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Which should I play as for the Generals Challenge? [Pick 3] This poll is closed. |
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| Laser |
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60 | 14.74% |
| Air Power |
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34 | 8.35% |
| Super Weapons |
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49 | 12.04% |
| Tanks |
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26 | 6.39% |
| Infantry |
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39 | 9.58% |
| Nuclear Power |
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68 | 16.71% |
| Toxin |
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48 | 11.79% |
| Stealth |
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42 | 10.32% |
| Explosives |
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41 | 10.07% |
| Total: | 189 votes | ||
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Since all money in this game, besides the other two factions' alternate sources, comes in the form of UN relief packages, it's a bit iffy that the US seemingly deroutes food and medicine to fuel their military incursions.
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Sep 11, 2021 14:15
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| # ? May 14, 2024 03:38 |
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DOING WHAT'S RIGHT
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Sep 11, 2021 18:29
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Space Kablooey posted:Also what's up with that atrocious power consumption anyway? it's a slab with some lights bolted in, is it the blinking computer that consumes that much power?? The building's actually a bitcoin mining warehouse, and once mined those are traded for physical goods (supplies), hence why it takes so long and uses so much power. 
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Sep 11, 2021 19:29
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next you are going to tell me the Black Market also does bitcoin shenanigans to get its money
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Sep 11, 2021 20:07
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Why do you think GLA buildings don't need power? They use it all for Bitcoin! And they train faster once they get other power sources because they finally can turn on the AC
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Sep 11, 2021 20:22
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USA 07: Last Call https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soLJZeB4kHw USA 07: Last Call  The remnants of the GLA forces have holed up in Akmola. Destroy them, let none escape!   Site of GLA's 3rd mission, we're back in Akmola, also known (or twinned with) Astana, now named Nur-Sultan  Location: Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan Objective: Destroy all GLA forces. Author's note: There's something about half the map being one big chokepoint that takes away some of the fun of this mission. I do like the AI setting up tunnels, using Ambushes, and generally using the GLA faction to good effect.   Ambulance RANGE: Short ARMOR: Vehicle WEAPON: Anti-Toxin Sprayer COST: 600 This mobile infirmary can return injured soldiers to fighting form. Additionally, it can release a foam to clean up poisoned or radiated ground, which helps to keep infantry on the battlefield. Author's Note: I never use these, but they can be useful, especially against GLA/Chinese superweapons.  Aurora Bomber RANGE: Short ARMOR: Airplane WEAPON: Bombs COST: 2500 Traveling at supersonic speeds on its attack run, the Aurora Bomber is invulnerable to enemy AA fire. After ordnance is released, the jet slows and regresses to base at subsonic speeds. On its return flight or in large groups, the Aurora can be hit by ground fire. Author's Note: Great in terms of Alpha Strike capabilities, it suffers from a high price tag and being vulnerable on the return flight, unlike the Stealth Fighter.  N/A Aftermath: Finally, the GLA forces have been defeated once and for all. Time for some R&R, General! Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Sep 11, 2021 |
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Sep 11, 2021 21:02
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 What an end screen.
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Sep 11, 2021 21:16
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Jobbo_Fett posted:
e: Wait, can they repair vehicles in the base game?
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Sep 11, 2021 21:22
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Jobbo_Fett posted:
Erm, getting a bit of a Deja Vu here?
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Sep 11, 2021 21:23
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loving Auroras. 12 year old me could never figure out how to get my turtled overlord balls past my USA aurora rushing friend
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Sep 11, 2021 21:26
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Magni posted:Erm, getting a bit of a Deja Vu here? fake news, nothing to see here!
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Sep 11, 2021 21:31
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I suspect the reason Generals' last mission has both the "good guy" faction bases available is simply because that's what Starcraft's last mission did. anilEhilated posted:And here's the other half of the US ground deathball. Pair them up with Humvees and very little can stand in their way. No, and not even in vanilla ZH - that ability was added in a patch later. The Ambulance's cleanup ability is very situational but it is a power worth having, especially in the late game. The situation will arise where you need flat land cleared NOW and hey, the USA can do it.
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Sep 11, 2021 21:43
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Did they just thank Bing, the search engine?
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Sep 11, 2021 21:46
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I like grabbing the Chinese base on this mission mainly for hackers, which I prefer greatly to supply zones.
