LOVE IT!!!!
Generals was a good return to the real-time combat game that these guys made famous.
I've got the whole C&C collection, and it was headed downhill in a fashion until Generals/Zero hour made the scene.
If you play Red Alert, you need to keep in mind it is supposed to be campy. Not to be taken serious at all.
I beg to differ. Generals is where Command & Conquer series got a bullet to its head.
When the old Command & Conquer and Red Alert first came out, they were revolutionary in at least several areas of gameplay, but Tiberian Sun and Firestorm set the standard for what a C&C game should be. Both sides have lots of different units and different tactics. And I'm talking about units that don't have silly capabilities like the Red Alert 3 SHRINK RAY. Tiberian Sun featured DYNAMIC terrain, a feature deleted from the later C&C engine. I remember well how effective the NOD artillery was at digging giant holes in the ground. Not just cratering that you see in the later engines that doesn't affect unit movements, I'm talking about the ground changing when struck by high powered weapons.
NOD also featured two underground vehicles: An APC and a flame tank. Something that's gone from future C&C games.
Another awesome feature of Tiberian Sun was the use of the Stealth Tank. Detecting stealth units was difficult - only one unit could cover a large area to reliably detect stealth units. In future C&C games, many units have stealth, but also almost every defensive building and many units have ability to discover stealth units - making stealth meaningless. Such was the case with stealth units in Generals.
Tiberian sun also had by far the best cinematics and voice acting of any game I have ever played:
James Earl - General Solomon
Michael Biehn - Commander McNeil
Frank Zagarino - Slavik
Joseph Cucan - Kane
The cutscenes look like well produced movies, not just some person talking to the always silent commander behind the screen:
CABAL:
Getting back to Generals:
All Generals was was a test of the in-dev engine. The cutscenes were rendered in game, the voice acting sucked, the number of units and tactics available was limited and the game was incorrectly balanced.
Chinese had insane ground offensive capabilities, US had the air force, but why bother with stealth Comanche, if they can be detected by the low tech GLA stinger site. :facepalm:
GLA was a nuisance when you wanted to destroy them. The stingers just caused enough damage to scratch your tanks, but no amount of GLA resistance could hold up to a serious ground assault.
GLA also had no special super powers in the beginning of the game. You couldn't do a Zerg rush with the GLA... They were just worthless.
The point defenses were a joke. Usually C&C featured a small ground turret and a large ground turret, as well as a SAM site. Generals crushed that into one turret and it was worthless in all three roles. GLA missiles and Patriots were only able to shoot air threats down after bombs were away and performed horribly against infantry. Chinese gun turrets were worthless against tanks and only excelled against infantry.
The generals powers were overpowered and there was no cap on number of super-weapons. You could basically build a large defense force, wait for enemies to attack so you could score points, then use the super powers and general's powers to wipe the enemy out. Where's the tactics and strategy in that?
Tiberian Sun style super-weapons were the best. The ion cannon would best be used against power plants, base defenses or unit concentrations just before your force rolled in. NOD's cluster missile was best used against power plants and concentrations of buildings, but if you waited for 2 chemical missiles, you stood a decent chance of destroying the Construction yard, weapons factory or a refinery - the three strongest buildings. You just couldn't destroy the enemy base with super weapons.
Red Alert 3 is an even bigger failure and so is Tiberium twilight. No more tiberium harvesting... it's like they ripped the backbone out of the game. Things really went downhill when EA took over Westwood studios.
