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Command and Conquer Generals Released
A reader writes:"Febuary 11th marks the day that the future of the Command and Conquer universe will be determined. Electronic Arts has taken over the franchise and has even shut down Westwood Studios. Many of us will remember Westwood for such games as Dune II. They basically invented the RTS market which makes this a sad time. Electronic Arts today launches what they are hoping will be the WarCraft 3 killa. This game along with SimCity 4 is what EA is counting on. Here is an amazing 430 screenshot pictorial of the Generals single player missions. "
I used to be a big fan of C&C. Problem is, Red Alert was just like the original, Tiberian Sun was just like Red Alert, Red Alert II was just like the original Red Alert. Each game has new graphics and different names for the same things.
if its a game, its a game, besides i'd like to destroy iraq
Would you feel the same way if the object of the game was to crash a plane into a US city?
Psst, don't tell anybody, but somebody already made a game about invading the USA. It was Westwood and the game was called Red Alert 2. Personally, I thought running through the streets of DC and garrisoning inside the Smithsonian was fun. But what do I know? My sense of being offended at fiction isn't very well developed.
Isn't that the POINT of a sequel game? Keep the basic game play, which people like, intacted but also add as many new features as you can. Each game had new units with differant special abilities changing the game play just enough to keep it fun and fresh. Yet they kept most of the basic units in some form or another so the learning curve would be small for an old vet.
Game sequels are the game programers remaking the same game to push the latest hardware and add new things that at the time of the orignal game where not possible.
Don't dog on a C&C game for being a C&C game.
Would you feel the same way if the object of the game was to crash a plane into a US city?
To be honest, playing the original Microsoft Flight Simulator at age 6, I thought the purpose -was- to crash a plane into the Sears Tower.
BUILDING CRASH
As to this-- look, there's tons of North Korean and Iraqi movies about the downfall of America in various ways. Every side spins things the way they will, and I like playing games with conflicts/weapons I can relate to. And killing a lot of Russians in Operation Flashpoint doesn't mean I hate Russians.
Plea to game makers - please make the baddies aliens and dragons or robots.
This is political correctness gone too far. You've started down a path I don't think you intended to take. If we turn it to face another way, being half-German I know that many Germans, most Germans in fact are ashamed that their history includes Nazism and Hitler. And they certainly don't like being reminded that the whole affair happened, but you're not campaigning for Medal of Honor and Castle Wolfenstein to change their games? Why not? If aliens landed tomorrow and started complaining that they're being maligned by our entertainment industry would you suddenly want to remove them from the list of acceptable villans? No, you probably wouldn't.
If a company in China or Russian or wherever released a game about invading and destroying things in the USA, I'm sure many people in the USA - and especially elements of the press - would be outraged.
And I agree with you, people in the states would be outraged, but that's not my metric for why I should or shouldn't do something. While I may not agree with the missions, or what they portray (though I think they accurately reflect active military plans the US already has drawn up), I have enough wherewithall to distinguish between a game and reality. The path you're taking leads to the same place 'concerned parents' and activists are taking us by wanting to ban violent video games altogether because of what they portray, and how they will affect us. If a game offends me, I don't buy it. You should do the same, and vote with your dollars, instead of trying to take choices from me.
Ok, while it's just a game and probably not trying to be realistic . . .
I didn't realize that it's offensive to say these nations are our military competitors. Are you going to say all those warplane simulators are offensive? And it's not like they've been confined to just American craft, they've simulated Soviet aircraft too.
You're saying I shouldn't buy "SU-27 Flanker 2.0" because it's offensive to Americans. Yeah. Whatever.
Yes, that's right, they wouldn't, but not for the reasons you think - not because it's 'wrong' or 'disgusting'; rather because people like you, people who can't distinguish between reality and fiction, would crucify them. Or sue them.
Do you know how terrible, how absolutely hellish WWII was? Neither do I, even though I've got a tiny window into it from reading many books and soldiers' accounts and seeing many pictures of it. It makes the whole WTC incident, including the footage of people jumping to their deaths, seem like a birthday party.
But that doesn't stop us from playing any of the WWII-themed games out there. And by 'us' I mean of course the people who can tell the difference between a game and real life.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Syndicate was AWESOME. Syndicate is one of the top PC games of all time in my books. The intro was nothing short of orgasmic, and the cutscenes were gorgeous. The gameplay was sweet and it had some cool interactive music too, though unfortunately it only had two "themes", where Dune II had five or six at least. And the sound of that mini-gun! One of the most amazing sounds ever to come out of a computer game. How come no other game mini-guns just tore shit out like that? It sounds like it's blasting several hundred bullets a minute.
