Command & Conquer Generals

Command & Conquer Generals

Generals was the wierdest and sweetest C&c in a way because it was present day like C&c RA but realistic looking like C&c TS. The game was based on a three army world; China, GLA (terrorists "al-queda"), and USA. It was wierd because it was the first C&c without the westwood seal of approval, but it was still called C&c, but it wasn't like C&c or RA really, very confusing indeed.
Each army had all the basic C&c units but in present day equivalent terms, the new feature was that as you killed you opponent ( and as time passed) you gained experience and ranked up in games (and started again every new game). It was like researching tech but there was a huge tech tree already. The expirence related to the fact that you were a general and after enough kills you became a 2 star 3 star and so on to 5 star where you had some powerfull special abilities that rivals the damage of  super weapons. There were lots of units and the coolest was a GLA tank that would armor up and increase damage as it killed other tanks and picked up spare parts.

Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge

Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge

Yuri's Revenge was a pretty good expansion for Red Alert 2, it went further than other expansions in that it added an entirely new faction to the game Yuri and his Russian mind controlled slave army. RA2 set up the expansion with the cinematic clip at the end when Yuri is the cause or the Soviet aggression and goes rouge. Yuri has some really awesome units from long range missile subs, to flying saucers, to mind control tanks, and a mind control and damage inducing super weapon.

Concept art

Red Alert 2

Red Alert 2

 This game marked the beginning of a new era of C&c. in my personal opinion; Once EA games got it's greasy little paws on westwood (they bought them out) and on the franchise; they lost something that made C&c great. ever since RA2 i feel like each game except C&c 3 is lacking in some way. Now when I got this game I was eagerly awaiting it's release for like a year (cough.. StarCraft2..cough..Diablo3), as I said before Red Alert in contrast to other C&c's had a special place in my heart. I remember that I got a bootleg copy early (don't worry i had a real copy pre-ordered and EA got their cash) and I loved the game. Once I got a real version, I learned that there were B and C list Hollywood actors playing characters in cinematics for the campaign. Everything was really cool except that the game seemed a little too cartoony. Tiberian Sun had great graphics, better than RA2 in ways because the shapes were more proportionately realistic so everything was more believable, but in RA2 soldiers appeared to be more than a story tall when standing next to skyscrapers, and there alwase seemed to be a playground somewhere on the map. This attitude carried on in later versions of RA to a wild extreme where I have a hard time playing the game; I find myself getting bored and playing something else. The one positive side to RA2 is that the units were great, that is to say that EA  put a great mix of units in the game, they included important Red Alert units such as the tesla trooper, the demolition truck, mammoth tanks, and naval units, with even cooler new ones. another cool thing about RA2 was that both factions had individual countries that you played as in skimish or online play. Every country had a special unit that gave it a particular edge, for example; USA had aircraft carrier, France had long range artilery defense tower, British had sniper (awesome one hit to infantry), Koreans had a fighter plane, Germans had an advanced tank killing tank, the soviet army had a similar setup. Another cool thing that happened in RA2 was most units gained a secondary skill or alternate attack, this depended on the nature of the unit but an example is allied infantry dug into a sandbag bunker and gained damage and range, AWESOME for turtles. The final excellent feature of RA2 that stuck with subsequent games was the large AOE (area of effect) super weapons. In RA2 super weapons could take out an entire base if you liked to make nice neat and organized bases (like me). basically if you group building at all you better be able to knock out enemy super weapons before they fire...EVERY TIME. So basically in RA2 a nuke was way more powerful than it had ever been before

veteran army (mixed some allied some soviet same team)

A good defensive position for the soviet player (notice allied infantry in alternate mode of attack)

Super Weapons in action (soviet nuke ready to fire in the middle of allied weather machine attack)

Concept art

Tiberian Sun Firestorm

Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun Firestorm

Firestorm was an awesome addition to Tiberian Sun, it had a great new campaign and new units that balanced and saturated the game (any more units would have been too many). In the Campaign mode Nod had developed a super AI called CABAL, and Nod had been messing with cybernetic cyborg technologies and these eventually lead to complete robots. CABAL at the end of the story takes control of a huge robot with insane weaponry and shielding, then Kane must destroy the AI before it destroys Nod. On a personal note if you buy this game and cant kill the robot, don't use artillery make a bunch of banishes and bomb it.