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Sep 11, 2021 22:37
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Speaking of clean-up (since the Aurora is fairly self-explanatory, though totally badass. Two Auroras + Level 3 A-10 or Fuel Air Bomb can destroy anything in the game I think), there is actually a glitch related to toxins or radiation fallout. The game engine actually can't handle two of those kinds of damage over time effects overlapping with each other. So if you're GLA and the Chinese nuke you, bring out a Toxin Tractor and spray toxins somewhere in the affected area. All that radiation will be cleaned up instantly. If the GLA has upgraded to Anthrax Beta and Anthrax Bomb or Scud Storm your base, bring out a Toxin Tractor with un-upgraded toxins and they'll instantly dispel it. Also, really can't wait for Zero Hour. Generals' campaign is just kinda okay, with some pretty memorable missions (like China or GLA 7), but Zero Hour's campaigns are all shorter but the missions are generally much more interestingly designed. It's the rare expansion that almost completely supplants the original. It's also a lot closer to what the original vision for Generals was supposed to be, but I'm sure we'll get to that.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:27
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I am unaccountably entertained by the opening cutscene where, if you look closely, a Rocket Buggy is trying to drive out and an entire queue of Rebels runs into it, one after the other like lemmings.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:30
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Sylphid posted:Also, really can't wait for Zero Hour. Generals' campaign is just kinda okay, with some pretty memorable missions (like China or GLA 7), but Zero Hour's campaigns are all shorter but the missions are generally much more interestingly designed. It's the rare expansion that almost completely supplants the original. It's also a lot closer to what the original vision for Generals was supposed to be, but I'm sure we'll get to that. One thing I've never been clear about : was Generals originally supposed to have, well, generals?
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Sep 11, 2021 23:45
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Mordja posted:One thing I've never been clear about : was Generals originally supposed to have, well, generals? Yep. If you dig around in the files you'll find stuff like the GLA Warlord General (don't think this guy ever got further than a namedrop in the files) that was supposed to be in the base game, but they ran out of development time or something and all that got canned.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:48
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Ahh here we go, the last step before the utterly insane and amazing Zero Hour. Compared to most other final missions in C&C games past, yeah I can see how this one is a bit lacking. While it is kind of neat how 2/3s of the map is just a GLA controlled city with their base spread across it, a welcome change from the hollow bases from before, it also makes it very one dimensional, vs say all the various things going on in most other seen C&C game's factions finals. You can also do some major Burton cheese with this one too, if you use your air strikes to clear out some of the upper wall and any nearby Stinger Sites, and then send him along the northwest of the map and then along down to the south to have some fun. Clearing out the city is defiantly rough work if you try brute force, thanks to numerous Demo Traps and garrisoned buildings, plus multiple Arms Dealers cranking out units. Honestly being able to combine US and Chinese forces on this map leads to some stellar combinations, especially for defenses, throwing in some Gatling Cannons with the US missiles just can stonewall GLA attacks outside of SCUDs and Buggies and US chopper teams crush those quickly. MIGS or Inferno Cannon's creating firestorms can just sweep away GLA attack teams as well. Shame you didn't show off the Aurora Bomber, those things do some massive damage, but really need any nearby anti-air to not exist, as they have incredibly low health, but used well can just steadily break down the GLA on this map. Sadly the Ambulance has yet to reach its full potential in base Generals, but can still be useful when dealing with say an Anthrax Bomb drop or the aftermath of GLA or Chinese superweapon hits. Still, glad to hear that the GLA has been 100% defeated and the war is over. We certainly didn't forget about anything, nope, nothing at all...
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Sep 12, 2021 00:33
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Aaand here's Last Call / USA 7. So I shot most of the bolt with Stormbringer, but this is the third mission that REALLY makes it clear how this game's bent view of the world is working, with the USA straight up besieging a city. That the GLA have a capital at all and that they would dig into it for a last stand instead of dispersing across the hinterlands says it all -- the game has gone from making vague attempts to treat this like the War on Terror to pretty much directly making it World War 3, complete with a Berlin that this time it's the US that get to attack it. I'm still going to sit on my GLA theory until we're done with at least part of Zero Hour, but my thoughts on Zero Hour itself are surprisingly different given that it's really just a continuation from this point. Zero Hour gets way nuttier than this (though I genuinely can't say if I think any of it is more out-there than Normandy on the Caspian), but for some reason I'm less critical of it from that standpoint. Genuinely, I think it's because ZH starts from a baseline assumption that's in a way different place than Generals. Generals is starting out with a terrorist attack on Beijing and takes most of the game to truly and utterly transcend into the realm of fantasy. This is actually a problem, because when it DOES, it feels like a shift and it's completely off-kilter from where you thought the game was going, which was "contemporary-setting game with C&C exaggeration". This also has really, really bad effects on what the GLA is and how it's handled (but, we'll get there. Probably after GLA-ZH). Comparatively, Zero Hour gets to start with all that baked in and work from it, so it never has that kind of sharp tone shift feeling. Despite being less reasonable, it feels more reasonable. And it's really, really not. Overall, this campaign is definitely worse than I remember. It's still fun a lot of the time, but the maps are so relatively small and the story is so much more wacked out than you notice when you're playing this for the first time as a 15-year-old in 2005. I also forgot to mention it, but I actually really liked the depiction of the ambush at the start of Desperate Union. It seemed so much more reasonable than the chase scene in Guardian Angel, even considering that it ended with a fuckin' orbital laser saving the troops.
