It was SO easy to install, the Doc prescribed valium? (Command & Conquer Renegade (PC))

Member Name: cazm17

Product:	Command & Conquer Renegade (PC)
Date:	24/03/02 (325 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gorgeous graphics, Nice attention to detail, Fun to drive the vehicles

Disadvantages: Pain to install, High system requirements, Can be jerky

You think I'm kidding? To skip and jump ahead to the end of my tale, the game finally started working this afternoon at 1, having arrived on our doorstep direct from Game what seems like weeks ago. (It was actually on the release date a couple of weeks past.)

To tell you a little something about the game, to whet your appetite... Renegade is the latest offering from the EA/Westwood stable. It's based in the Command and Conquer world, although unlike the traditional games such as Red Alert or Tiberian Sun, this one is played from a first-person perspective, such as Quake or Delta Force.

You play a character called 'Havoc' an elite GDI commando hero-type figure who runs around against the Brotherhood of Nod in a variety of missions. This is where it can be seemingly confusing, because you also get to jump in and commandeer a whole range of vehicles. Think back to the original C&C - imagine being able to squish people in a medium tank or, even better, a mammoth! And on your stats you do actually get a separate score for how many people you have squished. Fantastic.

As it's in 3D, you also have to run around the enemy buildings in search of cards, people, master controls to blow up with C4, that kind of thing. It was this part especially that put me in mind of Delta Force ? rooms, doors and corridors everywhere, such that an easily confused game player like me could be driven insane trying to get out of a building!

There is a useful training session, not just for figuring out how to handle some of the new weapons and of course the vehicles, like the Humvee, but to help you figure out which keyboard layout you prefer to work with. You won't want to be messing around with keyboard settings once you start the game proper ? you won't have the time, for one thing.

To their credit, there really is an amazing amount of detail included. For example, the Hand of Nod barracks is complete with its own weights
room. Some of the graphics were a little jerky, but this is one of the things Westwood were supposed to have fixed in one of the patches. I tested it out completely patchless, well when it finally worked that is...

One of the main complaints about this game has been its incompatibility with Voodoo graphics cards. OK, so it was probably about time I ousted my Voodoo card in favour of something a bit more up-to-date, but it was expenditure I probably could have done without, just to play one game at any rate ? everything else worked perfectly well. There are a number of issues that have cropped up regarding multi-user / online playing. I'm not a hardcore games player (you can probably tell from this pathetic attempt at a review!) and therefore I've not experienced how good or bad this part of the game is.

On to the difficulties with installing the game, then. There are many reports on technical forums about people having problems installing or playing the game, and the answer usually points to 'get the latest video card driver'. Well, as I pointed out already we have been trying for over 2 weeks now to get this expletive game working. We changed the card, we updated drivers throughout the system like there was no tomorrow, installed and deinstalled patches until we were waking with nightmares about new BIOS settings we could try. Every time the game tried to start, the screen went black, the CD spun, and it threw us back to the desktop. And we knew there was nothing wrong with the video card, as it was functioning A1 OK on all the other 3D games...

In the end, looking through problems that other users have had with other recent Westwood releases, we found the answer. One of the games seemed to have trouble loading, as it was trying to find an internet connection, and that kept crashing to the desktop. Hmm, this sounds familiar, and the machine it was being installed on is a standalone with no internet or dial-up connection a
t all. It couldn't be, could it?

It blooming well was! Once the machine had a dialup connection installed, it was happy as Larry, so to speak. Well, I could tell you we weren't amused, but the fact that at last the game was installed and running perfectly more than made up for it!

In fact, that PC hasn't been off all afternoon. Despite all the problems we have had with the installation, it really is a very good game, provided your system meets the minimum specifications (see below). For the hardcore gamer, though, I could see how easy it would be to complete the missions fairly quickly so you may be relying on multiplayer to get good value from it (it's currently £29.99 off the shelf). So much for a productive Saturday. Oh well, at least Renegade is working.

Now, how does this multiplayer thingy work...?

Minimum specifications, for those interested:
Window 98/2000/Me/XP
400MHz Intel Pentium II Processor
96MB RAM
700MB Hard Drive
4 CD-ROM
16MB PCI/AGP Graphics Card (check the Westwood site, Support, for a list of compatible cards and drivers)
Direct3D Accelerator
DirectX Version 8.0a (prefers 8.1 which should come on the disk)
Internet 56.6Kbps (don't forget that connection!)
Keyboard and Mouse

Official site: http://www.westwood.ea.com

Summary: