- Command and conquer game download for pc
And rest assured, we're being promised plenty of nuances in this very department. First off is the new command interface, which has been completely revamped. The age-old vertical interface of games-gone-by is to be replaced by an intuitive horizontal one which will allow information to be gathered and orders dispatched far more rapidly. Clicking on a building will now reveal all the options available from that structure, considerably simplifying base and unit construction.
And in an attempt to make units less one-dimensional, EA Pacific has decided to incorporate unit upgrades. AKs for the Angry Mob being just one such example. Resource management and building construction have also received overhauls. Each side will start out with a bulldozer, which acts as your construction vehicle funny, but I've always been under the impression that bulldozers were meant for knocking things down. These can erect new buildings anywhere on the map, as opposed to just within your base.
EA Pacific is hoping that this will open up a whole new array of tactical possibilities in Generals. Resource collecting will revolve around pick up trucks and supply depots. Will they fall to the floor and pound the earth with scab-covered fists and shout:.
The combination of the two is being called the Sage engine. Now this is an odd one. The 3D engine is one big reason and seeing it running at E3 proved that Westwood has gained from biding their time and watching otl ler strategy games make the mistake of going there first. Mark Skaggs, executive producer on the game, ran us through a typical mission, which kicks off with a botched political assassination in a small fishing village.
A UN envoy, being escorted to Kazakhstan, is ambushed by two vehicles that explode and take out the escort vehicles, giving us the first taste of the cinematic quality of the visuals. After a hefty firefight Skaggs settles in control of a US and allied Chinese base and orders the construction of a nuke. A bridge separates him from the enemy GLA base, and a huge dam is located upstream.
Instead of leaving this to your imagination, the new engine enables you to track major events like this and witness the fallout, in this case the sight of the villagers attempting, and ultimately failing, to outrun the water.
Of course, being a Westwood presentation, Skaggs gets his ultimate revenge by calling a nuclear strike and obliterating the GLA troops. Westwood always manages to get fun into its games but the build-and-rush tactics of old are getting stale and it needs to move on.
Despite their flaws, and there have been many throughout the seven-year history of the franchise, the games have always achieved immense playability through addictive gameplay, a somewhat cheesy sense of humour and an aura of toy-like wonder built into every single unit.
This time it takes place in the near future between the USA, China and the terrorist organisation of the GLA Global Liberation Army within the structure of a continuous campaign, with eight to ten missions for each side, maps and a skirmish mode. The idea is to keep quality high at the expense of quantity. Tiberian Sun was also very serious and hardcore and we wanted to do something that was in the middle.
Our goal is to make a game that's like a Hollywood action war movie that has this feeling of fun, so when you walk out, you feel good. The developers have certainly played on this, as well they should, with paused explosions during the in-game cut-scenes that show off the might of the newly created Sage engine and degree rotations, that could have come straight out of Swordfish. Vehicles will leave tracks and push over walls and trees, rather than just rolling through them like they did previously; rangers will drop down onto the top of buildings to flush out enemy troops.
In gameplay terms, this meant that if you worked out the pattern the enemy units would follow, you could frequently beat them with ease. This is something that EA Pacific is trying to address in Generals. So, if a unit uncloaks nearby, your soldier will have some kind of 'Wow a stealth unit has just appeared!
The Chinese and GLA can also take enemy units prisoner. The GLA use tranquiliser darts to knock out enemy soldiers and special snipers that can fire through armour to kill tank drivers and capture their vehicles. The Chinese opt for rubber bullets and take their prisoners of war back to their propaganda centre where they are brainwashed until they turn into Chinese units.
Even the buildings have unique attributes. For example, the Americans fill theirs up with rangers that spill out of them when the building is destroyed, and the Chinese have mines all around their base building, so approaching them is potentially lethal. But perhaps the most interesting, is the sub-basements of the GLA, which allow a building to rebuild itself from the basement up if only the main part of it is destroyed.
This is something that will undoubtedly come in handy during some of the more powerful strike attacks. Every side has a choice of three Generals at the start of each mission, each of which gives their side various benefits, upgrades and unique units, rather like the sub-races you could ally with in Emperor: Battle For Dune.
And like a king, when their command centre is destroyed, they are very weak, with only a pistol to defend them. The top brass in the GLA train up their units to veteran level much quicker and turn them into superior guerilla fighters. They can also be a dab hand at biological warfare too. They also have a Warlord General who gives the Chinese tanks a horde bonus, making them an incredibly powerful siege force when kept together.
