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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. "
Sniff...Westwood also did the two Eye of the Beholders in the beginning of the '90s.
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.
Well, EA has made some good games but for me it's more and more a game-studio killer, buying other game makers and shutting them down (more or less)...
The interview with Lord British that was posted recently on /. gives some insight into EA's thinking: make money fast, even at the cost of quality, it seems.
Very sad...
hardly worth playing the game now...
What would Brian Boitano do?
Bunch of movies here.
the warez peeps played it and came up with some additional information not contained in this slashvertisement...
:p
10 hours playtime for all 3 campaigns
uncounted number of bugs
AI is.. Not So Good(tm)
there are no movies furthering the storyline
then again there is no real storyline
its built on chinas/arab terroristi stereotypes, us are great peeps though
worst c&c ever.
so im off playing dune2.. the dos one you know
I thought they intended to reduce the entire game market to Sims and Sports. But I forgot that there is one other category just as boring as Sims and Sports -- the C&C Clone category!
This increases the diversity of EA's offerings by 50%!
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
...don't ask me how, but I live in SouthEast Asia(if that'll give you a clue).
My initial comments, based on playing Skirmish mode:
- Effects are okay (nice explosions) but I think some of the animations esp. for the personnel suck. I think the 3D engine is solid, but not really ground breaking. Not sure if the terrain is deformable (haven't played around with the superweapons as much), but I don't it's a big loss that it isn't. Most, if not all structures are certainly destroy-able.
- Tech tree isn't that deep, although the Experience Points system is something different. I've been able to beat opponents using the plain old tank rush, but it's not as bad (or good, depending on how you look at it) as in previous versions.
- Lack of previous version's cut scenes (no more Kari Wuhrer --- damn!!!)
they are hoping will be the WarCraft 3 killa.
Yeah, ok...Word up, homey.
Sheesh.
Bowie J. Poag
Oh Battletech, The Crescent Hawk's Inception (and Revenge) were my first ever Westwood games, and in fact my first ever PC games back in 1988 on a CGA monitor and an XT i believe! The Crescent Hawk's Inception was one of the best RPGs i've played, but of course playing it now only takes a few hours to win. I'd love to see a huge, modern version of that game instead of today's run-around-and-kill-stuff-in-a-huge-robot Battletech games. Here's to more science fiction RPGs!
Don't forget Westwood also did a whole bunch of the early AD&D games (whether that's a good thing or not is perhaps debateable). They did California Games - those wacky surfer dudes with their hacky sacks :-) Kyrandia, Eye of the Beholder II, Lands of Lore (featuring our beloved Jean-Luc Picard).
I have a feeling Westwood were even around in the 8-bit days, though going under a different name, perhaps. Were they Ocean? Does anyone remember?
I got a sig so you would remember me.
Tweaking the rules.ini file kept me playing the game for a while after the original novelty had warn off. making harvesters mostly invicible was a variation that was great in multiplayer (for a change anyway). I think later incarnations (red alert etc) added this as a game option.
Tweaking also meant we could change the game just enough so that the normal strategies (light tank storm etc in later incarnations) didn't work so well, and we'd all have to invent new ones.
The map designer in redalert was also great! it added so much value to the game in multiplayer mode.
The original Dune was hardly an RTS. While there were certain strategic elements to it...there was little that was actually realtime. It played more like a turn-based, strategic RPG.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
In the campaigns described on the site, you can:
1) Destroy a nuclear warhead storage facility in China ("The dragon awakes...")
2) Destroy a damn in Shymkent, Kazakhstan.
3) Destroy all enemy forces in Iraq ("Operation: Final Justice")
Can't they just use make-believe places and situations? I find this kind of stuff offensive.
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. Imagine if an Arabic country released a game like this - many people would see it as inciting hatred towards the USA.
Plea to game makers - please make the baddies aliens and dragons or robots.
Electronic Arts today launches what they are hoping will be the WarCraft 3 killa.
;).
Umm.. I thought Warcraft 3 already killed itself. Maybe I'm just getting too old now, but EVERYONE played the original it seems, but everyone I've talked to that I know hated 3. That's the nice thing about piracy. Everyone I knew back in the day pirated Warcraft, then went out and bought it because it rocked, but if people pirate a game they don't like they won't buy it.
