Welcome Back Commander. OpenRA Review

We all know that EA latest attempt in the C&C franchise was a complete disaster, so in the midst of us looking forward with uncertainty why not look backward? 

Warning! This game will not work with certain Intel GMA onboard graphic cards! Be sure to check your specifications before taking time to install the game and running it!

The Command and Conquer franchise started making its mark right from the beginning with Command and Conquer: Tiberium Dawn in 1995 by the hands of Westwood Entertainment. CnC was based off previous company project Dune 2. It was a huge success from the first installment seeing it was being targeted for an anglophone audience that was quickly translated to other languages such as Russian, Korean, Spanish and Chinese.

In the upcoming years, Westwood worked on various spin-offs such as Red Alert, which focused on another timeline; Renegade, a First Person Shooter in the world of Tiberium Dawn with its main character being the commando and already under the leadership of Electronic Arts, General which focused on a modern setting of terrorists under the name of Global Liberation Army, the United States and China.

In 1999, EA bought and took over Westwood and taking complete control in 2003 disbanding the name Westwood and absorving what was left of the developer team to EA LA. Those who didn't followed up with the rest ended up in Petroglyph Games.

Today, we see that most of what's left of the essence of CnC is gone, the latest installments CnC4: Tiberium Twilight doesn't focus on building a base and having a limit cap (which was already implemented in CnC: Tiberium Wars) on the military you have, being severely criticized in the community and critics alike.

So, its understandable that openRA exists, people wanted to get that feeling back and like the main description of the project says:

OpenRA is a Libre/Free Real Time Strategy game engine supporting early Westwood games like Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer: Red Alert". 

Now  the game itself develops much like the originals, you build an army and an economy good enough and start taking the fight your enemy. OpenRA doesn't have, for my understanding, the campaign and focus entirely on the Online and its Multiplayer. This already satisfied the curiosity and the need for many players to get the same feeling as before and now counts with a huge playerbase with over 87K downloads.

Unlike the previous remake projects, EA has posted the games as freeware, so what OpenRA developers did was just grab the essential files you need to play the game, so instead of downloading those 700 MB CD images you can just download the openRA program, it will download all the files you need and your good to go!

The bugs however still constitute a problem, whether is the port problem or in game UI and units, the forum is riddled with users who don't know how or don't have the know how to solve the problems and the team tries frenetically to answer all of them. It's a must try and if your a fan of the CnC franchise you really, and I cannot say this enough, REALLY try this.

OpenRA is available for Windows, Linux and Mac

If you want to know more about this mod, here are the things you need to get started:
Official FAQ: http://bit.ly/yJLdtC
Official Website: http://bit.ly/bchajL
OpenRA Forum: http://bit.ly/A5MlfK
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/xCHIjT
Twitter: http://bit.ly/wpibHr

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