."

There's just a few more days left in Direct2Drive's Summer Ends daily sales event. Today the PC game download site has cut prices on two more games. The sale lasts until 1 pm Eastern time on Tuesday. One of the games is Command and Conquer 4, the latest game in Electronic Arts' RTS franchise. You can grab the game now for just $14.95, a 50 percent cut from its current normal price.

The other game on sale until Tuesday is Midnight Club 2, the urban racing game from Rockstar Games. It's now on sale for a mere $4.95, which again is a 50 percent decrease from its normal price.

If you have Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars but haven't played it for a while (or more likely uninstalled it off your hard drive) then it might be time to hit that executable file. A group of mod makers have spent years creating a third party expansion pack for the sci-fi RTS game from Electronic Arts and this week the expansion, The Forgotten, was released.

This is an expansion pack in the true C&C tradition with an all new faction, a new single player campaign with full motion video cut scenes, new multiplayer and skirmish maps, and lots more. Considering that EA is reportedly working on a revamp of the C&C franchise this old school mod team-created expansion might be worth a look for those folks who want some good old fashioned RTS action.

[Via Joystiq]

It's hard to believe but half of the year 2010 has now come and gone. As in years past the PC game industry has seen one or two games released that could be in contention for Game of the Year when 2010 is over. We've also had a number of solid PC games released (not quite up to Game of the Year standard but still worth getting) and we have had some titles that have failed to live up to our expectations.

Today on this US holiday we look back at what we believe are the best PC games released so far this year along with a couple of PC titles that disappointed us. Of course the last half of 2010 is scheduled to be packed with major PC game releases such as StarCraft II, Mafia II, Civilization V, Elemental, Medal of Honor, Fallout New Vegas, Crysis 2, Final Fantasy XIV, DC Universe Online, World of Warcraft Cataclysm and many more. Still if the year ended with just the games that have already come out it would still be a good year for PC gamers. With that in mid here are our picks for the best PC games of 2010 that have been released so far, in no particular order:

The big PC downloadable game sales continue today as Stardock's Impulse service announced a big sale beginning today and running through the Fourth of July weekend. There are a ton of games that are below $5 in this sale. In fact one game is just 79 cents this weekend.

Among the deals this weekend on Impulse.are Command and Conquer 4 being sold for 50 percent off at $24.99, Company of Heroes Gold sold for just $9.99 and a Sins of a Solar Empire expansion pack bundle deal is set for $14.99. You can check out the full list of games on sale via Impulse after the jump.

Players for Electronic Arts' recent RTS game Command and Conquer 4 got a fun surprise this week when they launched the game. They got to automatically download a previously unannounced content patch (1.03) that adds three new multiplayer maps to the game. You can see a top down view of one of the maps, Capital Coup, above this post. The other two maps are titled Disputed Depot and Bridge to Nowhere. All three support the game's new 5v5 multiplayer gameplay feature.

The patch also apparently deals with some minor bugs that have been found in the game but so far there's no patch list that can be found on the site.

[Via Blue's News]

Last month, Electronic Arts released Command and Conquer 4, the latest game in the long running RTS series. Now the game finally gets its first big patch which can be accessed via the game's auto-updater. There are a number of bug fixes and adjustments in the patch and there's a welcome addition. If the game's "always on" internet connection is interrupted your single player campaign and skirmish battles are saved automatically.

EA has also released the WorldBuilder tool for C&C 4. This is basically the game's map editor as used by the game's development team and lets anyone else make their own custom maps for the title.