I've been playing C&C Generals: Zero Hour with a friend lately. A lot. And my experiences have brought back feelings of nostalgia worthy of more than a few words. I would like to share them with you, so here goes nothing:
I first purchased the original Command & Conquer: Generals back in 2003 when I saw it on the store shelves at Wal-Mart and knew nothing about it other than the fact that it was a different C&C title and that it had awesome box art. My copy featured the GLA (Global Liberation Army, aka terrorists) themed box, with the U.S.A. and Chinese-themed boxes also available (and equally awesome). I can remember flipping open the box flap and seeing colorful pictures of tanks, rivers, propaganda-filled cities, nuclear bombs exploding, and planes dogfighting above skyscrapers. It was at that time that I knew I was in for a treat.
Fast-forward six years later and here I am still coming back to it, still playing the same maps with the same units and same strategies, but having just as much fun now as I did then!
When I first popped the game into my computer back in 2003 after returning from the store, my pathetic PCI Geforce 4 MX 440 video card couldn't handle the game. My frame rate chugged in the teens and single digits, units moved at a snail's pace (even humvees), and the incredibly fugly, low-res DirectX 7 water was in place of the smoothly animated, flowing and pulsating DX8 version. At the time, however, I could have cared less! The factions were very interesting to me and the music and unit voice-overs worked to enhance the otherwise slow gameplay experience.
It wasn't until I paid visit to a local LAN Center and saw the game running silky smooth on their Geforce Ti-4200-equipped computers that I realized the true glory of the game. GLA workers, now running at the speed of cheetahs, quickly scattered around the battlefield, building structures and moaning about doing so much work (but it then made perfect sense - I wouldn't want to work at that pace, either!), tanks flew across the battlefield, infantry ran as if they were participating in track meets, and smoke quickly billowed out of buildings, each casting its own dynamic shadow. I don't think I will ever forget the first moments I had seeing C&C Generals as it was meant to be. God, what a beautiful game at the time! And oh, how fun it was to play. Whether against the A.I. or whipping up on my old man, I had a blast each and every time. Although I got my butt kicked often in online play and took a good while to improve, I loved every moment of every battle because it all made perfect sense balance-wise and looked beautiful in the process.
One of the first big battles I ever played was at the same LAN Center I mentioned previously. Two of its owners - Brian and Jodie - were also fans of the game and had been playing it a fair bit. As a result, they came in one day and boastfully challenged us to a match against them. My father and I took teams, as did Brian and Jodie, and we were also accompanied by a couple other teams with two players each. As the game began, I sloppily played with the Chinese and almost immediately began making dumb mistakes. I put up a gatlin cannon base defense on just one side of my resource trucks - a big no-no when your opponent can just attack the opposite side. Sure enough, Brian, playing as the GLA, brought down a technical truck and started shooting at my trucks from the undefended side of the resource pile. Before I knew it, he had overwhelmed me, stopped my resource gathering, and taken down all of my units. I can remember getting an airfield before a war factory and thinking that a few MiGs would somehow protect me from any attacks. Ha! Suffice to say, we ended up having our asses handed to us; but I learned a very valuable lesson that day: The best defense is a strong offense!
Then quickly came the year 2004 and the release of the one and only expansion pack: Zero Hour. To this day, I could argue that there has never been a better real-time strategy game expansion pack, ever. Most expansion packs - Blizzard's included - throw in a few new units and maps, but do little in the way of completely changing the scope of the game. Zero Hour added in nine completely new "sub-factions," three for each regular faction, containing completely new units, abilities, and ways to play. Some of my personal favorites, for example, are the U.S.A. Air Force General, the GLA Stealth General, and the China Infantry General. The Air Force General has stronger planes that come equipped with missile-defense lasers that can shoot down almost literally every missile being fired, completely making them obsolete for the opponent. The Stealth General can make all of his structures invisible on the map and also features many cloaked units, his hijacker being one of my personal favorites and a great way to annoy opponents. The Infantry General features "minigunners" rather than Chinese Red Guard troops, meaning they carry anti-infantry and air machine guns rather than bolt-action rifles; and he also features pre-veteran-status (aka stronger) infantry spanning all spectrums, meaning his infantry are immediately better than any other faction's upon being trained.
The other main component of Zero Hour that I found incredibly intriguing was its brand new "General Challenge" mode, a fresh alternative to the typical skirmish mode found in the original Generals and most other strategy games. In this new mode, opposing generals representing each of the sub-factions taunted you in-game and featured their own portraits and voice-overs, giving each general a unique personality both in terms of how he/she played and his/her attitude towards the player and war in general.
