I guess it is a bit irrelevant to rate a computer game 13 years after it's release. C&C's legacy speaks for itself. However, the only reason people would play it nowadays is because of nostalgia or out of curiosity. Mine was the latter.
I have never played a C&C game before and must admit that for such an old game it was thoroughly enjoyable.
Playing the game one quickly realises why it was such a hit 13 years ago, and even though graphics, gameplay and AI of RTS games improved considerably since 1995, it seems pretty cutting edge for the mid-nineties and actually aged relatively well.
I believe it's one of the first RTS game that introduced opposing sides where units were not simply copies of each other, but where sides were unevenly matched and had different strenghts and weaknesses. The game also had a strong storyline (unlike another hit of that time, Quake) and video cut-scenes(that were a bit rare back in those days).
For the single player campaign, the gameplay has a interesting balance in that it is fairly simple to survive the AI attacks on your base because the idiot AI insists to keep attacking your base with a small number of units at a time (a minor nuisance to a well defended base). But capturing your AI opponents well-defended base is sometimes extremely difficult without exploiting a quirk in the AI.
The stupid AI is C&C's biggest drawback, for example the AI pays little attention to protect his valuable (and expensive) harvester, and will simply replace it every time you destroy it. So by keeping on destroying the AI opponents harvester, your AI opponent will eventually run out of money, and you can take your time to conquer your now penniless opponent.
One last thing the Kane character (Joseph D. Kucan)- I just don't get it... Why does everyone say he is so scary/charismatic???? For me the guy is just kind of goofy, and I tried my best to be amazed by his presence.
Overall, an old RTS game that aged really well, is still enjoyable and worth a play if you haven't tried it before.
