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Even though the game-play in Command and Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun is a bit of a disappointment, the title is selling very well. Developer Westwood knows when it's on a good thing. Command and Conquer: Renegade, will be a 3D combat action game in which you control a lone commando to infiltrate enemy bases. Played using the third-person perspective, the 3D engine will present, up close and personal, the buildings and terrain of the C & C universe. Westwood is keen to differentiate Renegade (set for release next year) from the many 3D shooters currently in development. It says the game is different because it plays almost exclusively in outdoor locales. The game also is looking very promising visually, with individual soldiers being comprised of more polygons (graphical building blocks) than those in games such as Quake and Unreal. This means more realistic graphics than ever, but it does come at a price. The entry level machine for Renegade will be a 233MHz Pentium II with a Voodoo 2 card. That said, Renegade is one of the many games in development around the golbe that pretty much demands Pentium II technology. To quash concerns that handicapped its Tiberian Sun, Westwood has gone into detail about Renegade's artificial intelligence. Soldiers will duck for cover when fired upon, look for you if you are sniping from a distance, and give orders to comrades to sweep the area in search of you. Let's hope this is true, as the artificial intelligence in Tiberian Sun is very poor, and perhaps that explains what Westwood has been doing lately. Renegade will also have a strong single-player game, with players being given the option of choosing soldiers from the Global Defence Initiative (GDI) or Brotherhood of NOD, and will feature various character types with various abilities and functions. Following in the footsteps of promising efforts such as the coming Team Fortress 2 and Unreal Tournament, Renegade will focus on online multiplayer team play, with complex communications systems, objectives and all sorts of strategic options. Imagine being able to lead a sneaky back-door assaut on a NOD base by avoiding the main defences at the front gate and having your troops slip quickly and quietly through a rear door into the enemy encampment. Renegade will also feature about 30 or so online players in a melee at the same time. And Westwood has leaked information that Renegade may be developed with next-generation systems such as the Dreamcast or PlayStation 2 in mind. Speaking of next-generation consoles, the hot rumour is that Sony is aiming to release the PlayStation in Japan as early as next January. Following on from this, the plan is that there will be an installed user base in the land of the rising sun, or around one million units by March. This information has just been leaked at the ECTS trade show held recently in London, and it is hard to verify. It is also worth bearing in mind that Sony would be quite keen to see such information reach the masses. True or untrue, it is useful to distract potential purchasers of the Sega Dreamcast console, due for release here at the end of October. Even if the PlayStation 2 is released in Japan at the beginning of next year, we will almost certainly have to wait until Christmas 2000 for the local release. |