COMMAND & CONQUER: GENERALS (PC)


Generally speaking, it's a solid RTS

By MARTIN KINGSLEY

Can you have too much of a good thing?

Let's see what we've got here: Command & Conquer (C&C), C&C: Red Alert, C&C: Tiberian Sun, C&C: Tiberian Sun - Firestorm Exp. Pack C&C: Red Alert 2, C&C: Red Alert 2 - Yuri's Revenge Exp. Pack, C&C: Renegade (expansion pack coming soon), not to mention the numerous bastard spin-offs of the franchise (Sole Survivor, anyone? Counterstrike add-on missions?).

It's come as a great surprise to us here at the GameBlitz bunker to discover that, no, McDonalds does not give away C&C tank toys with every Happy Meal.

It's possibly the most prolific game series on Earth, and now we can celebrate as a new, revamped member of the family joins the rest of its kind, and its name is…Generals. All cower before its mighty polygonal goodness and dynamic camera angles; fear its rotating slow motion 360-degree pan!

Nah. But seriously, Generals does look good. Not stunning, by any means, but good nonetheless. Maybe it's all those years of voxels and high-res sprites that make Generals look so appealing. The particle system has to be seen to be appreciated, especially when in the presence of a nuke. Sure is purty.

Unfortunately, about 5 minutes must have been spent on rendering infantry models, because not since Rogue have I seen such ugly beings (and Rogue was using ASCII, for crying out loud).

Made up of blocky sections in various colours (apparently to designate different parts of the body), these mirror-cracking individuals must have been deployed sheerly out of the hope that someone would shoot them, therefore saving anyone from having to look at them again.

Thankfully, the bulk of your army is made up of mechanised and motorised units, coming in various flavours, such as tanks, artillery, jeeps, planes, helicopters, Armoured Personnel Carriers, bull-dozers and special units, such as a Boeing 767 dropping fuel canisters out the back door.

Of course, all this weaponry is useless without a war, and boy do you have a war! A war in bad taste, admittedly, but still a war.

In the near future, we have the Chinese, the Americans and a terrorist faction known only as the GLA vying for global supremacy. The GLA, being the nasty blokes they are, wander around and nuke stuff for fun, and when that fails, they plough sedans full of nitro-glycerine into military parades, generally making a mess.

And so the Chinese and good ole US of A take it upon themselves to rid the world of these terrorists by chasing them halfway across the world and carpet bombing the hell out of them, the silent battle cry of "SCREW COLLATERAL DAMAGE" metaphorically ringing in their enemies' ears...

Let me give you an example of what I mean:

The first USA mission involves you going into Iraq and laying siege to, of all places, Baghdad, before bashing your way in there and shooting everything up, barely avoiding getting hit by a chemical warhead and having to retreat, build up a bigger army, and then nuke everything.

Art imitating life, or life imitating art?

The most ironic thing is that Generals was held back from beta release after 9-11 because it might arouse sensitivities in high places.

Now they release the full game when everything is allegedly quiet, only to have a war not too dissimilar to the one depicted in the game erupt in their faces. Boy, Westwood sure didn't have any luck there, did they?

Similarities to reality aside, and Generals is not really a single-player game. Oh, certainly, it's got a single player campaign, but it's similar to the single player game found in Quake 3, where the whole point of the campaign is to train you up for battle online or over a LAN.

Gone are the cheesy cinematics, B-movie actors and weird jokes that we have all come to associate with C&C. In their place, we find clean, sparsely decorated briefings, with emotionless voiceovers and a quite bland rotating world CGI background.

Personally, I sort of preferred the Tanya cinematics and "Boris the Turtle" gags over this whole sterile theatre of war approach. And James Earl Jones as the GDI commander…I mean, you can't lose.

I mentioned in my opening about 360 degree camera pans. Let me elaborate: This effect was cribbed totally from the Matrix, and, to my great irritation, shows up in 9 out of 10 -wait- make that 10 out of 10-ingame battle cinematics.

While it's kind of cool the first couple of times, what with the badly rendered soldiers flying all over the place and tanks breaking apart, after that it becomes painful, and then very annoying.

Other than the Matrix-loving cinematographer, the camera performs well, allowing you to get in close without going so far as to ever obscure your view.

Unfortunately, the whole transition to 3D has upped the system requirements, meaning that without a Geforce 4 and at least 1.3GHz behind the processor, you will find yourself unable to maintain a decent frame rate.

A new shiny add-on to the C&C game mechanics is the General system, whereby you gain experience points RPG-style for destroying enemy units and, once you've gained enough EXP, you get a promotion, meaning you get access to shinier new units.

These new units comprise such favourites as the still-technically-in-production supersonic Aurora stealth bomber or even the (wholly cribbed from Die Another Day) space particle cannon. It's this kind of thing that gives you an incentive to really get into the action.

To counter the old bog-standard tactic known only as the tank rush™, each unit has a particular specialty when it comes to countering enemy units.

For instance, heavy tanks are good against other tanks and buildings, but happen to be weak against infantry, while infantry are good against planes and weak against vehicles, but have the advantage of being able to enter buildings.

And for every action in-game, there is an equal and opposite counteraction. Example: The GLA has commandos holed up in a hotel.

As the Americans, you can of course simply shell the building into its component atoms, but the smarter player simply orders a special ranger team to land on the roof and clear the building out floor by floor. 30 seconds later, the building is under your control and you can move on.

This sort of "rock, scissors, paper" gameplay is good, because it encourages strategy over straight unit rushing, a fact that should help in an online environment where cheats are always constantly on the lookout for that extra cheap-as-hell advantage.

Sorry to say this, fellas, but pumping out endless columns of jeeps isn't going to work this time.

And you can't just rush construction to get the nukes, because you have to have enough EXP to be able to build the nukes, and you can't get experience unless you actually fight, so no luck there, either.

A multiplayer game at heart, this is still the C&C we all know and love, but this time it's got new fiddly bits for you to play around with.

Those of you without Internet access are encouraged to save your money and play Generals at a LAN party, but those lucky enough to have access to the WWW should definitely have a gander at this new, lemon scented, Command & Conquer.

ORIGINALITY 70%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 90%
PLAYABILITY 85%
ENJOYMENT 80%
OVERALL 85%