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Sep 12, 2021 01:28
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@10:00 There was 100% a Scud Storm launched warning from EVA
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Sep 12, 2021 02:14
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Veloxyll posted:@10:00 There was 100% a Scud Storm launched warning from EVA Yeah the warning was definitely there. Also yeah, if you don't want to mass overlords, capturing the Chinese base gives you access to nuke power plants which i think are strictly better, and more importantly, gives you access to Gatling cannons, perfectly complementing patriot batteries. In any case I'm glad we're finally getting into ZH, the missions there are a lot more interesting in general, mechanically and otherwise.
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Sep 12, 2021 03:37
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City? No guys this is clearly castle GLA. I always did love those big old garissonable wall sections, and boy howdy are they satisfying to fuel air bomb.Veloxyll posted:@10:00 There was 100% a Scud Storm launched warning from EVA I had been looking at that a10 ability off cooldown and the Scud Storm countdown for so long before he pushed it. And he was, as he predicted, just seconds too late on the air strike.
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Sep 12, 2021 04:33
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Defeating terrorist organisation named Global Liberation Army by destroying their last stronghold is "Mission Accomplished" levels of sureness.
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Sep 12, 2021 07:25
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Redeye Flight posted:
A weird oversight of that intro is that umm, what on earth happens to that Particle Cannon? Looking at the intro again, the Particle Cannon is flat out INSIDE your base, as one can see the Patriot Missile, trio of Power Plants, Barracks and Command Center, alongside the terrain being exactly the same, but it and the two spare Power Plants nearby just vanish after the cutscene is over. Then again, in US mission 1, the exact same thing happens with your starting base as well, during the flyover, there are several extra buildings, including an Air Field inside of it sooo, yeah... 
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Sep 12, 2021 08:55
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UED Special Ops posted:A weird oversight of that intro is that umm, what on earth happens to that Particle Cannon? Looking at the intro again, the Particle Cannon is flat out INSIDE your base, as one can see the Patriot Missile, trio of Power Plants, Barracks and Command Center, alongside the terrain being exactly the same, but it and the two spare Power Plants nearby just vanish after the cutscene is over. Then again, in US mission 1, the exact same thing happens with your starting base as well, during the flyover, there are several extra buildings, including an Air Field inside of it sooo, yeah... That is a different US base.
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Sep 12, 2021 16:31
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Sylphid posted:Speaking of clean-up (since the Aurora is fairly self-explanatory, though totally badass. Two Auroras + Level 3 A-10 or Fuel Air Bomb can destroy anything in the game I think), there is actually a glitch related to toxins or radiation fallout. The game engine actually can't handle two of those kinds of damage over time effects overlapping with each other. So if you're GLA and the Chinese nuke you, bring out a Toxin Tractor and spray toxins somewhere in the affected area. All that radiation will be cleaned up instantly. If the GLA has upgraded to Anthrax Beta and Anthrax Bomb or Scud Storm your base, bring out a Toxin Tractor with un-upgraded toxins and they'll instantly dispel it. MiiNiPaa fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 19:49
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MiiNiPaa posted:It is not that it cannot handle it, the developers decided to explicitly delete overlapping fields to avoid need to handle stacking damage zones. You can disable deletion by editing ini files. Huh. Learn something new every day. Something of a shame. It would be cool to see how many numerous overlapping Anthrax Bombs you'd need to melt even Overlord armor.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:29
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Jobbo_Fett posted:That is a different US base. Really? The rocky ground nearby the Particle Cannon is exactly the same as the ground found to the right of your base, and the layout of the bases are also exactly the same, sans the Particle Cannon and two spare Power Plants. Honestly just think those were removed post cutscene because starting you off with a Particle Cannon might have been to powerful.
