|
Which should I play as for the Generals Challenge? [Pick 3] This poll is closed. |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Laser |
|
60 | 14.74% |
| Air Power |
|
34 | 8.35% |
| Super Weapons |
|
49 | 12.04% |
| Tanks |
|
26 | 6.39% |
| Infantry |
|
39 | 9.58% |
| Nuclear Power |
|
68 | 16.71% |
| Toxin |
|
48 | 11.79% |
| Stealth |
|
42 | 10.32% |
| Explosives |
|
41 | 10.07% |
| Total: | 189 votes | ||
|
FoolyCharged posted:Huh, I'd never heard of these. Same
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2021 19:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 05:31 |
|
|
Seeing footage of that Commanche and Crusader games did stir up memories, didn't know about the card one though. Now every game is a cardgame, Generals truly was ahead of its time.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2021 21:15
|
|
|
You smoked the A.I. in that card game, definitely your most skilled play so far.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2021 00:01
|
|
|
Zero Hour's 18th anniversary is in a couple days and the community has been doing a big streaming celebration, you can find the schedule and info over here. Today they put on a big tournament with the VOD below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_E0YJqnsLI
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2021 06:06
|
|
|
FoolyCharged posted:Huh, I'd never heard of these. Also same. Real shame to hear about the latter two, especially the chopper one, being more or less lost though, they seemed like fun little time wasters. The card game could do with slightly less fanfare for each "victory" though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2021 08:10
|
|
|
USA X1: Global Security https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG7Lt53dP88 USA X1: Global Security  Despite successes by both the Americans, and the Chinese, the GLA remains undaunted, and has continued their use of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This time, they have attacked Europe with chemical weapons! Chinese forces have been unable to take control of the Cosmodrome, and leaders from both countries have agreed to send a force of US troops to wipe out the air defenses so that the cosmodrome can be levelled. We must not allow the GLA to use those facilities any longer!   Back once again at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.  Location: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan Objective: Destroy the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Author's note: A nice little intro, although I wish this was more of a training mission, for reasons that will become apparent later.   Name: James Seabury Aliases: None Affiliation: USA Occupation: Reporter for BNN Voiced/Played by: Julian Stone A reporter for BNN, James Seabury is an attache to military troops in Europe/Asia.   Sentry Drone RANGE: Short ARMOR: Humvee WEAPON: 20mm Machine Gun COST: 800 This stealthed vehicle provides a forward-looking eye that doesn’t need much coordination or supervision. Author's Note: 800 credits for a stealthed detector is nice if you don't want to spend a general point on the UAV.  Hellfire Drone FACTION: USA ARMOR: Tank COST: 500 PREREQUISITE: Vehicle PURPOSE: Attacks nearby enemy units. Usable by any USA vehicle, it is a drone that fires Hellfire missiles. Author's Note: More combat capable than the Battle Drone, it lacks the ability to repair its parent vehicle.   Sentry Drone Gun FACTION: USA COST: 1000 PREREQUISITE: War Factory PURPOSE: Provides the Sentry Drone with a 20mm Machine Gun This upgrade gives the Sentry Drone a machine gun. Author's Note: Honestly, I can't see why you would want to skip on this. It can turn a mobile vision device into a hacker harasser or anti-rebel ambush device. Aftermath: With the Baikonur Cosmodrome destroyed, the GLA can no longer threaten US and allied forces in Europe. However, the Global Liberation Army has yet to capitulate, and there is much more work to be done.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 19:04
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 19:31
|
|
|
Was that a bunch of evil Burtons at the launch site, during the end cinematic?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 19:43
|
|
|
Color me impressed that they introduced some continuity with a previous campaign.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 19:48
|
|
|
That intro video gives me flashbacks to playing tons of this expansion after hours at my first job! Interested to see how much I actually remember of the game vs half-imagined out of blurred memory from 15 years ago.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 19:59
|
|
|
THE BAR posted:Was that a bunch of evil Burtons at the launch site, during the end cinematic? We've seen them a few times during the campaign, it appears to be an unused unit with a minigun or other underslung weaponry. In the editor, they are called Biohazard Techs. If there is any comparison to be drawn in-game, they are most similar to Ambulances.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 20:15
|
|
|
Do we ever learn what BNN is short for?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 20:21
|
|
|
That opening shot at the GLA bikes is just magical.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 20:49
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Do we ever learn what BNN is short for? I'm not actually sure, come to think of it... Might be British National News? James' got a bit of an accent.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 21:16
|
|
|
Bing News Network, perhaps.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 21:34
|
|
|
If we're gonna invent names my vote is Broadcast News Network to parallel the obvious inspiration of Cable News Network also even from the intro and the first video you can see how Zero Hour is working hard at redeeming so much of what Generals failed to do. There's characters! They talk! Sure the dialogue isn't much to write home about and they're going for the news anchor approach instead of like, your intel officer, but someone definitely realized there's more to C&C than medium tanks
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 21:47
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Do we ever learn what BNN is short for? Almost certainly "British News Network" - Seabury is very clearly a certain cliché of an Iraq War-era BBC war correspondent. Sentry Drones are another interesting unit if you poke into their files. At some point the three factions actually had walls. China had concrete with cartoonish Asian roofs, the GLA had literal tyre fires (ha!), and the USA had laser fencing. All are still in the game. The laser fence is impassable to vehicles but if infantry break the lasers, it sounds an alarm - apparently the original plan was that this would also summon nearby sentry drones. The idea seems to be that the player would build a bunch and let them wander or patrol around inside their base, as anti-infiltration defence. Not a bad idea but I can see where it would run into control issues.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 21:49
|
|
|
In my mind it was "Breaking News Network." But those others also make sense.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 22:23
|
|
|
That opening cutscene aged magically, what with all the recent footage of Taliban biker gangs overrunning Afghanistan. 