I'm not sure if i'd call Syndicate a real-time strategy on the level of Dune II, though, mainly because a lot of the strategy happened between missions when you taxed your countries and outfitted your team. It reminds me of another old game called Steel Empires (Cyber Empires in America) where you built up resources and outfitted your giant robots before switching to the real-time part where you had a top-down view and ran around blasting the other guy. Great fun in two-player mode :-)
I got a sig so you would remember me.
In the name of Eris, stop bitching about Sept 11 already. We're talking about a GAME here which thousands of people, including me, have enjoyed. Not because of the fact it involved blowing up US stuff, but because the game simply was quite fun to play. Yes, I enjoyed flattening entire US cities for fun, but I also enjoyed playing on the German side when playing Operation Market Garden in Battlefield 1942 and I also enjoyed nuking Amsterdam when playing Superpower, both involving my own country. Besides, flattening US cities or taking on an US armour platoon in a GAME doesn't have much political "power" anyways.
Hate me!
Can't they just use make-believe places and situations? I find this kind of stuff offensive.
No kidding. Imagine the hell that would be raised if someone came out with a mod pack that lets you run squads of Israeli stormtroopers to squash Palestinian uprisings, conversely if you could play small squads of Palestinians to take out key Israeli civilian targets, or if you could deploy Arab sappers/bombers/engineers to take out key city buildings.
Political Correctness gone too far?? heres one for you, how about the terrorists make a movie and in that movie they make those american CIA FBI agents look stupid and clumsy, goofy and dumb, as they fail to stop the two towers being destroyed.
...yeah thats right...i mean NO ONE will put the dots together...right?
Hey i know its just a movie, geez man lighten up.
Ok ok, lets pretend its ANOTHER two buildings that get destroyed, in a far away make believe land with two different make believe races,
whats that??
HEY back off man, dont take my choices away from me, youre such a damn activist, you see a conspiracy in everything. Go back to hicksville.
etc.
Dont be a victim
In the first mission you mention, the nuclear warhead storage facility is being run by terrorists, and the player, as China, must destroy it. There are 3 single player campaigns available, where you play the role of China, America, or the "Global Liberation Army" (terrorists). It's actually quite interesting to see the game designers' predictions towards a future war. America's forces focus on technology, mobility and air superiority; China uses masses of units and nuclear technology; while the GLA uses junkyard vehicles, anthrax, and even suicide bombers. But, remember, one can play any side and thus use any strategy. It's not some "America conquers the world" game (at least, so far that I've played... you begin the game in the Chinese campaign, and end it with the GLA, and I of course haven't completed the first campaign yet). When I sit and play any of the sides, I don't sit there and think, "Oh, hey, it would be cool if I was doing this in real life; launching nukes and scuds." It is a setting for a game of strategy, and the setting, a future which may not be so implausible, poses some interesting questions. All of the sides can unleash terrible devestation. All of them believe in their cause. Which one is necessarily "right", if any? Destroy all enemy forces in Iraq? Isn't that what a certain nation is planning on doing? Many books are written about real life events, from the perspectives of all people involved. Just because this is a game doesn't mean that it must be void of any sort of valuable philosophical content. While in a book one must simply accept the perspective given to them, here the player has a choice. I'll admit that diplomacy isn't an option -- but the genre of this game is the strategy of warfare, not the strategy of negotiations. As I stated before, I haven't played through the whole game yet, simply because of time. I could see your point if the game only allowed a person to play as America; however, the fact is that you can play any of the sides, along with their appropriate predicted ideologies and goals.
Just like many recently released over-hyped nth sequel crap.
I saw it while peering over the shoulder of somebody I don't know but they say he's a warez guy.
It plays sort of like the original, true - but it has numerous faults.
System requirements are insane, and it does not look it. I mean, do you really need 2x the horsepower to reproduce Warcraft 3 & AoM's visuals?
The "story" (or since there's no story to speak of, the "setting") looks like a certain Texan's wet dream.
Units and sides are stereotypical and completely lack imagination. I mean, the arabs have a suicide bomber unit! Wow, who came up with THAT idea? Give him a medal.
Is it supposed to be fun to drive my shiny US tanks into a desert town after having the game take out all their defenses automatically with a number of combat helicopters and send the civilians flee in terror (oops there's that word in a weird context) while taking no casualties - not even shot at?
If this dud makes or breaks the C&C franchise, well, I have bad news.
Please, please, stop beating it! (the horse, that is).
