In the story-driven campaign of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod factions are at it again, the same conflict playable from either perspective. These days, however, a minimum of three warring factions is the norm for the real-time strategy (RTS) genre, so C&C 3 adds "the Scrin" to keep it up to speed. Chaos and goofily-earnest cutscene-acting ensue.

The critical, infectious mineral Tiberium has basically overtaken the planet at this point, driving the war-tech race even as it poisons the world. Staying with the roots of the series, Tiberium Wars offers lots of full-motion video segments stringing the battles together; actor and gamer-geek favorite Joe Kucan reprises his role as Kane, the Evil Cue-Ball of the Brotherhood of Nod, and his fellow-actors serve up a heapin' helpin' of weighty, campy intrigue and drama between battles; if you liked the old stuff, you're in for a treat here.

Meanwhile, the RTS action has survived the translation from PC to console -- with a few twitches: Frankly, the game-controller interface, while a noble effort, is still not the equal of the old mouse-and-keyboard setup, and probably never will be. Macrocosmically and microcosmically it's still awkward. Selecting specific large groups of units at once is irksome (unless you want to select all units of a certain type, or all units onscreen), and pinpoint-selecting individual units (particularly smaller ones, and there are a lot of "smaller" ones) in the heat of battle is even more difficult -- but the computer controlled enemy won't have any trouble lining up its cursor with its various units, and that just ain't fair.

Thankfully, the many different missions have a lot of variety, some nicely-presented real world locations, main and secondary mission objectives, and of course that new, third-faction element -- sometimes, the enemy of your enemy is your friend and all that... at least for a while.

For the most part, the battles are lean and mean, so if you're the sort of gamer inclined to a leisurely "defensing up" before slowly encroaching on your enemies, you're in for some fairly rude, abrupt attitude adjustments. The somewhat-hobbling nature of the controller interface becomes even more apparent during skirmish games, which are obviously less structured than focused campaign battles -- so when even when you're not actively struggling with the enemy, you're devoting at least part of your hand-eye horsepower to getting the cursor on smaller or fleeter units. Think of it as trial-by-fire practice for online play (and yes, you can connect your Visioo Cam so that you'll be able to obnoxiously telepresence your own ugly mug and helpful gestures to opponents -- it's not a revolutionary feature, but if you're the sort who can enjoy/abuse it, go nuts).

Speaking of online, the game's lobby system works solidly, and even in-game you'll be able to plan and strategize with your online team (courtesy of the Back control).

Multiplayer options include live opponent/CPU skirmishes, territory-capture and King of the Hill modes, Capture the Flag, and a Seige mode which renders each combatant's base invulnerable to attack for a certain amount of time (to counter the otherwise "tank rush" nature of the game).

The factions each have nicely distinct feels to them: The Nod forces can skulk around and do very specific, evil things, the GDI forces are suited to a more straightforward kick-ass-and-take-names approach, and the alien Scrin have nasty carriers and fighters (not to mention a Tiberium-centric advantage that some will find as fundamentally unfair as the GDI Mammoth Tank may seem unbalanced -- both are true, and both make playing the game that much more dire and interesting).

In all, C&C is solid and well-presented. There are constant new challenges, the "special" nuke/energy strikes are spectacular, the audio work rocks, the hammy cutscene drama unfolds nicely -- and while the console control is still clearly the inferior of the good old mouse and keyboard, Tiberium Wars does as good a job as a console RTS as you're going to find.