A little been there, done that," explains Browder. We want to make great games, not great games mixed with bad TV shows! Another familiar part of the Westwood games, that of resource management, has also been revamped for Generals. The USA use helicopters to pick up resources from supply piles and return them to their base, whereas the GLA use people to do the same thing.
The Chinese concentrate on hacking the Net for resources. China is a technological superpower that uses propaganda and the Internet to fuel its war effort, and the primary reason every one is going to war at all is the nefarious GLA, a terrorist group who are developing weapons of mass destruction. Starting to sound familiar? However, this doesn't mean it's just a brushed up version of Red Alert 2 with a few new units chucked in, there's far more happening beneath the surface than that.
However, this seems like gimmickry when compared to the tiny details you keep noticing out of the corner of your eye, which really add depth to the game. In fact, in many ways Generals is a more accurate portrayal of war than many official news reports. By now little things like this seem so fundamental to strategy games that you have to wonder why Westwood clung to their antiquated system for so long.
The traditional upgrading mode has been enhanced on several different levels. There are upgrades for some of the buildings and numerous upgrades for the units that endow them with extra weapons, speed and gain attack bonuses. Alongside that, as a player you gain promotions based on your performance during the game, which in turn allows you to access new technology.
Resource gathering has been refined as well, so you're no longer worrying so much about little piles of tiberian or gold. Controlling stockpiles and the various civilian buildings like hospitals and oil derricks is still an important part of gameplay, but each side has been given imaginative means of creating resources from inside their own base. The Chinese use hacker units to steal money off the Internet while their supply trucks gather the meatier resources.
Chinooks are the favoured transport method of the US and they also have supply drops to bring in extra resources. The GLA are very versatile when it comes to bringing in the moola, and use workers to gather from the stockpiles and black markets to boost up their economy.
They can also gain resources from the scrap left by burnt-out enemy vehicles. There are still the chubby pictorials for each unit and upgrade, vehicles and troops are still over and undersized against other units and their environment. But what EA Pacific has retained from previous games is carefully chosen and spruced up for Generals, such as the always strong skirmish mode in which you have a choice of 24 maps. Genuine innovation in gaming is a rare and precious thing, and the Dune Ils, the SimCities and the Dooms of this world are getting fewer and fewer, as regurgitation becomes an all too frequent development technique.
The Al is laughably basic, the graphics unsophisticated, the interface overly complicated and the characters cliched and wooden. Perhaps the best thing about the game, apart from the multiplayer mode, is that someone saw fit to include the playable demo of Medal Of Honor on the disc.
However, though it may drive many to buy what is an infinitely more accomplished game, fear most will be making an exchange before too long rather than parting with more cash. It was only last month we took a more detailed look at Renegade's online game, and since then it has received a rather significant update in the form of the 1.
In it, along with a few bug fixes and support for third-party mods, are two new maps, across which players can now take to the sky. Big deal? Well in some ways, yes.
Some of you may recall that originally aircraft were meant to be in the game, but they were removed 'for the sake of gameplay' a few months before release. Despite the panning the game has received since, it is with some thanks that Westwood has stuck by its fans and continued to update and upgrade what is an enjoyable multiplayer game - lesser developers might not have bothered.
There are in fact three aircraft to choose from: the NOD assault helicopter; the GDI Orca and the transport chopper, which is identical whichever side you fly for. Like the ground vehicles they're pretty sluggish to control and although they use the same keys as all the other vehicles, strafing and altitude controls are somewhat inconvenient.
Despite - or rather because of this - the aircraft are far from overpowering and compliment the fast-paced nature of Renegade's arcadestyle combat. However, the two maps aren't so special: the first a dusky urban figure-of-eight map, the second a rather basic desert scenario, though it won't be long before some quality maps appear, if they haven't already. While it may be stretching it to say this patch turns Renegade into a must-have game, it certainly improves its already broad online appeal.
While the single-player game is beyond help, the multiplayer game is gaining momentum. If Westwood can see its way to including real-time base-building we may finally have cause for celebration.
But for now Westwood deserves no more than a pat on the back. Before you snort like a Frenchman and skip to the next review, there's something you should know. Yes, the single-player game was a widely acknowledged cock-up, but thanks to the efforts of some die-hard modders, the multiplayer game is still enjoyed today.
Now, I'm not suggesting you buy the game for this reason - if you haven't played it by now you've probably missed the boat. But the people behind some of the best mods for the game are now working on a Ftenegade-inspired mod for Half-Life 2, with a full single-player campaign and multiplayer game called A Path Beyond and The Dead 6 respectively.