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Sep 13, 2021 06:44
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UED Special Ops posted:Really? The rocky ground nearby the Particle Cannon is exactly the same as the ground found to the right of your base, and the layout of the bases are also exactly the same, sans the Particle Cannon and two spare Power Plants. Honestly just think those were removed post cutscene because starting you off with a Particle Cannon might have been to powerful.  They've always been weird about that, and I suspect that it is to reduce how strong you'd be with an opener like that
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Sep 13, 2021 11:03
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They sold those buildings to pay for the Bitcoin mining rigs
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Sep 13, 2021 11:39
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Redeye Flight posted:I also forgot to mention it, but I actually really liked the depiction of the ambush at the start of Desperate Union. It seemed so much more reasonable than the chase scene in Guardian Angel, even considering that it ended with a fuckin' orbital laser saving the troops. The Guardian Angel chase sequence was used in pre-launch trailers (as was a LOT of the US campaign). The US military famously only allows you to consult with it if you give it script approval. I wonder if that explains some of the more uncomfortable bits? UED Special Ops posted:Really? The rocky ground nearby the Particle Cannon is exactly the same as the ground found to the right of your base, and the layout of the bases are also exactly the same, sans the Particle Cannon and two spare Power Plants. Honestly just think those were removed post cutscene because starting you off with a Particle Cannon might have been to powerful. I thought this was just a nod to the common practice of making exact copies of an area for use in cutscenes. Loxbourne fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 12:22
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There isn't the remotest chance this game got script approval from the US military.
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Sep 13, 2021 12:27
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Jobbo_Fett posted:
Ahh fair enough.  Considering how... "interesting" Generals development was I would not be surprised at all if that was at least part the reason for various cutscene oddities and whatnot as well.
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Sep 13, 2021 12:55
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Fangz posted:There isn't the remotest chance this game got script approval from the US military.
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Sep 13, 2021 12:59
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Fangz posted:There isn't the remotest chance this game got script approval from the US military. Who knows for sure, but I can see the US military approving this thinking the US campaign it made them look good, and just didn't really care for the other factions. It's not like the US does any explicit war crimes in the mission cutscenes.
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Sep 13, 2021 15:31
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MiiNiPaa posted:Nobody says that the script used in the game is the script sent to the military. Send script, get consultation, scrap script. I can assure you contracts don't work that way if they're written properly.
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Sep 13, 2021 18:05
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Command and Conquer: Generals - The Lost Titles To coincide with the release of C&C Generals, EA had released several free-to-play games that would take part in the same universe, although not being canon so far as I can tell. In 2003, EA had the perfect vehicle to accomplish this, as they had acquired popular flash game website Pogo.com only a couple of years earlier. This offered a way to play Command and Conquer, or hype it up, while not being able to play the game at home on your computer. Many days of my life were most certainly wasted on at least one of these. Pogo.com is still around, but the C&C Generals spin-offs were taken down in 2010, with no apparent backup having been made by the public. As such, the games are considered lost to the sands of time, with only the few youtube videos (recorded with unregistered hypercam2, no less!) to tell the tale of their contents. 1. C&C Generals Combat Cards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61mD1Dsqcns Being F2P like the other two entries here, Generals Combat Cards is still available for download and is, essentially, a slightly more complex version of BATTLE, where the higher card trumps the lower card. The twist is that every card has four stats: Firepower, Speed, Cost, and Build Time. For Cost and Build Time, the lower number trumps the higher number. The game can get harder as it progresses as you try to figure out what their roster has left and how to defeat your opponent, but a few rounds later and you should be fine. If a draw occurs, the cards are set aside (and the pile continues to grow should multiple draws occur) and the winner gets the entire pile. 2. C&C: Armored Attack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ6CfgpvfGo VIDEO IS NOT MY OWN Armored Attack was released in 2003 on EA's Pogo.com and features the player taking control of a Crusader Tank (the wiki states it is a Paladin Tank) and accomplishing objectives on an isometric map. Gameplay is almost an exact copy of Attack Copter, itself essentially a copy of games like Desert Strike. The player gains points for kills and completing objectives. Multiple pickups can be found throughout the environments, including repairs, special weapons, armor upgrades, and more. 3. C&C: Attack Copter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8USy2jt_o04 VIDEO IS NOT MY OWN The cream of the crop, Attack Copter was the better of the free games available. You didn't have to worry about bumping into structures and overall the copter felt more fluid and fun. Featuring 11 missions and a tutorial, you command an Apache, using a combination of rockets and machine gun fire to destroy (or protect) objectives. Ultimately, its sad that the two games are lost, likely never to be recovered as I feel a twinge of nostalgia, and subsequent desire to play them through and see if they really were good after all these years.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:22
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I'm glad that "internet archiving" is getting more recognized as a worthwhile activity these days.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:29
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| # ? May 14, 2024 03:38 |
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Huh, I'd never heard of these.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:35
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