Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight

Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (abbreviated C&C4) is the final game set in the Tiberium Universe and is the direct sequel to Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath. The game departed from the standard RTS gameplay of most other Command & Conquer titles, removing conventional base building and utilizing mobile bases in the form of Crawlers. The gameplay focuses on fewer specialized units, resembling a real-time tactics (RTT) formula.

Tiberian Twilight came out of the Command & Conquer: Arena project, which was supposed to be a multiplayer-only spin-off for the Asian market, by forceful decision of Electronic Arts, which was a controversial decision even within Electronic Arts Los Angeles.

Features

 * Game is primarily focused around 5v5 objective based multiplayer.
 * The appearance of Global Stratospheric Transports
 * A new resource system
 * During cutscenes the camera will move around and interact with the environment.
 * All the base functions, including harvesting and constructing units, will be replaced by the Crawler. The crawler holds units inside it (up to five at a time) while they are being constructed and can release them at any time.
 * The GDI campaign is called "The Man Who Killed Kane". It is an action-oriented Sci-Fi story and the GDI campaign is seen from the point of view of a splinter group who refuse to work with Nod.
 * The Nod campaign is called "The End of All Things" and reveals the truth behind Kane, his motivation and his history. It contains more nuance and depth than the GDI campaign and runs alongside it allowing the player to see the events from both perspectives.

Background
By 2062, global Tiberium contamination reached critical levels; GDI's contemporary abatement technology has become ineffective. With the threat to the Earth and mankind too great, even for Kane, to ignore. Meeting with GDI leaders in Manchester, UK on 27th July, Kane proposed a cooperative venture which was controversial for both sides. Using the Tacitus as leverage, Kane revealed that he had developed a new system, dubbed the Tiberium Control Network, to control and harness Tiberium, however only GDI had the resources necessary to construct it. The situation was too dire for GDI to decline, and GDI and Nod formed an uneasy alliance.

The Tiberium Control Network Conflict broke out in 2062 between Nod Separatists and GDI. By 2073 GDI defeated the separatists with their new weapons, the crawlers.

After 15 years of restoration work the Tiberium Control Network was a success, and the crisis averted; however, the uneasy alliance between GDI and Nod eventually fails leading to the Fourth Tiberium War and the start of the game.

Story
The game leaves the Tiberium story-line open ended, with Kane's motives and objectives remain obscure with him wanting to use the tower, and humans to activate it.

The player may choose whether they will follow Kane or GDI rebel leader Colonel Louise James.

Classes
Both Nod and GDI are divided into three "classes", each of which has its own selection of unique units. The classes share only very basic units, such as the engineer.

A player can switch classes if their crawler has been destroyed or by self-destructing it, which can help outmaneuver an enemy. Some upgrades, such as tech levels, persist between class switches.

Offense
The Offense class has a strong focuses on frontline combat units and upgrading those units. Most of the offense class units are vehicles, be it light or medium armored. The only exceptions are the engineer, which is universal to all classes, and the commando for GDI and cyborg commando for Nod.

Defense
The Defense class focuses on defensive combat and has many infantry units in powered armor. Defense produces fewer units, but infantry are as powerful as light vehicles (due to GDI powered armor and Nod cybernetics, garrisoning and transports) and Defense has powerful defensive structures —only the Defense class can place structures—such as defensive turrets, stealth-field generators, laser cannons, tunnel networks, shield generators, outposts, bunkers, and superweapons.

Defensive turrets should be carefully placed. The GDI rocket turret, for instance, can fire on enemies that a nearby turret can see.

Structures cost power, of which a Defense player has a limited amount, usually about 12 structures. Better structures cost more power.

Defense structures can enjoy veterancy; tier 1 structures gaining more resiliency and tier 2 structures gaining upgrades such as rockets or flamethrowers.

Global upgrades include advanced shielding technology, which increases shield health and regeneration.

Most structures are created instantly when production is completed, allowing a defense player to instantly reinforce any deployed ally across the map.

Support
The Support class has a variety of powers to augment the other classes, including a wide array of aerial units. This class' focus should be on the "Supporting" of allies in destroying crawlers, capturing TCN Nodes and collecting Tiberium, in order to be victorious.

Support has access to support-powers. These recharge more quickly when in combat or actively healing.

The support crawler can produce some ground units, including tanks.

Bases and units
Traditional base building is replaced by the Crawler, a single, mobile unit that fulfills the base's role. Each Crawler is class specific. The only class that can build traditional bases like in previous C&C games is the Defense class.

