blog@osd.se

Yesterday I noticed a C&C3 (Command & Conquer 3) guide on IGN. Normally, these guide consists of five pages listing all the buildings, their usage and cost to build. Stuff that anyone who have played the game picked up after a few minutes, and is always present on the screen while playing. Then the rest of the guide lists the units. Just trivial facts. Facts that aren’t interesting to anyone. I’ve always wondered why people like writing those guides, since I doubt anyone read them.

Anyway, the good news is that this was not one of those guides! The first part (”Basics”) was very basic, but it was just one page and the name kind of hinted that it would be basic too (…) so I can live with that. The rest turned out to be a guide for the campaigns. Each mission (I assume; I haven’t actually played through all missions) had its own page with some screenshots and some text giving hints on what to do and in what order. To give you an idea on how the text could look, I’ll quote a part here from the GDI campaign walk-through:

It’s probably a good idea to establish a refinery and a War Factory by the Rift Generator, but your top priority should be guiding some Mammoths north from your primary base to take out the Disruption Towers. These are cloaking the Nod base, and if you take them down soon enough, the Mothership will head for Nod instead. Now mount your attack on Nod, gathering all the Mammoths you have and plow through. (From IGN.)

What positive to see is the hint for taking out the Disruption Towers to get the Mothership (dangerous Scrin unit) to move towards the Nod base instead. Now, if this is information that you’re given in the game, then it’s not interesting at all, so I’m a bit nice here and is assuming that it’s not and that it’s actually a helpful hint.

The guide is pretty large (42 pages) and covers not only both the GDI and Nod campaigns, but also the Scrin (yes, there’s a third faction in C&C3) campaign. However, I haven’t played that campaign and the guide only features four missions, so it might not be complete. Someone who have completed the game should correct me on this.

I really miss subjective information based on opinions on the web. Facts are good too, but when I browse gaming sites for guides, I’m usually interested in some really good hints on how to use some units in a creative way, or some other way to gain an advantage towards my opponent. It seems to me that people don’t really dare to be have their own opinion and argue for it (if you draw it to the extreme). However, a couple of days ago I found this guide (linked from Planet CoH) on how to use some of the tier 3 Axis units, in Company of Heroes, in a good way. It was interesting and fun to see, even if I don’t agree with everything in it. (I’m way too much of a defensive player myself, so I need my 88mm AT/AA guns…)