CABAL

Command and Conquer Tiberian sun

Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun

Command and conquer Firestorm was a really awsome addition to the C&c series, it had been a few years since the original command and conquer and red alert was really popular. Red Alert was so popular that they re-released command and conquer on Nintendo 64, more recent versions of the game have been released for state of the art gaming platforms like Xbox and PlayStation. Tiberian Sun was a total revamp of the original command and conquer, totally new units and buildings (some iconic building remained the same), and a third neutral race. in Tiberan Sun Kane is back after being presumed dead since the original command and conquer (unless you saw him in a clip in red alert), Kane and the Brotherhood seek to destroy the GDI again but this time there is a much more complex game going on. In C&c and Red Alert; damage seemed to be somewhat unbalanced, tanks killed infantry really easily and infantry couldn't really ever stop a tank, also the radius of attack of every unit was similar because of the graphics. Now in Tiberian sun there were many more unit types that had a specific type of damage that worked well verses certain buildings or units, also the type of unit determined the units armor and range. In older versions of C&C it seemed as though the longer a units health bar was the more life it had, in TS it was different there was more complex equasions happening with damage detection.

 There were 3 major differences in TS then other C&c games that made TS better (in my opinion):

1. cool superweapons (superweapons cooler than just a nuke)
2. range of tech tree & unit diversity (lots of air, armored, and ground units to make)
3. veteran units (after X amount of kills units ranked up their armor, damage, and recovered health)

RED ALERT Counterstrike and Aftermath

Red Alert expansions

RA had two expansion sets that came out in 1997 "Conterstrike" and "Aftermath".

Counterstrike was mainly a mission and map pack but aftermath had a bunch of new units to play with including Tesla tanks and troopers, missile subs and other cool new units. The two packs really expanded the online multiplayer capabilities of the original game platform, and this is what was cool about them. The new units balanced the game and made the soviet army better.

Some of the new units

Chrono Tank- could teleport with its built in chronosphere, had twin rocket launchers that attacked air and ground.

Demolition Truck- This bad boy was a supply truck with a nuclear bomb in it, weak armor so they were destroyed easily. Personally i liked making a chain convoy that would wear down defenses before my tanks swept in.

M.A.D. Tank- The mutually assured destruction tank was an awesome tank that blew up a few seconds after you set it off, they had a huge explosion and good armor.

Tesla Tank- A light to medium armored tank with a Tesla lightning generator in place of a cannon, great against infantry and overwhelmingly powerful in groups.

RED ALERT

duh-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nuh-nuh!

RED ALERT oh my god this was the hottest thing when it came out, it was the illest thing ever created. this was my first PC game that i put more than 24 hours into, honestly i'm not sure that i don't have close to a whole year of hours playing skirmishes against the computer... seriously this game kept me occupied for such a long time, i remember that i was angry initially when the next Command and Conquer came out because it wasn't a new better graphic version of Red Alert it went back to the GDI-Nod future as in the original games. The big differences with Red Alert over the older games was that Red Alert had the skirmish option where you could play against the computer on a map and use every unit available in the game right away and you could build your base up from the ground any way you wanted, also unlike C&c you had infantry units, armor units, aerial units, and naval units (personal favorite). Also if you had a creative mind you could build a custom map and play on that. Another huge difference was the online aspect that was brought to RTS's, (and the awesome soundtrack)

Red Alert took place in an alternate universe explained in the game and subsequent Red Alert sequels due to time travel or more specifically a technology employed in game play called chronosperes. Chronoshperes where the allied "super weapon" in contrast to the Soviet iron-curtain. They could be used to transport any individual unit (except infantry oddly) anywhere on the map instantaneously, this is tied to time travel and quantum physics. In the storyline the post WW2 allied leaders decide to travel back in time and kill Hitler! Great idea right? Except that now Germany never fights communist Russia, and now in the late part of the century the USSR is ready to take over the world. So while the allies wanted to save lives back in WW2 they now are faced with a WW3 like scenario with full nuclear arsenals on either side of the battle lines. This came out like only a few years after the cold war ended and this was such a scary sci-fi story unfolding right in your hands, i remember feeling adrenalin from watching the intro video and all.

 

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