Well I was gifted Act of Aggression, an RTS that I had a lot of interest in because its mechanics seemed very promising...
So I started playing it one day and I only got an hour into it. The problem was, apparently either the tutorial was really, REALLY bad and uninformative, or I'm absolutely blind and miss even the most noticeable stuff on my screen. Because the menus were rather hard to navigate and I have no idea where the tutorial was, or if there even was a tutorial... some controls were explained but I felt like they were explained completely out of order. (I should note that there were no 'tutorial' campaign or option - I had to play one of the faction's campaigns and learn all the controls while playing the game. Oops.)
Well needless to say I tried one of the single player campaigns, got through the first mission nearly failing it (WHOOPS), the second mission I took it slow and did alright (nearly got my base destroyed though), and the third mission a glitch happened and my units would not move and ended up dying to an endless wave of enemies since it was an escort mission. Yeah, I ended up stopping there.
I'll probably find a way to learn how to play the game some other way, but frankly my first experience with that game sucked. I honestly felt really bad for Sir Boomalot too (a friend of mine), it wasn't cheap. :s
But lately I have been having fun with Grey Goo, an RTS that plays sort of like C&C in a way (but differs in a few aspects). It may not be $40 material but it comes really close to being $40 material, it's a pretty solid game all around. The soundtrack is amazing too (Frank Klepacki still got it.
No seriously, LISTEN TO THIS!!). I would have you listen to my favorite song in the game but that would spoil the amazing feeling you get when you do hear it.

But yeah, Grey Goo is fantastic. Definitely get it when it goes on sale! And who knows, maybe we can fight sometime.
