From Red Alert to Tiberian Dawn, to Red Alert 2, Generals, and Tiberian Sun, Command and Conquer, the iconic strategy game series by EA and Westwood, has seen a lot of new additions over the years. One mod, however, attempts to mix the best elements of these games with brand-new units and levels, and it’s just received a huge update adding ten missions, complete with an original soundtrack. Combined Arms now essentially serves up a new Command and Conquer campaign.
An ambitious mod based on the OpenRA project, which provides a generic, customizable platform for creating classic-style strategy and RTS games, the latest update to Combined Arms is one of its biggest, overhauling the entire experience and adding new missions and a unit upgrade system. This is basically an entirely new campaign mode, in the classic C and C style. If you’ve been twiddling your thumbs since Tiberian Twilight, waiting for another big battle, this one’s for you.
Playing as the Allies, Soviets, Nod, GDI, or Scrin, Combined Arms offers the classic Command and Conquer-style gameplay mixed with new units created by a devout development team. The mod has been in development since 2018, but its latest update, from June 24, is one of the most significant, adding new co-op and single-player missions to coincide with the original units, custom soundtrack, and artwork.
Every faction from classic Command and Conquer history has new, specially made abilities and units, and you can put any of them into battle together. Want to see the GDI take on the Soviets, or the Allies fight NOD? Well, now you can.
The Allied Prism Tank, NOD Cyborg Elite, and GDI Titan are some of the standout new buildables here, with update 0.91 allowing you to retrofit all of your units with upgrades. So, if you’ve built a massive army of standard tanks but now want to beef them up before one last push on the enemy, you can take them to a depot and hook up some mean upgrades.
Combined Arms is a totally standalone experience. Nevertheless, if you’re yet to try out the brilliant Command and Conquer Remastered, which modernizes both Tiberian Dawn and the original Red Alert, we’d recommend that very highly indeed. You can find out more about Combined Arms over on its Discord.
Take a look at some of the best old games if you’re a big fan of classic Command and Conquer. Alternatively, try some of the greatest grand strategy games on PC.