Terrorism, weapons of awesome destruction that can kill thousands, this is the largest issue in the world right now and Command & Conquer: Generals has all of those issues in mind, that’s what make the game play more life like and the most realistic of its genre. The three main sides in the game meet-head-on, The GLA standing for Global Liberation Alliance an underground terrorist organization attacking civilians, the USA and China who are fighting to get rid of the GLA who have targeted them and they want revenge. The game offers a wide variety of different weapons and units. It’s something different from the rest of the C&C’s genre.

At first you are a soon-to-be general who hasn’t quite made the ranks yet, and you get to choose one of the three armies that you want to play as. The GLA are a bit weaker and have mostly speed and lower costs, China is in the middle with strong units, that are really effective in hordes (you get stat bonuses) and of course the very dangerous flame tanks that I love the most. Finally, there is the US who dominate in the skies, that is the field that US specializes in, offering carpet bombing, fuel bombs, Aurora bombers, and of course the classic paratroopers. 

The heart of Command & Conquer, is the game play it’s one of the greatest aspects in Generals and being in command is even easier now, they expanded on some of the older ideas, such as most units can guard areas instead of certain units, air units can protect your base from an air attacks, shooting down the enemy aircrafts. Units armed with missiles that shoot from far distances will attack the enemy and if the enemy closes in on them they will pull back and shoot again when they hit the required distance, without having to defend them.

New to the Command & Conquer series is the concept of promotions. In the older C&C games, the units that survive combat engagements gain experience, they would get promoted and gain more firepower and healing ability, which it is still in the game but in this one if you have exterminated a certain amount of enemy buildings and units you can get promoted, with these promotions you get points which can be spent on certain things such as paratroopers, unlocking units for that match, powerful air support, and other useful things that can help you conquer. Some of the abilities have a required rank, such as the USA’s fuel bombings is a level 5 and you need to get to level 5 in rank before you can even use it.

Another new concept to C&C: Generals is making money, most of you who have played the game probably hated when the tiberium ran out and you have no resources to make units and thought that the game was over right? Well in Generals it’s different! I was running out of money as the Chinese Army, and I trained 10 hackers and use them to hack on the net, before I knew it, I had 30 to 40 hackers earning me large sums of money every second, and as they got promoted they made me even more money, for the GLA they use the black market and Americans use the supply drop. 

I found the graphics to be one of the most important parts of the game as well, Generals really demands a lot, my GM (game machine) is a XP1600, 512 megs DDR and a Geforce 4 440mx and I had to lower my graphic details a bit to prevent system lag. One of the game aspects I really enjoyed was the CGI movies between the missions. Watching various structures and units getting blown up in slow motion; the view would rotate so I can watch the attack from multiple angles.

The quality of the detail of the terrain was beautiful, as well as the buildings and the other objects that could be found. Most of the units in the game look great as well, such as the skins on the Humvee’s, Technical’s, flame tanks they were all done very well. The details for building constructions was great, while creating the buildings it looked as if there was an actual construction site unlike other C&C games, the building is somehow pre-made and dropped into place.

Included in this version of C&C is an option that has yet to be seen in most RTS games. This option is the ability to ZOOM in. Although it’s a great option, being able to zoom into an all out battle, watching you’re enemies and even your troops getting annihilated. I found it cool at first, but after a few hours of game play, I would have to say it became completely useless. However, for those who like a close in view then that would be the best thing for them. Sadly, the detail on the infantry (USA’s example Rangers) was terrible, when I zoomed in it looked as if the soldier was carrying a plastic rectangle. I enjoyed mostly everything else in the graphics section, but the look of the units up close was just horrible.        

The most recognizable part of any Command & Conquer game would have to be the sound, in every game from Tiberian sun to Yuri’s Revenge, you would hear your men acknowledge your order and make you feel like your of important. Generals also uses this form of interaction between you and your men, but they’ve also added a few additional line, when I highlight my units some will reply “always ready for action” which seems realistic knowing that most of your troops in real life would actually talk to you and interact with you. I have played almost all of the Command & Conquer games, and the music was always great, I had big expectations from EA to have great sound track of which affects my game play. If the sound track I’m listening to is horrible and doesn’t relate to the game in any way I’ll just give up on the game and move to on to a new one. Generals lived up to my expectations. The music was great; the theme of the sound track gave me the impression that I was fighting for a good cause. As well as the Music, and Interaction there is one main part, the sound effects, a great game will always have realistic sound effects. C&C: Generals doesn’t let you down there, The guns in Generals sounded great, they sounded very realistic to me, on the other hand the rocket launchers will didn’t really sound the greatest but they have improved upon the older games sounds effects, so I do give them credit for improving. 

By far the easiest part of this game to would have to be the Controls, throughout most of the C&C games, the learning curve for the controls is pretty small, a couple of solid hours and you have most of the basics down. The tutorials in Generals actually teach you more with the controls than any other game and this got me angry, I learned from Generals that if you hold down Ctrl+1 you could make a group and hit 1 again to easily access the group. I played Tiberian sun and tried it and it worked! Through out my whole C&C career I had never heard of using the groups and I thank the people who added it. There is a booklet that also teaches you the entire hot key commands that comes with the game; it’s very useful to use them so that you can deploy your forces of mass destruction much easier. Out of all the C&C games I would say that Generals teaches you more of the commands than any of the other ones and most user friendly.

The worst part about Generals that I have to label in this review would be that the game requires a good machine to play on, Another bad point is that EA was completely unprepared for the Multiplayer servers, Westwood is great, I have never had any problems online with their games when they were new, but when I went online there was no refreshing of servers, the list would scroll up all the time and a game would be full when I scrolled back down, sorting out the games by certain types wasn’t really effective and most of all connection problems was the largest problem with me. I heard people saying in the chat room that they wanted to sell the game and that it was a complete disappointment, they still had a point and it was what they paid money for so they could play online with other people without the problems of not being able to join games or connect with other people.

Overall, I would say that this is a must have game, with new people or computers, missions and will never get bored of the game. If you liked the other command & conquer games and have a fast enough computer, then you should go to the store and buy this game right now.

-- Matt Capranos, Gaming-Media

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