BioWare Unveils Command & Conquer: Generals 2

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• TSS - Monday, December 12, 2011 - link

  Red alert 3 is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to red alert 2 which IMO remains the best of the series.
  
  Lots of interesting, creative units all still balanced with eachother, fun campaigns in traditional C&C style (the cheesy cut scenes where just as much part of C&C as base building was), and none of today's "micro" crap. The micro you did there was strategic movement of armies, positioning, flanking, that kind of stuff. None of the rock/paper/siccor abilities micro of today. If you'd build a bazillion light tanks that worked just fine. Even in multiplayer.
  
  Generals wasn't so bad. I mean it was crap at the time, everybody said it was crap. And it was, compared to RA2 which was the previous game. Not just gameplay wise either, i modded generals back in the day and it was a real bitch to do so. Much harder then RA2 (just code wise not even graphics wise) and infinitly harder then warcraft 3 which was out at the time. And we knew it would lead to further degeneration of the classic C&C style games, namely C&C 3 and most obviously now, C&C 4.
  
  If there's one franchise EA has F'ed up, it's C&C. It got better with each game, then EA took over, then it got progressively worse each game. I've got no doubt it'll look marvelous, and gameplay wise won't be so different from the original generals. But just remember: generals already was crap compared to what came before. With the new engine, considering what's in BF3.... I'm expecting a smaller unit cap then before.
  
  By comparison, i once built 600 chinese infantry in generals just because i was bored and wanted to see the limits of the engine. I could move about 450 of them at the same time with cross-map selection (otherwise they would not move). But i could move them all at the same time in chunks. Bet ya 10 bucks frostbite 2 can't handle that.

• KoolAidMan1 - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link

  Are you always mad when a game has expansion packs?
  
  It doesn't seem like anything to get outraged about. Instead of one expansion like the original did, now we get two. I'm all for more game.

• V-Money - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link

  Have you played the original? It had 3 campaigns, 1 for each race, the expansion also had 3, 1 for each race. I stand by my original statement. SC2 only has the Terran campaign, the '2 expansions' as you call it are campaigns for the other races, which I feel really just adds up to one game. I wouldn't have minded if they had announced this originally, or if they didn't take 12 years to make it, but I waited a long time just to get only one campaign. (I was also underway/on deployment alot at the time, so I didn't get to play it until ~8 months after it was out and I missed the part about it only being a Terran campaign until I got back)
  
  The only bigger disappointment I had last year was when I played C&C 4, I mean, really, that was the worst excuse for a game ever. I tried so hard to like it, the tiberian sun franchise was my favorite by far, but really, support MCVs, WTF.

• KoolAidMan1 - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link

  Yes, I bought Starcraft and Brood War the day they were released.
  
  The original game had three campaigns, 30 missions total. SC2 has nearly as many missions and takes about as long to complete as Starcraft and Brood War.
  
  Your logic only makes sense if Starcraft 2 had a third as many missions as it shipped with. As it stands, you're getting even more content and a much bigger campaign in the end.

• V-Money - Monday, December 12, 2011 - link

  Obviously you are missing the core principal of my argument, so i will use an analogy as I would to a child. The original SC to me was like Neapolitan ice cream, chocolate (Protoss, by far my favorite), Vanilla (Terran, which I can stomach, but not as good as chocolate) and Strawberry (Zerg, which I hate.) I was expecting another Neapolitan game, but was delivered Vanilla. True, there is just as much Vanilla ice cream than the Neapolitan combined (not arguing with you there, but as it turns out we aren't in the 90s anymore), but its still not the same. To look at your argument look at WC 2 vs WC3. I got more enjoyment out of SC than WC2, and WC3 included all races and I got much more game play than WC2, same with Frozen throne. I expected the same with SC2, all the races and much more gameplay, my expectations weren't met, I am dissapointed, end of story.

• Jedi2155 - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link

  Man, I stopped playing it after Generals, but I was a die hard C&C fan until they just shat on it with crap.

• Spivonious - Monday, December 12, 2011 - link

  Those are all kid games. Total Annihilation is the only true RTS.

• Leonick - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link

  So it's an RTS? Hmm will be interesting to see what Bioware can do with an RTS, the singleplayer campaign should be good...
  
  It's to bad they aren't making a game for the Tiberian or Red Alert universes, you know the two proper C&C universes, but I suppose they are both beyond saving thanks to EA Los Angeles... (Well maybe RA isn't completely dead yet but Tiberian sure is after C&C4)

• shivoa - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link

  BioWare Victory is the RTS heads from EALA who didn't just give up and leave. Now EALA is an asset house for FPS they needed somewhere to put the studio that kinda once was Westwood and so EA Victory was born. Now rebranded Bioware Victory, because if EA can do anything it is dilute a brand to the point where anyone with an interest in games can smell the stink.
  
  So EA are releasing a 'Westwood' game, with a Bioware brand, on a service called Origin. Because that clearly reminds PC gamers of all the good EA have done for the industry.

• chizow - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link

  I get the tongue-in-cheek irony and angst directed at EA by listing those names, but overall I think EA's influence on the industry is far more postive than negative.
  
  I mean surely those studios/IPs are in a better place than some of the past stalwarts of the industry like Sierra, Interplay, SSI, FASA etc? There's a more modern tragedy unfolding before our eyes with what's happening to iD Software (currently dyng under Bethesda/ZeniMAX's banner).
  
  Its just a volatile industry where IPs and dev studios tend to run their course rather quickly regardless of who's cutting the checks and printing their names on the boxes.