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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.
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.
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 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.