The game is a big departure from the C&C series. It has the same amount of comedy on the battlefield as previous C&C games like people getting tossed into the air like ragdolls and what not, but the general story has been ripped out. There\'s no campy hilarious FMV sequences with Tanya, in fact, there are no female US soldiers. I don\'t know about the other units, but the GLA don\'t have any female units either. The story is also really simplistic without any really heavy shocking plot twists like in Red Alert or Red Alert 2.
Whether these missing portions of the game make you not want the series or not is a complete preference issue since people love stories and people can live without them. I think the brief introductions to each level are more than enough to tide me over though so in my opinion, missing those few extras don\'t necessarily hurt the game in the slightest. The unit changes are amazing though and the game feels incredibly balanced. The US side, which is the side I have used considerablly, has some really awesome capabilities seen in other C&C games, but never applied in this degree.
The music itself is damn good for an RTS and I\'m very impressed with it. One thing they did do very differently with this series other than the massive story changes, is the interface which is a mix of Warcraft III and traditional Command and Conquer facets. The fog of war regrows, not as rapidly as Warcraft III, but it regrows nonetheless. The interface is handled at the bottom of the screen as opposed to the right hand side like in every other C&C game, and resources are handled MUCH differently by each faction. It truly is genius how it all works out.
A couple of examples of some of the awesome tricks the US can do:
- Chinook helicopters can transport groups of soldiers into battle and they can rappel into buildings and capture them or re-capture them if they are occupied SWAT team style.
- Up to five units, and a pilot, can be packed into a humvee for transport and they can be outfitted with all types of soldiers making them perfect troop mowers, tank killers, or effective mobile SAM units. It\'s a perfectly capable versatile unit.
- Soldiers can be upgraded to carry flashbang grenades that completely mow down any and all types of infantry.
- You can also use your General abilities to unlock Snipers which completely wipe out infantry from a distance and like Ghosts in Starcraft, they are completely invisible when they don\'t move.
- Standard troops can also capture buildings so that whole engineer unit has been done away with. The difference is that it takes a single soldier quite a bit of time to capture the building so he must be guarded at all costs.
- The super weapons are considerably more powerful this time around annihiliating numerous buildings before settling and each super weapon is accompanied by a General ability such as the Fuel Air Bomb which is basically a miniature nuke without the radiation.
- The General abilities themselves are unique to each faction and each one is just as fun as the last. They unlock hidden units and the ability to perform certain tasks like call in A-10 Thunderbolt airstrikes, the Fuel Air Bomb, and of course paratroopers which can be upgraded based on your General level. 5 Star Generals can drop 20 troops while 1 Star can drop 5.
That\'s just the beginning too. America dominates with its air force and I didn\'t even touch on it here. Getting down to it, the General abilities coupled with the versatility of units and the sheer tactical know how required to play the game is magnificent making a game that is perfectly balanced and fun to play while being incredibly beautiful to stare at at the same time. If you have the rig to run it, I highly recommend you pick this game up. It\'s a truly magnificent RTS that\'s not only fun to watch, but really fast and fun to play as well.