Since the C&C Generals series, there have only been two other continuations in the Command & Conquer universe: C&C 3: Tiberium Wars and C&C 3: Red Alert 3. The former was one of the worst C&C games I think I've ever had the (dis)pleasure of playing, and the latter, though well-crafted and polished, still didn't draw me in or impress me as much as Generals did when I first played it. Regardless, I would definitely recommend giving Red Alert 3 a try simply because the developers did a much better job not only visually but balance-wise as well.
With the historical stuff out of the way, I would like to share a bonus "battle report" with you guys that highlights a battle I played just a few minutes ago online on Zero Hour. There's nothing special about it, but I did find it to be an interesting match-up and saw my strategy executed flawlessly! It went a little something like this:
I randomly joined a 1v1 game, not with the intentions of winning or even playing competitively, but rather to test my connection and see if I could even connect to my opponent. I'd been having some connection problems before-hand, as you probably could have guessed by now. Sure enough, it did properly connect, but when I got into the game I thought to myself, "Hey, what the heck? I made it in here, so why not give it my best shot?"
I'd chosen Random by accident, whereas my opponent had gone with the U.S.A. Air Force General - a favorite among many, I've learned. When the game began, I saw that I'd ended up with vanilla GLA - not exactly my best faction to go with, but still good as ever if played well. Because he was going with his air force, I immediately thought of a plan: Use rocket troops to attempt and hold off humvee rushes and construct quad cannons to shoot down his planes with bullets rather than missiles (remember: the Air Force General's planes are practically immune to missiles due to their laser defense systems).
As soon as the game started, I popped up the supply pile, an arms dealer (aka war factory), and a barracks to the left. The map was fit for two, with a bridge in the middle and in the lower-left corner. I knew he'd hit the middle with units, so my plan was to sneak around the lower-left using tunnel networks and hit his backdoor. As soon as my first quad cannon came out from the arms dealer, I sent it scouting up towards the middle of the map. Sure enough, there on the bridge in the middle were a couple patriot missile defenses, each cooperating to make short work of my nearly defenseless quad cannon (I wasn't quick enough to escape!) I was pissed off because I'd already lost a unit and wasn't sure exactly what sort of defenses he had back at his actual base. I was a small step behind, but I was determined to change that quickly.
I erected two tunnel networks: One near my supply pile and arms dealer (to serve as both a sentry for any overhead drones and a mobile transporation point for outgoing vehicles) and one over top of the bridge located in the lower-left corner of the map. Two additional quads had been created, so I sent those two into the tunnel next to the arms dealer and immediately made them exit the other tunnel to the left. As soon as they came out, I sent them directly up to my opponent's "back door." I was determined to gun down his chinooks, any planes parked as his airfield, and also any spare dozers sitting around. I hit the jackpot, apparently: I accomplished all three goals and met zero opposition. The guy literally had not constructed so much as a single patriot missile defense or ground-based vehicle! His lone chinook fell quickly (he was obviously not experienced, as all U.S.A. players need at least two) and I quickly commanded one of my quad cannons to gun down a Raptor fighter plane just as it was attempting to leave the airfield, leaving him out of options and also cash. Keep in mind that every plane in the game is quite expensive, especially considering this schmuck was harvesting resources with a single chinook helicopter.
By the time he had a chance to react, it was all over. Because he'd left his base undefended, I crushed his economy, destroyed his only plane, and destroyed two helplessly slow dozers parked near the back of his base, next to the supply pile and in perfect position for me to gun down following the destruction of his two air-based units. In the meantime, I had constructed two or three other quad cannons and was sending them close to the bridge in the middle as well as near the upper portion of the screen just above my base in case any "escapee" dozers were attempting sneaky re-building maneuvers. Such was not the case, and as I destroyed his second dozer with my quads, he left the game. There was nothing the guy could do, and he played incredibly poorly. With just one rocket troop-filled humvee, he could have easily circled around my quad cannons and destroyed them before they even had a chance to dish out equal amounts of damage.
In conclusion, every time I play C&C Generals and its Zero Hour expansion, the fire inside me is re-lit. I am reminded of just how fun it is to play the game and that the art style and faction designs intrigue me even to this day. In my sleep, I am haunted with statements such as "We are de red guard!" and war cries of "I will die for our cause!", but these nightmares are the best I could possibly have. I just wish EA Games could create another real-time strategy series as engrossing as this, and that critics and players alike could for once see these titles as the legends they are. As much criticism as both titles have received for being "nothing like the other C&C titles," I can't help but think to myself: Was this the way Command & Conquer was meant to be all along?
