I’ve been a fan of the Command & Conquer series of games, ever since the original published in the mid-90s for MS-DOS. I remember that we all went out a bought copies, and then null modem cables so we could set up head-to-head matches in the special accounts lab, where my group also work out of during the graveyard shift. Now and I, since we both left the hellhole known as Acer, have sort of continued the tradition of real-time strategy games, though it’s not been limited to C&C. We both played Red Alert and loved it, but when it came to Tiberian Sun, I think both of us were pretty disappointed with the game. When Red Alert 2 came out, I remember the phone call and invitation to hunker down into his hovel underneath the house to watch him play the game, and I was pretty much sold as that point. I went out and bought it, and then the expansion pack. The only problem with C&C:RA2 was the stupid Westwood TCP drivers. Anytime I tried to play that game and used the internet tools that came with it to hook up with and play over the net, it would utterly destroy my TCP stack and I would have to reboot in order to get net connection back. It sucked royally.

Now, I knew Generals was coming out, but I guess my attention toward the game sort of faltered, because I forgot the street date for the game. Fate intervened apparently, because when I went over to Gamestop to see my roommate at his place of work, he mentioned that Generals was released that day and, of course, I snatched up a copy immediately. I played that game for about 4 hours, only in skirmish mode. I always start playing RTS games in the skirmish mode, because you’re not timed and there’s no objective but to defeat your enemy. Only then can I get a real feel for the building structures, unit heirarchies, what’s required to reach a certain unit that will rule all. The neat thing about Generals is that there is no uber-unit, that I’m aware of. In fact, if you don’t work your units in some kind of harmony, there’s just no way you can win with only building a mess of certain units.

I’m having a lot of fun, but the minimum requirements are insane. On spike, I have to reboot every time I play the damn game. Yikes, this game is a resource beast…