Some may see this as a bad thing, but we think it’s a positive as it feels like slipping on a favourite pair of trainers - you know they are comfortable and you don't have to break them in.

This time around the fight takes place in 2047 and the Brotherhood of Nod or should we say Kane are up to their old tricks again trying to cause havoc and world domination - same old you may say - but this time there is a method to their madness as a third race joins the scenes (Scrin) and its this that makes the story slightly different.

Like before you can choose to pick either a GDI or Nod campaign and we recommend choosing the GDI missions first, it makes more sense as events from this campaign overlap in the Nod.

From the start there is definitely a more Arcade feel to C&C3 and a trick borrowed from Company of Heroes in that your troops can now garrison themselves in buildings, which opens up some cool tactics in the opening few missions.

For most parts building your base comes later, as you get several missions playing as a commando, this is a bad ass troop which literally kicks the enemy into touch - unlike before when they used to crawl around the floor a lot. You also have some zone troopers to play with (GDI) that have got upgraded weapons and mini jetpacks, so you can jump across hard to reach places.

Each mission has some classic old skol cut-scenes which are entertaining to start with and of course have the side order of cheese but you have got Michael Iron side - of Total Recall, Starship Troopers fame and Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica) for GDI and Josh Holloway (Lost) and Tricia Helfar (Battlestar Galactica) for Nod to add some quality to the vids, but its only when Billy-dee-Williams - GDI- (Lando himself) comes into play that everything else is forgiven.

However we found that the cut-scenes started to get in the way during later levels, especially as all we wanted to do was get stuck into the action, but luckily you can skip these. There are also several video-uplinks during each levels, pointing out your main objectives, plus there are graphical vids of sub objectives that also tended to get annoying after a while, but again you can at least skip these.

The good thing about having several primary and secondary objectives is that you get arrows on-screen showing you in which direction they are, so you are not left wondering around the map aimlessly. The missions themselves are varied, at some points you have to take down buildings, capture buildings or transport vehicles to safety or in Nods case destroy everything that moves.

Your base starts off pretty wimpish at first but over time you can build new structures to open up better base defences, troops and vehicles etc, your war factory can now heal your vehicles and in GDI's case you can deploy a romaing defense platform that can do the same job on the battlefield (thus opening up new tactics). You will find that Nod has better base defences but poorer vehicles and vice versa for GDI. Being a resource management game you need to get silos running quickly to keep your base and troops ticking over.

The vehicles vary from the usual air powered forces and tanks to GDI's awesome mammoth tank. During a battle a trooper or vehicle can gain experience and end up with better firepower and the ability to heal itself as a result. You can also gain upgrades by building them from your tech centre or gaining cash/experience by nicking crates scattered around the maps.

The same rules apply to Nod, they have some new vehicles to play with such as a hugh robot (looks a bit like Lego Exoforce), but we found that though there are several vehicles to build such as flame tanks, rocket bikes (Nod) we ended up sticking with a particular class of vehicle - however the choice is yours. But it’s the super weapons (Nuke for Nod) and Ion cannon for GDI) that are the most spectacular to use and watch.

Battles can get quite fierce between you and the Nod forces or vice versa, playing as Nod is a bit more fun as you get to kick ass more, but its only when the 3rd race joins into the game that things start to get interesting, the Scrin seem almost invincible when you first get to fight them and believe us when we say that your base defences better be on top form to repel them, however when you look closer the Scrin are exactly the same as GDI or Nod, i.e they use power supply, Silos etc but the race does fit in perfectly to the style of the game.

The Scrin race also have shield technology which makes things even harder, however we were thinking just before we finished the Nod campaign that it would be way cool if we get a chance to play as the Scrin forces and this is exactly what you can do once you get through the GDI and Nod campaigns.

Graphically wise the game looks stunning - you can also zoom into the action or out again for an overview - with some lovely smoke and lighting effects, when your super weapons go off things look amazing, their destructive power can be questioned though as you can't seem to take out the main base structure even with a nuke direct hit, but they certainly look impressive.

Sound effects are also used to good effect and some of the sounds used for the troops will make you laugh.

Controlling the action is simple, with a left click for selecting troops and a right click for firing or going to a certain location.

So far we have been playing the game for over a week on Normal difficulty, some missions can take several hours, but there is unique tactic required for each mission. We have spent many a spell playing the game till 3am in the morning and its certainly addictive - which is a dangerous prospect.

You can also dabble in the odd Skirmish mission or go online against other players. We must also add that our test PC's 3.2Ghz CPU, 2GB Ram and a 7800GTX ran the game at 1280 x 1024, but when there is a lot of action on-screen the game tended to crawl a touch.