Sometimes, a price is so appropriate that it warrants an article. Such is the case with the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection (opens in new tab), available now on Steam for the unbeatable price of $2.99 / £2.69 until the campaign ends on January 23. That's enough for a hell of a march (opens in new tab).

The C&C Remastered Collection is a cute combination of two classic strategy games: Red Alert 1 and Tiberian Dawn. Neither is the best in the series ("Red Alert 2" and "Tiberian Sun"), but they are still gold standards full of endearing elements and planted many seeds that would blossom in later games. It's also full of cheesy FMV goodness that continues to define Command & Conquer to this day, even though there hasn't been a new one in a while.

The remastered version turns those tinny blocks of pixels from the 90s into a smooth, analyzable game that you can actually play on modern 4K, 144hz Whirligigs. If you're the nostalgic type, though, you can always go back to the old graphics with the click of a button.

In my opinion, remastering is the best way to play these games today, but it's not perfect. Tragically, the developers were unable to obtain the original soundtracks for the cutscenes when making the remasters, so they had to resort to AI upscaling (open in new tab) to turn the compressed, blurry images that came with the original games into something acceptable on modern monitors. We had to resort to AI upscaling. Characters like Joseph Stalin occasionally look like they've been through a series of Photoshop filters, but for the most part they look fine. Then again, I suppose it is sort of appropriate (opens in new tab).

We were big fans of the C&C remastered collection when it was released. In an article published when the remaster was released (opens in new tab), Rick Lane reflected that "Command & Conquer may be an old game, but it's not an inconvenient one," and that its "simple but propulsive mechanics and intense, fast-paced missions" made strategy games . was refreshing in an age that demands that you make it a kind of second career, and for $3 you can't get much better than that.