And strategy fans everywhere die a little inside. What has happened to Command & Conquer? Their last real game was pretty mediocre, you know, the one with space ships, and since then EA has just been throwing around the name merely for its popularity. Free to play doesn't necessarily make a game bad, but few games have done F2P in a way that doesn't frustrate and sever the community. There is hope for F2P RTSs with the upcoming End of Nations, but I can only imagine the horrors that await us with the next Command & Conquer. I don't want to be biased just because it is EA, but look at what they did with Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances. Do strategy fans want Facebook in their strategy games? No, no they do not. This was just announced today and it is following the announcement about Sim City turning into a social game, not so much a deep city building sim. Check out their newest trailer for that here.

Command & Conquer does have a great engine with destructible environments, The Frostbite 2 engine, and it looks impressive visually as a result, but they really need to show off some gameplay so we can see how they are going to handle that. Are there going to be tanks or jets that are far superior that we have to buy with real money? Or will we have to share things with friends in order to receive energy that we use to build new units? I hope neither and I hope it is great, but my hope is fleeting and I'm still glad there are games like Company of Heroes 2 in the world. If you would like more information on the game or if you would like to sign up for the beta head on over to their main website.

-Written by Sean Cargle