Unfortunately for Sold Out, it's also a great reason not to buy this game. As Stinkers go. Renegade's single-player game is right up there with a cabbage and baked bean vindaloo follow-through. One of our main gripes about it was its Al. Or lack of it, like jeeps following an identical oval path in a vain attempt to run you over. However, take out the Al and throw in some live bait, and these criticisms get defenestrated faster than an extra in an old-skool Western.
And believe it or not, once you've filed your nails down to a set of useless carbon stumps waiting for one of several hundred packed-to-bursting-point servers to load, you'll find that under the glitches lies a highly entertaining multiplayer lark. Renegade is certainly one of the most popular new online FPSs for a wile, and its class-based similarities to TFC is obviously capturing the imagination of fraggers the world over.
And after a few minutes it's easy to see why. During each round you earn credits for kills, which can then be cashed in for a multitude of character upgrades engineer, heavy gunner, sniper etc or used to buy vehicles which you can hop into and drive including Mammoth Tanks. Sadly, though, many of these are infuriatingly hard to manoeuvre.
Things aren't helped by some atrocious lag even with an ADSL connection and severe clipping problems. Patches are needed, and fast. If you're going to buy Renegade, then make sure it's for the multiplayer game. As a team game it works extremely well and its already massive fanbase guarantees an abundance of servers all day long. Don't expect to be enthralled, but do expect to be entertained. Captain Nick "Havoc" Parker bit off more than he could chew.
Now as Capt. Parker you've got to stop him, free the scientists. Unfortunately Raveshaw isn't the only one you'll have to worry about; you're going to also be facing up with your ex-comrade Sakura Obata, a former commando with an attitude and Raveshaw's safety in mind. Command and Conquer Renegade is one of the most original takes on a first person shooter to come along in quite a while. In the game you play Captain Nick "Havoc" Parker, a Special Forces commando dropped into sticky situations to accomplish a laundry list of mayhem.
The single player mode of the game features about 10 hours worth of game play broken up into a dozen missions. Each of the missions are pretty sizable, having you cover pretty huge maps and accomplish a lot of killing and destruction before the day is done.
The enemies and support staff you run into throughout the game come straight from the real time strategy game. You even get to commandeer a number of the vehicles and tool around the map, annihilating enemies and structures.
From heavy to light tanks, to machine gun-mounted Humvees, extreme vehicular homicide is brought to bear. The weapons provided come from the special characters in the strategy game as well, things like flamethrowers or sniper rifles. Unfortunately the game's AI is just not up to snuff. Enemies tend to do a lot of standing around, unless you're within sight. Once they see you they charge blindly ahead, taking heaps of damage without doing much to avoid hits besides the occasional weaving.
Sometimes you'll even see a flock of bad guys hung up on a table or chair. Luckily there are three difficulty settings in the single player mode and cranking it up to the hardest tends to make the game worth playing for shooter veterans.
CCR relies on its very own 3D engine, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. While the graphics go a long way to put you in the world of the original Command and Conquer, they also tend to remind you that it's only a game. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's something you need to know going into it.
The game doesn't really focus on splendid graphics, although they are certainly passable, even good at times. The sounds in CCR seem to come straight from the real time strategies.
In multiplay, you'll hear that feminine computer voice telling you when units are ready or buildings are under attack. In single player missions the main character's quips will remind you of the commando's surly comments in the original game. Guns don't sound as intimidating as in most shooters and the vehicles just don't offer the complexity necessary to capture an authentic feel. This is where CCR truly excels. Multiplayer mode is supported either through Westwood's servers or through Gamespy.
Once you log in and set up a free account you can start a quick match or hop over to the multiplayer game list, pick a game and start playing. Like in the original game, both groups have totally different looking units with essentially equal abilities. Unlike most shooters, CCR isn't about killing lots o' people.
Instead you have to destroy the enemy's base, as in all of their buildings, before they destroy yours. The biggest difference between CCR and other shooters is that this game makes the buildings a very important part of the game. Throughout the game your team's harvester will be making regular trips to pick up Tiberium.
Once the Tiberium is deposited in the refinery it is doled out equally to that side's players. The players can then run into a building and buy vehicles or character upgrades.
Character upgrades change the types of weapons, amount of health and armor a player has, so you can become a sniper or a chemical warrior or even an engineer. The engineer, a weak almost unarmed character, is essential to the game because it can heal other players, buildings and units.
A team's selection of upgrades can be severely hampered by destroying a building. Take out a barracks and no more special characters; wipe out a weapons factory and no more vehicles.
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