September 11, 2003

Zero Hour is near

What great timing for EA Games to come out with an expansion pack for Command and Conquer: Generals....

...Finally after I figure out how to reliably sieze the battlefield tempo from a Brutal GLA army on any map, this new expansion pack comes out.

Beyond just adding new units, they're bragging about its improved skirmish AI:

    We've also spent a lot of time making the skirmish AI much better and a more fun opponent. We have three difficulty settings, but hard is very much a challenge for good players. It is vastly improved, nearly worth the price tag alone, if you are a big skirmish player

Probably the biggest change will be the allocation of three general's "profiles" to each country. A profile basically changes configurations and balance to favor one sort of strategy over another... Turtling, air-centric, laser-centric, hordes, etc.

GameSpy has a great overview of the profiles for China and the USA. Still waiting on GLA. I play the USA almost exclusively, and reading through the profiles it's not clear to me which profile I'd want to play -- the turtling option sucks, the laser general option sounds queer (although maybe a good wildcard against someone who hasn't fought against it). I guess air-general is the most fitting for me. I do drool over the idea of sorties of Combat Chinooks inserting forces behind enemy lines and then firing their way out. Would like if there was more special-forces single-unit stuff.

For further amusement, check out the movie trailers over at EA Games. They make it sound so much like a movie that you almost start believing normal people would think you were cool to be playing it. Almost.

If you only watch one trailer, make it the politically incorrect GLA video, nearly overtly Arab. I nearly spit up laughing when it concludes w/ a Arab-accented voice saying, "All your base are belong to us."

The expansion pack is out Sept 22nd (in the USA at least).

Posted by Nils Blutig at September 11, 2003 11:38 PM | TrackBack