Outposts can be constructed by "builder units" in the world. They are highly vulnerable during construction, but provide a build radius (other than what the crawler provides).

There are many options to repair units; crawlers are capable of this.

Most, if not all, infantry are in power armor or cybernetic. This is to make them more competitive against vehicles and, possibly, also to make them larger and easier to see. They no longer form squads. Infantry cannot be crushed by larger units.

Flaming weapons will always set fire to the ground. Damage dealt depends on how many patches are on fire.

Few units have stealth detection, and even if a burrowed unit is detected, it enjoys bonus armor, while a stealthy unit still enjoys a dodge bonus (increased chance of a shot missing it).

Units can still reverse move. Most do so at regular speed, and those that don't have some other advantage, such as cliff-jumping.

Air units reload in different ways. The Vertigo and Firehawk are very fast; they reload slowly, but much more quickly in the presence of a crawler, and don't need to dock to do so.

When an air unit is destroyed, it crashes to the ground, dealing damage.

Units can be "decommissioned" to get back command points; however, if they are killed while being decommissioned, the enemy will get double XP for that.

Units become veterans by killing enemy units or structures, or picking up green tiberium cores dropped by dead or dismantled units. Veteran units gain damage reduction (and self-healing at elite status) but not damage bonuses.

A variety of neutral structures are available for capturing, as well as long-range cannons, and one which grants a forward deploy zone.

Units can be upgraded to miss less often.

Damage and Armour Types
To make Tiberian Twilight's damage and armor system intuitive and easy to learn the developers have added visual cues so that a unit's armor, competencies and whether it is doing "optimum" damage can be seen at a glance.

By looking at a unit's weapon you can tell what armor types it is most effective against. The armor types include Light, Medium, Heavy and Reinforced. The weapon types are:
 * Gun - Most effective against Light armor. Examples: Machine guns
 * Cannon - Effective against Medium armor but poor against Light armor. Cannons tend to miss when the tank is moving.
 * Laser - Effective against Heavy armor, capable against Medium armor, poor against Light armor. Examples: Railguns or Obelisk laser
 * Rocket - Effective against Medium air, mediocre against others. Tends to miss moving targets.
 * Blast - Effective against Reinforced armor. Examples: Flamethrowers

To further emphasise this all weapon shots will be color coded to show whether or not its being used against it's optimum armor type (see above). All GDI weapons produce blue shots under normal circumstances and pink shots at optimum. Meanwhile, All Nod weapons produce red shots under normal circumstances and orange shots at optimum. Judging from screenshots this doesn't apply to flame weapons, probably because flames are already highly visible making such a distinction pointless. Nonetheless, when several patches of flaming ground overlap they explode in a blue fireball.

Also, you can guess a unit's armour by its size since similarly sized units have similar armour.

Campaigns and multiplayer
Each side has two different campaigns: one single-player and one co-op. Tiberian Twilight ' s multiplayer revolves around 5-on-5 objective based skirmishes, along with traditional skirmish being an option.

Videos

 * Tiberian Twilight cutscenes

Criticism
Tiberian Twilight was released to mixed reviews and received lower scores than all its predecessors.

One of the most criticized aspects of the game is the new gameplay mechanism, which completely eschews the base building and resource gathering aspects of previous titles, as well as forcing players to unlock much of the in-game arsenal. The plot of the game was also received negatively.

The digital rights management software included with the game, which requires the player to be online at all times and which will lead to a loss of progress if the connection is lost, has also been a source of criticism.

Naming
The game's subtitle was determined by the "Name The Game" competition in the summer of 2009, where fans sent the developers their ideas. The final subtitle, Tiberian Twilight, was revealed at CommandCom 2009.

EA Los Angeles published several other subtitles that were sent: Tiberian Dusk, Tiberian Eclipse, Kane's Ascension, Kane's Prophecy, Tiberium Unleashed, Wrath of Tiberium, Unholy Alliance, Tiberian Crysis[sic], Tiberian Legacy, Secret Of The Tacitus, and Overlord's Judgement.

Also published were several more humorous versions: Tacitus Domination, Tiberium Wars 2, Green Gold Allusion To White, Human And Mechanical, Tiberian Boogie Nights, and Apoc's Pink Pony Wars.

Names in different markets

 * France: Command & Conquer 4: Le Crépuscule du Tiberium
 * Poland: Command & Conquer 4: Tyberyjski Zmierzch
 * Russia: Command & Conquer 4: Эпилог

Videos

 * Tiberian Twilight cutscenes