It could be on your TV news, but this is all part of the Command and Conquer: Generals game. Photos from www.eagames.com/official/cc_generals/

Command and conquer like real generals

Command & Conquer: Generals
http://generals.ea.com/
Electronic Arts http://www.electronic-arts.com.au/eagames/

Unfortunately, Command and Conquer: Generals has been one of those games that has been sitting on my shelf for far too long.

The dearth of great games and a busy past few months has seen my gaming become far more selective than it was in the past.

Having played everything from the Command & Conquer stable as well as the titles in the alternative Red Alert universe, I guess I was just about burnt out on the series that made RTS the famous acronym it is today.

I hadn’t even paid much attention to other reviews of this latest incarnation, so you can imagine my absolute surprise as the first US mission loaded and I was faced with charging into Baghdad, securing the centre of the town and then heading into the outskirts to take out a weapon of mass destruction site.

In fact it was eerily familiar right up until the point the Iraqi’s targeted their own capital with several explosive scud loads of pesticide and lots of virtual civilians, a few soldiers and armoured vehicles and a couple of buildings melted on my screen … it was over in seconds and it definitely made me think about what might have been (but thankfully now only occurs on my PC).

Essentially Command & Conquer: Generals is a flashy heir to the game’s well-established universe.

The graphics for the first time are 3D models rather than sprites and the environments have been lovingly created by the team.

Players can choose to fight for the US in an expansive global war against terror, the GLA … a fundamentalist Middle-Eastern terrorist army or the highly populated Chinese army in the three included campaigns.

Each faction offers a different play style but to be honest the single-player campaigns are so scripted there is no real chance to develop useful tactics or strategies for each group.

To me it seemed very much like pouring more and more units into the battle until victory was achieved.

The first mission on the US side, for example, was just a matter of pointing them in the right direction and watching the units go to work.

It does get a lot harder as the game goes on and the serious mistake of sending armour in built-up areas without infantry support came back to haunt me on more than one occasion.

Command & Conquer: Generals includes some cool new features to ensure it does have something new to offer beside graphics.

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun introduced fortifying buildings to the series – Command & Conquer: Generals takes it one step further with airmobile ranger assaults to secure target structures.

Gone are the aimless harvesters, replaced with far more realistic depot systems requiring serious consideration to be given to protecting the logistics line of supply.

While single-play is challenging it is hardly revolutionary – multiplay, however, is a whole new game.

Working on the Starcraft principle of three distinctly different forces within a game, multiplayer allows a gamer to fully exploit the strengths of their army and exploit the weaknesses of their foes.

The Chinese with their massive numbers (granted through cheaper production costs) swarm across maps in human (and armoured) waves.

The GLA use terrorism’s main weapon, fear, to great effect with an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons as well as suicide bombers and up-gunned SUVs of the type our SAS recently faced in the desert.

The US uses its technical expertise to dominate the landscape with all-seeing reconnaissance drones, massive amounts of fixed wing and helo air support and the joy of a fully integrated C2 picture.

All of this technical expertise does, however, come at a hefty price and it is harder to build a massive army when fighting for Uncle Sam.

Online players seem to gravitate towards the US and GLA and for some reason the Baghdad maps, complete with the arches made famous as coalition tanks trundled underneath them a few weeks ago are all the craze … personally I’ve had enough

Gulf War 2 to last me a lifetime so the Manchurian plains are more my style.

Command & Conquer: Generals is an update, but a good one at that.

However, the single player campaigns should really have been packaged as an extensive training set and the game marketed as a multiplayer title as this is where it really shines with up to eight people battling it out for global supremacy.

It has been recently patched to version 1.5.

Electronic Arts recommends a 1.8 GHz or faster processor, 256MB RAM and a GeForce 3 or higher to enjoy Command & Conquer: Generals.

Time splitters doing what they do best

TimeSplitters 2
Eidos Interactive:
http://www.eidosinteractive.com/
TimeSplitters 2 is one of those amazingly addictive and fun games that gives consoles their immense popularity. It has now been released for all of the current generation systems and looks unlikely to make it to PC – although that would be a waste of the game’s greatest feature anyway.

TimeSplitters 2 is a run and gun action-fest that has a player warping through nine different locations and times to hunt down and eliminate the evil TimeSplitters. The game features everything from a 1920s Gangster scenario through to a Cold War military base and even a futuristic space-based robot factory.

Although the scenarios are different and the weapons have varying levels of effectiveness, gameplay remains constant and it is one of those games that you get into a groove and can stay there for hours.

While playing it through in single-play mode is fun, it is the multi-play aspects of the game that make it shine. The screen can be split into two or four frames for enthralling lounge room entertainment or those keen enough can lug their PS2 or XBox to a mate’s place and link up to 16 players depending on the number of systems/televisions.

The game controls are well thought out and its manga-inspired visual style is refreshing and extremely well done. Whatever your system TimeSplitters 2 is one of those must-have titles.

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