This game opens up with a hilarious intro “In the modern world great leaders resolve their conflict with words like…….SCUD LAUNCHER……CARPET BOMBING…….TOMAHAWK MISSILE”.
The game feels like a lowkey parody of modern conflict and the war on terror. We’ve got detention camps, suicide bombers and angry mobs. This is the only time I’ve ever played an RTS game and I have to say I quite enjoyed it. The part of the allure of this game is the real-life factions, equipment and vehicles. As a kid I completely loved the US faction because of the jets but playing this as an edgy adult I absolutely love the GLA faction and its units. On the downside I felt the missions were too little and too short, I didn’t even get to make a scud launcher and nuke during the entire playthrough just because of how quickly every mission ended.
I absolutely adore this game. Some of the vehicles are based on real life, at least the planes that I know of f22, f117, Mig 1.44, Comanche. There are unique vehicles and infantry in each faction with some interesting skills. I'd also like to mention the OST as well, the orchestral music slaps hard. America has epic orchestral with rock guitar at times, GLA has Arabic/South Asian ethnic music mixed in and China has its own ethnic instruments mixed over the orchestral pieces. Overall, this is a very fun albeit a bit short game with just seven missions for each faction.

I'm not good at strategy games but I'm pretty skeptical about the balance. Although nothing like that would matter to me because I booted it up again due to nostalgia. The unit models and especially the voice lines will be remembered till I bite the dust.
The writing and acting in this game is both batshit and phenomenal, it's a 2003 Teen-rated game where your first missions are a nuclear terrorist attack in China, the siege of Baghdad, and a terrorist attack on a dam followed by hails and cheers as the tide sweeps away civilians and enemies alike. Oh, and this game was written by Rachel Bilson's dad.

I have a soft spot for Command & Conquer Generals. This was EA's first game in the series, and the introduction of a third universe as well, separate from Tiberium and Red Alert. Generals strayed away from Sci-Fi and instead went for a setting based on modern warfare. And it does a good job at that. Unsurprisingly, Generals is a game that was a bit topical for the time, and ended up in hot water in some versions of the game. The German version in particular is heavily censored, where even human characters have their icon edited to make them look like robots.

Generals is extremely politically incorrect, and probably wouldn't fly today. Despite being modern warfare it doesn't lose any of that good ol' Command and Conquer charm that makes the series so darned lovable.

Gameplay differs slightly from previous entries. Previous games had players build structures in a queue and then plop them down ready-made on the field when they were done. In Generals, Workers and Dozers instead move over to the place the building will be and build it over time. It's a fun change and honestly I quite love this take on RTS structure building. Keeping your construction units safe into the mid and late game is much more important in this one. And there's no running by packing up your MCV either. I think this change was made to fit the modern setting better and it definitely works by making Generals play uniquely.

The campaigns are rather on the easy side for "Normal", so I'd recommend bumping up the difficulty if you're a seasoned RTS player. China's Mission 7 however is a pain, jeez. That one took me careful planning to make work. But true to being an RTS, having a right strategy in mind for these campaign missions usually works.

Generals unfortunately is lacking in some areas compared to its sequel/expansion in Zero Hour. There's some gaping holes in many of the units, such as the USA lacking a ground AA vehicle, or China only having one type of aircraft.

Still, vanilla Generals is still fun. I'd give it a try now that it's on Steam, but make sure you install GenTool to give it a needed facelift, proper FPS, and proper resolution.

Score: 84

>be game dev
>three factions
>"oh, it's obvious who"
>taliban
>china
>america

This game is not the best, but very funny and enjoyable if you just want some dumb fun.

generals is a great game, i cant really speak about how much it changed from the previous games as this was my first basically, dad played command and conquer and i continued. What i like about generals is honestly the art design just takes the game to such a higher level, something about this era of warfare is very interesting to me because its was an evolution of warfare, and this game really captures that.

you have China, GLA which is middle eastern forces, and USA, all of which have bonuses and weakness. for example the GLA forces do not require power, and save a tremendous amount of money by getting upgrades from enemy tank wrecks, and building power substation to maintain defenses. the problem, is theyre weaker, and realy on hit and run attack or something to surprise the enemy. China and USA use power to maintain defenses but must bide their time till they achieve tech dominance over GLA.

i really recommend finding a way to play this game, its prob pretty cheap online for a real copy. and it doesnt interact with windows 10 that well