Okay, so the second demo in as many weeks, and admittedly the one that I was more looking forward to.

And to be honest I was slightly disappointed.  But I had prepared for it from the beginning.

The Good: the graphics are spectacular, and the attention to details are exquisite - bins, cars, the markings on the roads.

The FMVs are fantastic to watch - high definition and I have to admit the acting is almost all top-notch and true to their characters (glad to be able to write that after recently playing RA2!).

Also the storyline is shaping up to be brilliant - mysterious to the end but not so much that you give up halfway through.

The Bad: I'm sorry to say this, but more often than not, it just doesn't play like a C&C should.

Out of all the games that I played using both sides and 3 of the AI types, in the end I used the same strategy every single time, regardless of anything that the AI did - the promised "adaptive AI" hasn't arrived.

Although this game was touted as being for everyone to play, it actually appears to cater only for, for want of a better word, Rushers.  Myself as a "turtler", I noticed this very quickly - there is simply too much pressure on the gameplay for players to expand across the map.  Previous games allowed a turtler to play their own game, albeit at a slower pace than a rusher.  But this game rewards turtlers with a quick defeat and nothing more.  This is for a few simple reasons - most notable of which is the fact that base defences are simply not adequate for defending.

I'm sorry - but the music is 100% crap.  There is nothing in it whatsoever - nothing would change at all if I were to turn the music volume down to zero.

As an RTS player in general, I am certainly more than happy with the game at the moment.  But as a C&C player, no.