RIP for the days of each new version of a game having significant advances and not just a reskin/rehash/new story version of the same thing on nearly the same engine.

Thinking Commander Keen → Wolfenstein 3D → Doom → Quake kind of things.

(Sure there were always expansion packs or similar, but often done by other studios and more of a primitive DLC (Doom II, etc). But Warcraft → Warcraft 2 → Starcraft → Warcraft III was way more of a jump than the various Halos, say.)

I tried to play c&c few months back, I think EA gave it for free?

It has not aged well. But at the time was amazing.