Magni fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Oct 1, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 22:59
|
|
|
And we're back to factions eating poo poo in the intro cutscene.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2021 03:13
|
|
|
Honestly, I'd prefer the Sentry Drone without a self-defense gun unless you chose to upgrade it with one. Being able to put a bunch of them at key points around a map to watch for sneaky Workers or troop movements in general (as long as they didn't have stealth detection) would be pretty valuable in multiplayer, just watching the enemy without giving their position away. The big problem for me, though is the price. Nearly as much as a Crusader is just too much to ask for a fairly niche unit. I guess they could make for a decent anti-infantry replacement for Humvees when paired with more traditional units, but if the US has Pathfinders they don't really have a niche. Being able to last longer with Drone Armor is good, though. Also, for Zero Hour in general, there's some pretty obvious spots where corners were cut to make such a short release date after the base game, and, as usual, digging around in the game files reveals a ton of things that got cut prior to implementation, but overall it's pretty remarkable it turned out as good as it did under such a crunch. Of course it helps that so much of the game was already done just by virtue of the fact it's an expansion, but overall the imagination on display in the single-player content is actually really good. Sylphid fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Oct 1, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2021 03:16
|
|
|
And it begins. Ahh Zero Hour, easily one of my top expansions of any C&C game, it just brought soooo much to the table and just massively improved things across the board. The amount of time I spent on the General's Challenge alone... Anyway, yes, seems that everyone slightly forgot about Baikonur somehow. How and why it wasn't the very top priority to retake is a mystery to the ages but it does make for a solid intro mission and a flashy kickoff to things. Nothing too much to say about it that wasn't already said, but if one thinks that dropping a freaking MOAB on the launch pad was... excessive, ohh boy are we just getting started here. Really can't wait for things to roll into the GLA and especially the Chinese campaigns, have a good old amount to say about them. As for the 1st new unit, the Sentry Drone is a tad expensive but is very handy for being a stealthed detector unit that doesn't need General Points. Handy in a pinch to vs infantry and great for keeping an eye on Tech Buildings to prevent sneaky captures. Can also be handy for tagging along with your army as a backup if your Recon Drones get shot down. The Hellfire Drone is actually pretty decent in a fight, dealing a solid amount of damage vs non-infantry units, but at 500 a pop, you really need to be careful with your unit placement, replacing them gets expensive fast. anilEhilated posted:That opening shot at the GLA bikes is just magical. Agreed, and somehow the messed up camera angle due to the resolution changes made it even better.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2021 10:27
|
|
|
Somehow I forgot the bikes even existed despite them being one of my favorite ZH units. I'll possibly say more when we reach the gla campaign but those things are just fun.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2021 10:46
|
|
|
UED Special Ops posted:Anyway, yes, seems that everyone slightly forgot about Baikonur somehow. How and why it wasn't the very top priority to retake is a mystery to the ages but it does make for a solid intro mission and a flashy kickoff to things. It gets glossed over pretty quick in the intro, but China was handling retaking it until they weren't and now the US is scrambling to retake it and you don't get there in time to stop the first launch. That's why you get the pile of Chinese tanks to loot.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2021 12:26
|
|
|
FoolyCharged posted:It gets glossed over pretty quick in the intro, but China was handling retaking it until they weren't and now the US is scrambling to retake it and you don't get there in time to stop the first launch. That's why you get the pile of Chinese tanks to loot. Fair, from the sound of things in the intro I always took the Chinese attempt to be rather late, like just before the missile is launched late. A descent amount of time has to have passed since the end of the main game GLA campaign and the start of USA Zero Hour after all and only now are both sides focusing on retaking, or I guess in this came just utterly pointlessly destroying, the Cosmodrome. Granted, at least for China there can be a bit of hand waving as the intro also states that they are dealing with "warlords" in the east, which would be tieing down their forces and focus.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2021 12:56
|
|
|
I forgot there was an actual campaign here and not just the challenges
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2021 13:23
|
|
|
