Well, I cracked and finally bought it. I had to pay $50.00 for it though... ugh.
My initial impressions are this (I will do a full review later):
- It takes an inordinate amount of system resources - I've got a AMD Athlon 1700+, GF3 Ti500, and 256MB PC2100. It isn't enough - I'm still getting slow downs at 1024x768 (medium).
- It looks superficially beautiful. Landscape and terrain (water is gorgeous), building models, units, fire and explosions, and smoke all look great. Unfortunately there are in game cut scenes which use the game engine. When you zoom in on the models, they don't hold up. Soldiers look horrid.
- There is absolutely no story. It is essentially a "here is your objectives - go kill 'em" mission.
- The three different countries have very few unique units. They all have the basic rifleman and tank. C&C: Generals doesn't really distinguish itself from other C&C games or even other RTS games.
- There appears to be a complete lack of optomization of net code. Multiplayer over the Internet is frustrating (from the VERY little I've played).
- The interface is decent, but not phenomenal.
My early impression is that this game is just another RTS game with little to no innovation. While it is superficially pretty, I can't see C&C name going much further. Their releases since C&C: Red Alert have been pretty bad. I'm starting to feel like this was a bad purchase (at $50).
I'll work on a review later.