Way back in the Nineties we were all treated to the truly exceptional real time strategy game Dune II, where you battled for spice on the harsh desert landscapes of author Frank Herbert's Dune universe. This title marked the very first game of its genre, and its creator, Westwood Studios, applied their experience from Dune II to the very first Command & Conquer game, which was released in 1995. The game was a phenomenal success and spawned a series of similarly excellent sequels over the following ten years, establishing Command & Conquer as one of the top gaming brands of all time. Since the very first version of this mega-brand there's been literally tons of competitor products, ranging from Starcraft and Warcraft II all the way up to the more recent Dawn Of War and Age Of Empires III. Westwood Studios' much anticipated sequel is finally here. The big question is, can Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars rival or maybe even surpass the competition?

The story of Command & Conquer 3 takes place in 2047. A harvestable alien material known as Tiberium has sprouted up across the Earth and is rapidly forcing the climate into an ice age. The GDI, a tech-savvy super army, is fighting to remove the Tiberium and save the Earth. Meanwhile however, the infamous Kane, insidious leader of the Brotherhood of NOD, is going to do everything he can to thwart GDI's plans. Kane is hell bent on gathering the Tiberium for his own purposes and using it to destroy the nations of Earth. This sets the scene for a chaotic all-out war between the GDI and NOD, the classic rivalry of many previous Command & Conquer games. As the game begins, NOD has just nuked the GDI's orbital military command centre. As you might imagine, this seriously narks off the GDI, who are now looking to open up a can of whoop-ass on NOD.

When you begin C&C3, you choose between the GDI and the Brotherhood of NOD, then embark on the corresponding single player campaign. As with previous versions of the game, you pick your mission from a map system called the Theatre of War. The missions, which stretch out all across the globe, from America all the way to Australia. They are very diverse, involving commando raids, search and rescue operations, convoy escorts and many, many more objectives. The best ones are obviously when you get a chance to build up an awesome base, but all of the missions here are great fun. The usual RTS fare makes up the basic game mechanics; you construct a base, harvest your resources and then use the proceeds to amass a huge army and wipe out the enemy. Whilst C&C3 could be criticised for not veering from this tried and tested formula, it must surely be applauded by doing all the usual things excellently. This game takes everything that's good about old-school RTS games and dresses it up for a modern audience.

Playing as the GDI, you have all your usual infantry units, like the Sniper Teams, Rocket Soldiers, Engineers and Commandos, and vehicles such as the Pitbull, Predator and Mammoth Tank. For NOD, there are the infantry units like the Saboteur, suicide bombing Fanatics and the Militant Rocket Squad, as well as vehicles like the infamous Flame Tank and Stealth Tank. Both sides also boast some great air units, with the GDI's Firehawk jet and Orca helicopter and NOD's Vertigo Bomber. Fans of the series will instantly recognise most of the units, as they have been taken straight out of the previous games, Tiberian Sun and Generals. This is actually pretty lazy on the part of the developer, but I guess they just reckoned that if it ain't broke then they shouldn't fix it. Both The GDI and NOD have different playing styles; with GDI it's all about blitzkrieg, storming through with battalions of mammoth tanks and air support, while with NOD it's much more about guerrilla warfare with stealth units. Each force has their merits and you'll really be tested to try and manipulate these to your advantage.

But hang on a second, what's this I hear? There's a third faction in C&C 3? Why, yes there is! Welcome to the Scrin, an alien race who appear towards the end of both of the single player campaigns. The Scrin bear a striking resemblance to the alien race from the movie Independence Day. They thrive around Tiberium, they're extremely dangerous and they are very, very aggressive. The Scrin are pretty tricky to tie down, as they warp in from nowhere and wipe out massive swathes of your troops, so you need to be on your toes whenever they're nearby. Their strength lies in their ability to manufacture huge armies of troops in a very small space of time. They also have some pretty cool unit types, such as massive battlecruisers that launch fighters and bombard you with their cannons and giant War Of The Worlds-type tripods that loom over the horizon and obliterate your troops with ease. I don't want to reveal too much to those of you who haven't played the game, but suffice to say, the Scrin really are a great addition to the C&C world and hopefully they will continue to have a presence in the franchise. You can also unlock a five-mission Scrin single player campaign if you successful complete the GDI and NOD ones.

C&C 3 also boasts a great in-game interface that makes it the most fun C&C game yet. The familiar side bar system is still there, as are the infamous 'Building' and 'Training' sound-bytes that trigger whenever you choose to construct a building or recruit an infantry unit. You can also now have multiple constructions queues, so you can be building heaps of different structures and units simultaneously. Once you've constructed your units, you can assign waypoints and alter their AI status, depending on whether you want them to attack, defend or patrol. You can even assign hotkeys to quickly jump to key points on the map, so if you're launching a series of attacks on an enemy position, you can jump between managing your resources at your base to monitoring your attack's progress at the touch of a button. C&C 3 has four difficulty levels, ranging from Easy to Brutal. Personally, as a pretty seasoned RTS gamer, I played on Normal and found it pretty tough, so with Hard and Brutal modes above that, you can see that there's plenty of challenging gameplay on offer.

As you progress you can make use of some of the special support powers, such as air dropping paratroopers, calling in long distance artillery and launching air strikes. These support powers become available as you upgrade your base's technology by building more advanced structures. Through these structures you can also find a host of options on how to upgrade your units, such as upgrading your infantry's armour and attack ratings, boosting your aircrafts' speed and firing capabilities, and fitting your tanks with rail guns to take down infantry.

C&C3 can also be played in Skirmish mode with AI computer players, via a LAN or online with friends. The game can host up to eight players on one map, which makes for some hefty battles and lots of bickering and scrapping over the last traces of Tiberium. Before starting the game you can tweak how many credits and units you want to start with, how much Tiberium is available and so on. There is really only the one playable mode - Skirmish - and whilst this is a shame, it really is so much fun playing this game online that you don't really mind that much.

C&C3 also brings back the awesome FMV sequences between each level. Some may say that FMV is so late Nineties, but I was delighted to see EA reviving it for this latest instalment of C&C. The FMV features a great cast, with Michael Ironside (the voice of Splinter Cell's Sam Fisher), Billy Dee Williams (Lando from the Star Wars films), Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost) and Grace Park (Boomer from Sky One's Battlestar Galactica). Graphically it's also a stunner - not only is this the best looking C&C to date, but it's a contender for best looking RTS ever. There's a huge level of detail in the game; everything from heat vapour trails wafting out the back of your aircraft to your soldiers pacing nervously as they await you orders. More importantly, you can have as many units as you like onscreen and the game still doesn't suffer from slowdown, which lets you be as overkill as you like. The sound is also top notch, with all the familiar sound bytes from the previous games that take you back to many late night hours playing various incarnations of the great C&C series. It really is a tour de force of everything from the previous games ramped up to sound even better, and it works perfectly.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is truly one of the finest RTS games out there. It doesn't do anything particularly new, but it builds on the greatest aspects of the previous C&C games and moulds it all together to create the best C&C game yet. With easily over twenty hours of gameplay and more than twenty-five missions, there's so much here for RTS fans to get their teeth into; it plays sublimely and really looks and sounds the part. My only criticism is that sadly we will have to wait for the next C&C if we're looking to see any big gameplay changes, as Westwood Studios have opted to work with what they know and have not ventured into unknown territory. Regardless of this, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is a fantastic game and one to add to your collection as soon as you possibly can.

Reviewed by Ross Alexander for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).