UED Special Ops posted:And it begins. Ahh Zero Hour, easily one of my top expansions of any C&C game, it just brought soooo much to the table and just massively improved things across the board. The amount of time I spent on the General's Challenge alone... Zero Hour somehow makes C&C Generals less ludicrous by being more ludicrous. Generals started from attempting to be a modern-day-relevance thing Inspired By Real World Events and all that, which made it stand out like a neon sign when it was very much Not all that. By comparison, Zero Hour is already starting from that position of unreality, so it just springboards off it and completely discards any attempt to be plausible. It's genuinely much better for it, and if it weren't for all the loving racism and the fact that it's dependent on Generals to get it there, it'd be a fine product. I'd genuinely compare it to the relationship between Red Alert and Red Alert 2; Red Alert is tied down by being tied to the Tiberium timeline as a "prequel" which gets quietly discarded later on, and also being closer to the real world by including such figures as loving Stalin, which makes breaking away from it harder. But it also means that that work has been done already when Red Alert 2 comes around, so Red Alert 2 can get as far away from reality as it can run, and it's infinitely better for it. That said, Zero Hour's campaign has a big problem in that each campaign is only five missions long (what is it with every RTS ever having shorter and shorter campaigns as time goes on? I don't like it one bit. And how did Starcraft 2 break that mold?). Five missions is really not enough time to let anything approaching a story breathe. Fortunately, Zero Hour doesn't introduce too many new units for all the other new stuff it includes, so it doesn't have much of a problem in having to spend missions dedicated to "here, use this new thing", and as a result what missions ARE in ZH's campaign are actually pretty interesting on the whole, and do some very cool stuff with mechanics and map design. This mission is NOT that, however. This mission barely exists, which is sad, because it has a lot of cool set pieces and I always love using mixed armies when the campaign allows me. Slaan posted:I forgot there was an actual campaign here and not just the challenges I have so loving much to say about the challenges, if Jobbo_Fett doesn't mind. I didn't realize how much I had to say until I started writing it up. That's gonna be a time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 00:26
|
|
|
Let's at least finish the campaigns first.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 00:56
|
|
|
Redeye Flight posted:Zero Hour somehow makes C&C Generals less ludicrous by being more ludicrous. Generals started from attempting to be a modern-day-relevance thing Inspired By Real World Events and all that, which made it stand out like a neon sign when it was very much Not all that. By comparison, Zero Hour is already starting from that position of unreality, so it just springboards off it and completely discards any attempt to be plausible. It's genuinely much better for it, and if it weren't for all the loving racism and the fact that it's dependent on Generals to get it there, it'd be a fine product. Yeah, that's a very good way to describe Generals to Zero Hour and while there is reason to go back and play, say, the original TS or RA campaign, there is zero reason to ever go back and play base Generals after Zero Hour. It pretty is what Generals SHOULD have been, sans of course some of the... issues stemming from the time it was made and released. While say Firestorm or Yuri's Revenge made some minor quality of life additions and added some extra units, Zero Hour IS Generals in my book, for better and worse.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 01:08
|
|
|
Redeye Flight posted:That said, Zero Hour's campaign has a big problem in that each campaign is only five missions long (what is it with every RTS ever having shorter and shorter campaigns as time goes on? I don't like it one bit. And how did Starcraft 2 break that mold?). Five missions is really not enough time to let anything approaching a story breathe. Fortunately, Zero Hour doesn't introduce too many new units for all the other new stuff it includes, so it doesn't have much of a problem in having to spend missions dedicated to "here, use this new thing", and as a result what missions ARE in ZH's campaign are actually pretty interesting on the whole, and do some very cool stuff with mechanics and map design. This mission is NOT that, however. This mission barely exists, which is sad, because it has a lot of cool set pieces and I always love using mixed armies when the campaign allows me. To be fair, Zero Hour is an expansion pack, not a standalone game. When you compare it to Firestorm, it's 15 campaign mission vs 18. It IMO feels shorter than these numbers imply because they're divided between three factions instead of two. When you factor in the Challenge, I'd argue ZH actually beats out Firestorm for content.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 03:51
|
|
|
Slaan posted:I forgot there was an actual campaign here and not just the challenges
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 05:57
|
|
|
Redeye Flight posted:And how did Starcraft 2 break that mold?). By splitting their campaign into 3 different games. They were good campaigns but they also cost triple of a single game, unfortunately.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 06:01
|
|
|
Redeye Flight posted:what is it with every RTS ever having shorter and shorter campaigns as time goes on? I don't like it one bit. And how did Starcraft 2 break that mold? I don't think Starcraft 2 was actually that much longer than many other games, I think it was just that the game felt interminable in length because it was so loving bad.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 08:36
|
|
|