Now, if they wanted to try and kill something I would suggest going after MOO, but then again this is EA(Electronic Assoles) we are talking about, so it may be good that they set their expectations low
Also in the article, they talk a bit about sports games, saying it's the perfect franchise because fans will repurchase essentially the same game year after year to get updated player rosters. Is this actually true? I can understand buying the same game every couple years, as they add new features, and you migrate from one generation of consoles to the next. But are there really people who buy Madden 2000, Madden 2001, Madden 2002 and so forth all for the same system?
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Does the game come with a free P4 cpu? Otherwise I might need an upgrade...
Informative? Put down the pipes, moderators. The original Dune was in fact an RPG. You played Paul Atreides and walked around talking to Leto, Stilgar, etc. There weren't really any traditional puzzles to solve or battles to fight, you just met with Fremen, spoke to them, found out a little more about what was going on, then set them to work mining spice or training for war. Toward the end of the game you told all your Fremen to attack the Harkonnen palace, and that was that. It wasn't the most interesting game in the world, but it was undeniably one of the most immersive. The graphics and music were absolutely stunning at the time, and remain breathtaking even today. We're talking 320x240x256 VGA, but the color palettes were perfectly chosen, and the attention to detail when flying the ornithopter over sand and rock formations was second-to-none. I highly recommend downloading it from an abandonware site near you. If you get the CD-ROM version it has full speech throughout the whole game, with perfect pronunciation and acting on a par with a LucasArts adventure game. One of the best "art" games ever, in my opinion.
Dune 2, however, was a total different kettle of fish. That truely was the first real-time strategy where you build units, move them around, click back and forth real fast to avoid getting eaten by a sandworm, etc. There were other real-time strategies before that - the one that sticks in my mind is an old (80s era) CGA game called Sun Tzu's Art of War or something, but nothing broke through like Dune 2 did. Everyone liked Dune 2. The difficulty was very well-balanced, the interface was simple (unlike today's 25-hotkey RTS games) and the music and sound effects worked very cleverly with the game - subtlely changing with action on the screen. I think this was one of the first truly successful (read subtle) implementations of interactive music.
All in all, Dune has had a great time of it on home computers. That said, i haven't played Dune 2000 or the new C&C Dune. Anyone got reports?
I got a sig so you would remember me.
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.
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.
I remember playing Dune 2 on the Amiga 500 & 2000 ages ago. I imported it from the UK for about 25 USD and it came on 4 (or so) floppies because CD-ROM drives were rarer then diamonds back then. It was a great game on the Amiga though, with music, in game sound and even different voices as you ordered your units around a bit. That is where my addiction to RTS games began, the moment I ordered my first Harkonen (sp?) trooperer to engage some Atreides infantry attacking my precious big red lump of pixels which was my harvester. All I remember after that is making HUGE bases that are completely walled with rocket turrets at every corner and the fact I never really finished the game because the two vs one end levels were too hard for me back then :(
Great game and pretty original back then as well. Receives a well deserved place amoung my personal RTF "Hall of Fame" which also includes "Total Annihilation" (despite the cheap name) and "Homeworld"
Hate me!
Dune 2000 was simply a graphics redo of Dune II. Otherwise, the game was the same (pretty damn good).
A lot of people panned Emperor: Battle For Dune. Personally, I thought it was excellent. The storylines were well-told (Michael Dorn plays the head of Atreides), and I like the involvement that the lesser houses play both in the story and in the game (Ix, Tlielaxu, Fremen, Sardukar, and the Spacing Guild).
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Even at high resolutons (>1280x1024), the zoom is horrible. When fully zoomed out, you are limited to such a small portion of the map. I like the 3d but let us zoom out just a little bit more. Also the maps are SMALL! You end up taking over 1/2 the map when you play the game. If you try to play with 6 players you realize the 8person maps are still too small. Overall a good game, I think they did an OK job.
There are a couple of reviews of Generals out. This review from Gamespot gave it a 8.9 of 10. Not too bad.
forma3
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.
I've had the full game since last Friday (I'd rather not reveal my sources, yadda yadda). I've played through the China campaign, and would've played more online but since the full game wasn't released until yesterday (and I can't pick up my copy until today incidentally), there was no one on there :P
So, here are my thoughts:
* I love the idea that cutscenes are gone.
