It's hard to believe, sitting here playing through the original Command & Conquer, that it's now ten years old. A lot has happened in that time, of course, not least the rise of Westwood as one of the great emerging game developers, to their eventual downfall years later when they were consumed by publishing giant EA. The C&C series itself has gone through numerous changes, spawning three spin-offs and multiple expansions over the years. The First Decade is a look back at the C&C series, packing all of the games and expansions onto one CD, as well as including a bonus disc crammed with interviews with its creators, offering insight into this massive RTS franchise.

One of the earliest strategy games, don't expect to find the kinds of features more common in recent RTS games. There are no upgrades to research, no waypoint system to fiddle about with and the path-finding issues of the AI tend to be more troublesome now than they where back in 1995. Most of the earlier C&C games are simplicity personified, where gathering the most resources and building the biggest armies wins over big elaborate strategies every time.

What's amazing now is how playable the original Command & Conquer is today, despite being a decade old. Whether this is a compliment to Westwood's abilities as a developer or an insult to others for failing to do much since its release, I can't decide. But there's no denying that this is a game that was ahead of its time. The original, set in a near future world, where the combined Western superpowers of the GDI do battle against the maniacal Brotherhood of Nod as they fight over the strange alien substance known as Tiberium, still has much of its original charm.

All the catchy songs, the simple to understand and addictive gameplay and the video briefing scenes using real actors (although the video quality has aged terribly) all brings back memories of school nights wasted on determining the outcome of the interminable struggle between the GDI and NOD. Depending on which side you pick, you can decide which of these two mortal enemies win the war and gain unlimited access to the world's Tiberium supply, which is your only source of income during the campaign.

Pick the GDI and you get access to some of the most advanced units in the game, whose colossal twin cannon Mammoth tanks and Orca hover copters, together with the devastating Ion Cannon, an orbital space platform that fires off a devastating laser to the ground, resulting in much destruction. This always seemed the better choice when compared with the attack buggies and rocket cycles of the NOD. Although underpowered, to some extent, the Brotherhood does compensate with some of the more unique units and structures, and a far more interesting campaign that sees you being ordered around by maniacal baldie Kane in his quest for world domination.

Of course, playing now, it's easy to spot some of the game's faults, such as the annoying inability to queue up units in the build menu and inept AI, which allows entire armies to be halted by a thin defensive wall of sandbags. Red Alert, Westwood's revisionist history piece, is much the same. Still immensely playable, still with a great soundtrack and again pitting two very unique and very interesting sides against one another in a twisted vision of what World War II could have been like if Hitler had never come to power. However, these two games suffer from similar, damning technical problems that really shouldn't have been allowed to make it this far.

With ten years to make adjustments, it's annoying to suffer from slight resolution bugs and random crashes. While the resolution can be sorted by fiddling around with the configuration files, the random crashing is a real letdown; it's also disappointing that such flaws were left in when they should been ironed out. The good news is that EA are working on a fix, the bad news is that EA are working on a fix when they should have sorted these problems before the game hit retail. I mean, it's not like they haven't had long enough to do it!

Don't think it ends there, as I've since suffered random crashes with Tiberium Sun, Red Alert 2 and have encountered a strange sound bug on the Yuri's Revenge expansion. Others report missing FMV files, slowdowns and crashing in some of the other games. With such an appalling list of flaws, you'd be forgiven for thinking that The First Decade just isn't worth it, yet the collection of games assembled simply can't be ignored.

Almost every game and expansion is as playable as the other, from the fun but unspectacular Tiberium Sun, which has some of the campest, funniest and most entertaining video sequences of the series, to Red Alert 2 and its fantastic mix of freaky and entertaining units, such as chameleon style tanks, giant ship munching squids and devastating weather machines. Even Generals, despite being insanely difficult and largely hated by much of the hardened C&C community, as well as featuring some suspect content (suicide bombings as a viable tactic may raise an "ooh er missus" type reaction from many) boasts excellent multiplayer support, together with its massive expansion, Zero Hour, which includes an extra 12 armies. Only one game out of the bunch blights the entire collection.

And that's Renegade. It's Westwood's attempt to cross over into a genre they hardly knew, and it shows. It looked great on paper; you get to shoot and drive your way round the C&C universe up close and personal, drive the vehicles, blast the buildings. But it plays terribly. Aside from looking ugly and implementing AI so dim that you often shot the enemy as they were running backwards at you, the whole thing was so easy you could sleepwalk through the entire game on the highest difficulty setting and still come out the other end unscathed.

Despite the critical and financial panning and the fact it sowed the seeds for Westwood's demise, it got itself a bit of a cult following who came to adore the multiplayer aspect, which is pretty much redundant by today's standards. Speaking of multiplayer gaming for a minute, here we reach another chink in The First Decade armour; anyone hoping to hop online with the original C&C and Red alert better be prepared to be disappointed. As of yet it isn't possible to get online with the earlier games. Some people have worked around this and provided a temporary fix that allows you to bypass this until EA patch things up, but again such things shouldn't be left to the community to sort out; this kind of sloppy handling of The First Decade mars for what is the most part and excellent compilation of games.

There are other disappointments, but these are relatively minor and nitpicky, such as being forced to install all the games at once (as well as punch in several CD-Keys) and the DVD footage on the bonus disc not really seeming to scratch the surface of this massive series. However, what is available on the bonus DVD is an interesting insight into the history of the Command & Conquer universe, including various video interviews with many of the original designers, as well as hints at more C&C games on the way.

Hopefully any future release will benefit from vigorous testing before release, a privilege that hasn't seemed to have been granted to this collection. When EA do eventually provide a fix for the current problems I'll give Command & Conquer: The First Decade the extra points it deserves. Until then, whether or not you'll be able to overlook the flaws and spot the gold hidden within depends entirely on how much you long to relive the RTS days of old.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).