Eeepies posted:By splitting their campaign into 3 different games. They were good campaigns but they also cost triple of a single game, unfortunately. Well, it's less the cost of a single game and more the cost of two, or rather 1 + an expansion. I did do the math at one point, and if you add up all three of the Starcraft 2s, then they actually outnumber Starcraft 1 + Brood War in terms of number of missions, and at least in Wings of Liberty the missions are definitely more intensive than the Terran missions in SC1. So it still adds up fairly positively, which is a reverse of the trend for a lot of other RTS games. And it's true, Zero Hour is an expansion pack so it's better to compare it to, say, Brood War or just take it and Generals as a set, in which case the campaigns are 12 missions long for three factions, which is quite respectable. Jobbo_Fett posted:Let's at least finish the campaigns first. Oh, 100%, I didn't mean right away. I just meant that once we get to the Challenge, I've got a lot I can say. Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Oct 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 08:37
|
|
|
Magni posted:To be fair, Zero Hour is an expansion pack, not a standalone game. When you compare it to Firestorm, it's 15 campaign mission vs 18. It IMO feels shorter than these numbers imply because they're divided between three factions instead of two. When you factor in the Challenge, I'd argue ZH actually beats out Firestorm for content. The big problem is that since it is divided into three factions, you really don't get much room to breath before welp, this faction's campaign is over. Having a short intro mission is fine when you have 8 other more meaty missions behind it, but when there is only four remaining, not as much. Not going to mention anything about the General's Challenge however, don't want to spoil a single thing with that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 08:56
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I don't think Starcraft 2 was actually that much longer than many other games, I think it was just that the game felt interminable in length because it was so loving bad. lmao the ending of WOL certainly made me wish for the game to have ended hours ago by its sheer awfulness, that's for sure but I think in terms of missions it's confused by how many were optional and by blizzard trying to sell you Starcraft 2 three times over but WOL felt long enough mechanically to me. Had a few too many gimmick missions but it had a lot of them overall - couple dozen, I want to say? So it balanced out to acceptable. of course pure mission count isn't the only metric that matters; individual mission length and substance is important too. anyway tl;dr I disagree with the initial assertion that RTS campaigns 'only got shorter' and there are counterexamples both in and out of C&C coming up post-2003. Psion fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Oct 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 17:50
|
|
|
Psion posted:lmao the ending of WOL certainly made me wish for the game to have ended hours ago by its sheer awfulness, that's for sure To be clear, are you talking about the ending being horrible from a narrative perspective where the events that occurred made you feel like the story was moving in the wrong direction... or are you talking about form a purely in game related issue where the final few missions made the game drag on to long/the last few missions were not well designed? I can understand why some people might hold the former opinion but I really felt like the way that you get to "pick your poison" for which version of a final mission you faced in WOL was actually quite clever (though I believe that the version where you fight Nydus Worms is slightly easier because it means you can basically play "whack a worm" with quads of cloaked banshees which are also well suited for fighting Kerrigan whenever she attacks you along with not have to worry about fighting a gigantic flying boss) and so I enjoyed it. Though if you have a strong bias against "hold your ground" missions then I suppose I can also understand why you disliked it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 18:44
|
|
|
iwfan53 posted:To be clear, are you talking about the ending being horrible from a narrative perspective Narrative, yes. The ending of WOL was described to me before I played it, and I thought the person was joking. Then I played WOL and they weren't joking. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 18:53
|
|
|
Generals was very clearly cut back and rushed out to catch the zeitgeist and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The concept art and mechanics under the hood are for a much more Red Alert 2-level wild and wacky game. Although looking at it I suspect a full version might have been even worse on the "casually racist jingoism" front. I think everything in Generals has to be seen in the light of EA wanting a Tom Clancy C&C out now, before public fervour died down. The campaign is so short and so full of recycling because the developers had to grab whatever they had working in the engine and get a game out the door immediately.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 19:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 05:31 |
|
|
The sentry drone reminded me of the "C&C's most useless units" video from planet CnC waaaay back in the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rcflQoFxXQ We have now seen every featured unit, so there are no longer any spoilers for future games. NOTE: This video is from 2006, and you will probably feel embarrasement from watching it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 21:03
|
|
