Moving on from the story to the characters, there are even more changes present in the game design. You play as three different "factions", and these are about as varied as they've ever been in a Command and Conquer game, with each requiring a completely different strategy to maximize combat effectiveness.
The Chinese, for example, crush their enemies with brute force and overwhelming numbers. Their lower level tank, the Battlemaster, is cheap, quick to produce, and gains a "horde" bonus that increases their rate of fire when additional Battlemaster tanks are near. The Chinese arsenal also has the most powerful tank: The Overlord, which can be upgraded to include healing capabilities, double as a mobile troop bunker, or be equipped with a gatling gun. And of course, they also have the coolest special weapon, the nuclear missile. This weapon not only demolishes any building in a huge radius but also leaves the area irradiated for a long period of time, which whittles away at the health of any unit in the vicinity. All that power does come with the hefty price of slow unit mobility and weak air power.
Then we have the Americans, who stay on top of the technological curve with the most advanced weapons in the world and dominant air support. The Raptor can deliver large payloads to enemy bases, while the Comanche helicopters are excellent base ambushers and can reload while airborne. The US super weapon, the Particle cannon, fires a concentrated beam of energy at an enemy base and can move between targets. Although certainly capable in front line assaults, their relatively weak armor means the Americans are best used with a combination of Air and Ground attacks; going airborne to tenderize units, and then taking the enemy out with their superior weaponry on the land.
Finally we come to the GLA, who are the scavengers of the world, and what the GLA lacks in technological expertise they make up for with sheer ingenuity. The GLA units are comprised mainly of under-equipped rebels and antiquated vehicles, which yields poor performance in large scale battles, but are superior in hit and run attacks. Becoming a bit jealous of the powerful Chinese Overlord tank? Why not blow it up with a suicidal terrorist or steal it with a hijacker. Getting mowed down by the legions of American Rangers? Give them a lethal dose of poison with the Toxic Tractor. Not enough poison? Launch their super biological weapon, the SCUD storm and take the enemy out once and for all. With the GLA's limited engineering resources, craftiness and dirty play quickly become the name of the game.
Where C&C: Generals comes together is how well the game is balanced, especially right out of the box. Granted, I'm nowhere near as good as the upper level players and don't know the nuances of the mechanics as intimately, but from a purely pick up and play perspective, no single faction has a game-breaking advantage over the other. Every strategy has an effective counter or some kind of preventive measure that can be taken. Sure, the mobile Nuke Cannon of the Chinese can reduce your legion of tanks to metal shavings, but watch how quickly the cannons fall when you toss two or three RPG Troopers at them. Simple counters like this are littered throughout the game, and this is possibly the best balancing job we've ever seen from Westwood.
Perhaps where changes are the most obvious (compared to previous Command and Conquer games) is where it counts the most: the gameplay. Veteran players will notice the lack of the build bar that commonly resides on the screen's right side in most Westwood RTS games. Instead, Generals adopts a pseudo-Blizzard like interface and drop the bar to the bottom of the screen. It also serves an entirely different purpose. No longer does it queue up buildings or units for construction. In fact, the bar remains grayed out until a unit or building is selected, upon which the bar lights up with all available options for upgrading and manufacturing.
This can be a plus or a minus depending on what style you're used to. Blizzard fans will immediately find Generals infinitely more accessible and familiar and welcome the change with open arms, but Westwood connoisseurs might feel themselves handicapped with the new arrangement and the new interface will definitely take some getting accustomed to.
Previously, Westwood games took the view of "one unit, one ability.", but with C&C: Generals, different units can have multiple functions. The hacker, for example, can hack into the Internet in order to raise money, or it can also disable buildings. Colonel Burton can lay demo charges, then switch gears and knife or even snipe enemies. This is an excellent change because it gives the units additional flexibility in combat and allows for many different types of strategies to open up to players. Abilities are accessed through the bottom task bar, which brings up a real downside. Even though Westwood added this functionality, they still kept the old way of implementing it through direct clicks to units on the battlefield.
This interface decision makes it difficult to access units on the fly or in the heat of a skirmish, especially since abilities are mainly available on the human units, which are naturally the smallest units in the game. Westwood needs to construct some kind of unit bar, where selected units are displayed as icons, or at the very least allow standard hotkeys for units. Control grouping is one option that is available, but the implementation is still lacking. There is no easy way to add units to a control group without reselecting all previous units and the additional ones, and then recreating the group. So while it is a nice addition to the gameplay, Westwood needs to execute it a little better.
One of the last major changes is the addition of the Generals abilities. Generals basically function like hero units in Warcraft 3 or Heroes of Might & Magic. The more units you dispatch, the greater experience, or Skill points, you gain. For each skill point, one of three basic abilities can be learned, which can also upgrade your troops. More advanced abilities can be purchased, such as a Paratrooper Drop or Artillery Barrage. The advanced abilities show up to the right of the screen and a simple mouse-click activates them.
There is no limit to how many times you can use skills in a game, but after "casting", there is a fairly long cool-down time before you can use it again. However, unlike the spells in Warcraft 3, the effect is not immediate. Calling in an artillery barrage, for instance, might take up to fifteen seconds, making it a bit of a crap shoot. By the time the barrage hits, enemy units could have moved far away from the target, and there is an element of anticipation involved in exactly when and where these should be used. The abilities can dramatically shift the balance of the battles and using them intelligently could let you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Despite all these changes Generals still plays like a Command and Conquer game. The action is fast, there is still no unit limit, and tech tree research happens very quickly. Battles often contain dozens of units on the field and require quick reflexes and extreme management skills. The path finding isn't as smart as it could be, and sometimes units will get caught up in a traffic jam or just wander back and forth like some lost souls. This is really a minor quibble in the grand scheme of overall gameplay, and C&C: Generals continues the fine Command and Conquer tradition even in the midst of overhauling some of the core characteristics that helped define the series.
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