The compilation includes all the 12 Command and Conquer games till 2006 (i.e. the First Decade DVD) as well as last year’s Tiberium Wars. It also includes a bonus DVD of the first decade which contains a lot of background information into the origins of Westwood studios, the Command and Conquer franchise, who came up with the crazy idea for Kane and so on and, in general, is a very good bonus over what you already get with the main two game DVDs.

Anyways, I went to the store on sunday with plans of picking up Sins of a Solar Empire (which I have been searching here for over a month) and I find The Command and Conquer Saga on sale for only Rs. 999 (which if you do a straight conversion comes to about 25 USD) which is the same price as OB and I thought that was a great deal.

For anyone who has played any of the previous C&C games, this may not sound like much of a deal but for someone like me, who has not played any C&C game (yeah, sue me!), this is one of the best deals I have ever picked up. And swear at EA all you want but they have done a lot for third-world countries like mine where gaming is on the rise. They were one of the first publishers to set up a nice base of operations here (it did help that they had a cricket franchise which is the craze here) and recently decided to offer all their PC games for the price of Rs.999 which is awesome. In a country like India where piracy is full-fledged, those kind of deals make it worth your while to buy original games.

I started playing with C&C: Red Alert 2 which came highly recommended and so far am loving what I am getting to play even though I am not a lot into the game. I love how fast-paced the gameplay is - never letting you slow down for a bit and always giving you something to think about and something to get your hands dirty with which is what I want from my RTS. I also started playing a bit of C&C: Generals which I was told is a separate thread of storyline altogether and I am also liking what I am getting from it so far.

After tinkering around with those two games for a bit, I decided to try to play Red Alert and the original Command & Conquer but realized that the 2-D graphics were too much to look past and get to the superlative gameplay (at the time) underneath. So, I decided to start playing Tiberian Sun which is the oldest CnC game with passable 2-D graphics and I am totally hooked into it so far.

The reason I decided to start playing older games instead of the newer Tiberium Wars, Generals and Red Alert 2 is that I knew the newer and more advanced graphics in those games would spoil me into not playing the older games which I don’t want. And also I wanted to see how the basic CnC gameplay has progressed from older games right into Tiberium Wars.

As I stated I got totally hooked to the basic CnC gameplay right from the word go. The best aspect is how much little base building there is in CnC. In other RTS, I would have to spend the initial third of the game gathering resources and making technological advancements before getting into all the action. But in CnC, it is action from the get go and if you spend too much time on gathering resources and building up the right units, then you are sure to get yourself killed. That is the primary aspect which has got me loving the games so far and I am sure it can only get better as I find more and more strategies and other advanced units to play with. The campy full motion videos in between missions are also awesome and, in a weird way, they add a great deal of immersion and personality to the games. I am also liking the music which includes a lot of heavy metal which suits the hardcore action perfectly.

Overall, I am extremely satisfied with this purchase. It was one of those impulse buys which I am not used to a lot - I always plan my purchases a few days in advance so buying this was a pleasant surprise for me. Anyone who has not played C&C or does not own the entire collection and wishes to do so cannot go wrong with this one. Anyways, I am planning to do individual reviews of each of the games in the package separately, so look out for those in the coming weeks.