Command & Conquer: Generals Demo

While the Command & Conquer series established itself as an entirely sci-fi series, featuring the unending battle between NOD and GDI, change can be good in certain situations. Thus, the franchise took a turn for realism with this installment, by providing the players with a more real conflict between Earth's superpowers and the terrorists that threaten their supremacy.

Command & Conquer: Generals is a game that gives you the opportunity to wield the forces of USA, China and the international terrorist cell known as GLA, which stands for Global Liberation Army. By making use of their different strengths and abilities, you can gain the upper hand over the other factions, as long as you remember to compensate for your weaknesses as well.

The main campaign starts off with the GLA dropping a few nukes on top of China, in order to weaken their forces and destabilize the entire country in the process. By gathering their remaining army, China manages to push off this attack and asks the United States for support, in order to bring the terrorists to justice and prevent the same from happening somewhere else in the world.

Since you get to play as each of the three factions throughout the campaign, you get to notice the differences when it comes to strength, tactics and gameplay mechanics. Thus, while the USA may have superior fire power and absolute air supremacy, the GLA has to deal with cheaper and weaker troops, but they get to use dirty tricks in order to close the gap, such as underground tunnels or chemical warfare.

In turn, the gameplay turns out to be quite the satisfying experience, especially in skirmish mode, where you get to unleash the full power of the factions and build a base from scratch. Moreover, thanks to the powerful graphic engine used to render the units, everything looks and behaves very close to reality, with convincing environmental damage and very detailed objects scattered around the environment.

In the end, Command & Conquer: Generals manages to encompass enough elements to be regarded as a successful transition toward realism, despite the long history of sci-fie elements behind the series. It also keeps the same overall feeling and gameplay mechanics in the process, which should be all too familiar to any C&C fan.