Kane’s Wrath is a welcome addition to the C&C franchise and although it’s only an expansion, it adds a lot more than just a few single player missions - especially with the new sub-factions, which will be welcomed by anyone who likes to specialise in a specific area. And the Epic Units, well, they’re just lots of fun!

The time-line doesn’t simply continue from where Tiberium Wars left off, but covers three time periods over 20 years. The first follows on from the Firestorm incident of the second Tiberium war (as detailed in C&C Tiberian Sun), the second phase covers the same time period as C&C 3 Tiberium Wars, while the final period goes beyond the existing saga.

As you’d probably guess from the name, the expansion is centred around Kane and his return to power, after the slightly exaggerated stories of his death at the end of the second Tiberium war. At least it is with regards to the single player campaign, as this covers Kane regaining control of the Brotherhood of NOD, rebuilding it’s forces, the attack against the GDI that starts the third Tiberium and onwards.

But the rest of the expansion isn’t just about Kane and the NOD; there’re changes to the GDI and Scrin factions too, as well as a new single player game. The big changes for the group are the addition of new sub-factions - two for each. Each sub-faction has some unique units, as well as other changes, giving them strengths in certain areas and converse weaknesses in others.

For GDI we have ZOCOM (Zone Operations Command) and the Steel Talons. Anyone who’s played Tiberian Sun should recognise the Steel Talons (whose main focus is on ground based assaults) with units such as the Titan and Wolverine. These are basically updated versions of those from Tiberian Sun, namely two walkers: The Titan, a very large vehicle with a rail gun - a bit clumsy but a powerful hitter, and the Wolverine - a smaller vehicle that’s deadly to enemy infantry. But as the Steel Talons are focused on vehicles, they’re restricted in other ways, such as not having any of the advanced infantry units.

ZOCOM concentrate on elite hi-tech infantry units that can be upgraded with advanced armour, making them more resistant to damage and immune to Tiberium radiation. They also have hover tanks with a powerful sonic gun.

For the Brotherhood of NOD we have the Black Hand and Marked of Kane. The Black Hand consist of heavy infantry shock troops which include Confessor units armed with hallucinogenic grenades and Gatling guns. After upgrading, these imaginative weapons can deal out some serious damage, even to light vehicles. Their warmech is also different, coming armed with a flamethrower as standard, which can be improved with research, although no other upgrades can be added. But, on the other hand, this faction has no stealth or air units. The Marked of Kane use cybernetic enhancements and advanced Tiberium weaponry, and have EMP capabilities allowing them to disable vehicles.

For the Scrin we have the Reaper-17 and Traveller-59 sub-factions.

The Reapers concentrate on heavy vehicles, to the detriment of air power, which only consists of Storm Riders. They also have improved harvesting operations, so this also gives you an economic boost. The Travellers are more into speed and mind control, with the Cultist unit having no regular attack, but instead have a similar mind control ability to the Mastermind unit, although they cannot take over epic units, air units or buildings. But there’s no limit to how many of these units can be built, unlike the Mastermind unit, so this can mean a very potent force as long as you keep them protected.

Another new addition are the Epic Units, these are very large (and I do mean very large), powerful units. For instance the GDI’s MARV (Mammoth Armed Reclamation Vehicle) is bigger than most of GDI’s buildings! There’s only one epic unit per faction, so players can only build one at a time.