They are cheesy, and it would take Spielberg to make them even resemble TV Mini-Series status. I mean, did anyone actually care about those overracted scenes and goofy costumes? Tiberian Sun wasn't the worst (Red Alert 1 + 2 takes that honor), but they certainly make the game more serious, and the beautiful engine makes the most of showing what's going on and what you need to do.
* I'm so glad they broke the formula but didn't break the game.
This refers to the fact that they took the command bar from the right to the bottom of the screen, and now you have the ability to minimize it (why isn't this in Warcraft 3?). Also, they quit that "Primary" crap that haunted old C&C's forever, and now you can have 5 different barracks on seperate hotkeys. This was not previously available in past versions of C&C.
* The game is SO BALANCED. It is unbelievably balanced. I was so impressed how the rocket launchers now have much more effect on tanks, yet the infantry can take out rocket launcher units in no time flat. Defenses and offensive units strike an excellent balance, and this is probably because the game was delayed, and the online beta test was a rousing success. This just goes to show you that if you keep the game in beta long enough to try it out on many different systems, and people find the weaknesses and strenghts of all the different factions, you'll strike a perfect balance that never upsets the gameplay or the fun. This is huge, and what might make C&C Generals a classic (I can't wait for the Expansion Pack/Sequel).
* The engine is glorious.
It's not Jaw Dropping, it's no Doom 3, but its damn good and better than Warcraft 3's in my opinion. Again, thanks to in-game cutscenes utilizing what they've already got, you cut down on the cheese and can really showcase what's truly great about the game. The environmental effects are truly staggering. I just cannot explain how cool it is to be attacking a garrisoned tower, blowing it up, and then watching it fall on the rest of the enemy forces, crushing them instantly. Geek greatness is found here!
Anyway, to sum up, the more I play it the more I like it. They've finally put some of the most balanced gameplay into an RTS (even War3 can't touch this one), and the engine is a delight. Truly a notable game, and I'm so glad they delayed it to add functionality, gameplay and a graphics polish that the difference between the God Awful Beta Test (if you've played it, rest assured the final game is Much Much Better) and the Final Game is truly Night and Day.
This game suffers from the same thing SimCity 4 does - Rediculous end use requirements. I have what I think is a pretty damn decent system w/ a 1.6 Ghz processor and geforce 4. To have it stutter constantly is rediculous. What the hell is wrong with EA lately?
Sun Tzu's Art of War is also the first that I can remember. Played that day after day. You had swordmen and archers. Maybe Pikemen too. Top down 2D view. 4 colours only. As you moved your men around the map, the different terrain affected speed and offense/defense hiderances. You simply had to kill all opposing units.
It was followed up a year or maybe two years later by Art Of War At Sea. Independently maneuver your sailing vessels and fire their cannons (left or right barrage only). Classic elemntery naval tactics. 4 or maybe even 8 colours.
A little too sophisticated for most people at the time.
You can laugh without eating a sandwhich, but you can do both if bring one.
And I see a ton of criticism about what this game does "wrong", especially when compared to other games. So, this post is a little bit different....
:/ ....
First of all, I've only played the multiplayer game, and I would not be surprised if it far outpaced any parts of the single player campaign. There's a ton of people complaining about the lack of story, but I really see no need for one. It's not as if the games of Tic-Tac-Toe or Chess needed them. The focus is square on strategy, not extras.
As far as using "real" countries and events, this game succeeds in using a Holywood style of presentation. Yes, the Chinese talk with an accrent and the GLA (Terrorists) have carbombers that say "I love a crowd", but the USA are far more gung-ho than their real counterparts. It's blatantly over-the-top... Heck, to make money after normal supplies are depleted or destroyed, the Chinese rely on hackers to steal a little bit of money from the internet. The GLA salvage destroyed bits of enemy units to upgrade their own.
It is a great multiplayer game... The various factions seem to me to be much more distinct than other RTS games, yet still balanced. Playing locally with friends (at a gaming center with 5 copies), we've had tons of fun with this thing, especially on the unique team-game dynamic. When USA and GLA team up, you've got the biggest anthrax-spreading superweapon on one side, and radar on the other side. Hard to beat, but I send my Chineese overlord tanks anyway while occupying the city with a ton of tank hunter troops and hackers.
Anyway, I love this game, and I'm seeing far more negative criticism of this game than it deserves, and there's no clear reason why, at least from where I sit. This is one of the few games lately that's been worth my money..... even if it is going to EA
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.
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!