While I loved playing the first few games in this franchise, I personally think it's time for the madness to stop. Buying this game will only encourage EA to come out with more $50 retooled clones of old games.
__
Isn't that the POINT of a sequel game? Keep the basic game play, which people like, intacted but also add as many new features as you can.
No! No! I disagree and I hate when they do that!
I would agree is that the basic game play should be the same, but the thing should be SIMPLIFIED!
Make the user interface CLEANER! (Example: I am so glad that in Civ III I no longer have to move the fucking camels around)
Emphasize the things that people LIKED about the game, and remove the fiddly bits that people did NOT like. (Example: allowing you to let an AI "advisor" do things that you don't want to control manually)
Simplified doesn't mean "not improved" though. Things that are good can be HEIGHTENED and enriched, without just "lookit all the new features. To use Civ III again as an example, they didn't just add more "features" to diplomacy as much as enriched it. Yes, it is more complex from one point of view, but I would say it is simpler in that the types of things you can do seem more natural. An "alliance" feels more like what I would expect an alliance to be like, for example.
And... of course... I think part of the point of a sequel is to make the AI SMARTER.
(and yes, I like it when the whole thing is purtier too)
God is real unless declared integer
User Interface improvements can make all the difference in a game.
For example, Age Of Empires vs. Age of Empires 2. Don't get me wrong, AOE 1 was a great game, but it could be a pain in the ass to control. Villagers would finish working and do nothing and could easily get lost in a town. AOE 2's idle villager button solved that problem. Also organizing an army was a pain because you could not separate units once you selected them. AOE 2 allowed individual select, select by type, individual de-select and de-select by type for a large selected group. Although the two games were basically the same, the differences in gameplay made AOE 2 much more enjoyable.
You are very right. EA has a history of only support it's internal sports division. Except for that division, the rest of their history has been a joke: Buy a company, bleed it dry, close it down and let all the innovative product ideas and franchises rot.
This includes:
Bullfrog and their Magic Carpet Series
Origin and their Ultima and Wing Commander series
Janes and their entire line of simulators
Westwood and their C&C and Dune series
Notice, those four companies (amongst others) have released some of the most important and critically acclaimed titles in the history of Computing. Their all dead now, and you have Electronic Arts to thank.
The only good thing about all this is EA are morons and let most of the key talent leave to start new game companies. The good people are still out there making games, it's just sad that they no longer have access to the properties that made them successfull (and us quite happy gamers).
The original C&C will always be the king in my book. It was easily the best test of true RTS know-how and has yet to be touched. The problem with most RTS is the formula for success is (all the units you have)+1. Red Alert was ATROCIOUS for this. It was 100% tank rush. With 30 tanks, no base in the world is defendable. At a lan once I actually mined half the damn map, and I still lost to a tank rush.
C&C was different. I used to make people insane when they'd have some 12 missle tower base entrance and I'd land a chinook in their base and start c4'ing everything. With good players, the general rule was "if they make your base, you're done". That's why in the original C&C EVERYONE played the Tiberium Gardens map, you could make choke points into your base.
All RTS's suck these days, and I wonder if I'll ever see another C&C caliber game. RTS's now are about how fast you can click the build unit button.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Could you amend that to recent history?
Some of us still remember MULE, Mail Order Monsters, Marble Madness, Seven Cities of Gold, Arctic Fox, Skate or Die, Racing Destruction Set, Archon, etc.
I hate sports games too - but EA was once something, man.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
10 hours playtime for all 3 campaigns
Err maybe if you're superhuman? I've played for about 3 hours now and im up to level 4 on the chinese campaign and there's 8 levels per campaign. So you do the math.
uncounted number of bugs
Experienced no bugs at all thus far (and havent heard any reports of any aside from installation errors from the warez kids)
AI is.. Not So Good(tm)
The AI is great - it rushes me, sends out decoy troops and smashes me from the flank, put it on "brutal" and you'll have an extremely tough time of winning. If you play on "normal" dont complain that the AI is shit.
there are no movies furthering the storyline
There ARE movies, and tons of them (and they're very long), the only thing is they use the games engine instead of using the typical comedy actors complete with bad voices and costumes. Personally I prefer these new movies.
then again there is no real storyline
I'll agree there, it's just your basic "kill the terrorist scum" or "beat down the imperialist scum!" for either side but still - what else did you expect?
its built on chinas/arab terroristi stereotypes, us are great peeps though
So?
worst c&c ever.
In your opinion, oh and you sound like a freaking moron who hasn't actually played it. IGN.Com gave it 9.3 and Gamespot 8.9, both very good scores. It's a great game and the best C&C yet