C&C: Generals...

[Agalloch]

Anyone else besides me planning on picking this up tomorrow???

Agalloch

[Mr. Furious]

I love RTS games. I'm hesitating though because I'm planning on playing the demo first. I'm also thinking about waiting to purchase it until I can get it for $45 or less. I've got this adversion to paying $50 for any game. There are very few games worth $50 to me...

[littlebib]

I was considering picking this one up ($39.99 at Best Buy this week), but then I looked at the minimum requirements: 800Mhz, 128Mb RAM, 32Mb video card.

If that were the recommended, I wouldn't worry about it too much, but that's the minimum. My computer is 1Ghz, 256Mb RAM, and 32Mb video so I just pass the minimum. Unless PC companies have changed lately, that means that my system won't realistically run the game.

If anyone gets the game with a similar system, please let me know how it plays.

[Agalloch]

Originally posted by littlebib
I was considering picking this one up ($39.99 at Best Buy this week), but then I looked at the minimum requirements: 800Mhz, 128Mb RAM, 32Mb video card.

If that were the recommended, I wouldn't worry about it too much, but that's the minimum. My computer is 1Ghz, 256Mb RAM, and 32Mb video so I just pass the minimum. Unless PC companies have changed lately, that means that my system won't realistically run the game.

If anyone gets the game with a similar system, please let me know how it plays.

Yeah, from what I've heard the game will test your system limits if you want to play it on a high res. with the graphical settings on high. I think you could probably play it with that system, but would most likely have to tune down some of the graphic options and possibly play at 800x600 res. I was a little concerned awhile ago how it perform on mine, but after playing Unreal2 on my system and it running fine on max settings, my worries have been set aside.

Agalloch

[Astrakan]

See, this is why I prefer console gaming. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed many a PC game in my day, but with consoles you always know your machine will be able to handle whatever software is published for it. I just like not having the uncertainty I often have with PC gaming.

KM

[Agalloch]

Originally posted by Astrakan
See, this is why I prefer console gaming. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed many a PC game in my day, but with consoles you always know your machine will be able to handle whatever software is published for it. I just like not having the uncertainty I often have with PC gaming.

KM

Yup...that's pretty much the only thing I'll give console games over PC Gaming...don't get me wrong, there are plenty of console games that I love, but PCs are so much more capable of bringing the most spectacular games around. Maybe when there's a console that can outdo any PC and is able to hook up a keyboard and mouse to it I'll think otherwise...(FPS games will always be superior on PC).

But yes...Never having to worry about system reqs with a console is very nice.

Agalloch

[littlebib]

Yeah, from what I've heard the game will test your system limits if you want to play it on a high res. with the graphical settings on high. I think you could probably play it with that system, but would most likely have to tune down some of the graphic options and possibly play at 800x600 res.

Unfortunately, it sounds worse than that. This is from IGN's review:

As it is, Generals is one of the biggest system hogs I've seen recently, and if you do plan on running it in high detail with all of the lovely shadows, textures, and models, you're going to need a fat computer. 512MB of RAM is a must at high settings. If you don't care as much about the looks, you can leave the resolution and turn it down to medium, which was playable on a 1.4 256MB RAM and a GeForce4. That extra 256 MB of RAM made a big difference.


Maybe I can play at 640x480 at 256 colors :p

[Agalloch]

Originally posted by littlebib
Unfortunately, it sounds worse than that. This is from IGN's review:

As it is, Generals is one of the biggest system hogs I've seen recently, and if you do plan on running it in high detail with all of the lovely shadows, textures, and models, you're going to need a fat computer. 512MB of RAM is a must at high settings. If you don't care as much about the looks, you can leave the resolution and turn it down to medium, which was playable on a 1.4 256MB RAM and a GeForce4. That extra 256 MB of RAM made a big difference.


Maybe I can play at 640x480 at 256 colors :p

Hmmmmm...yeah, that doesn't exactly instill a lot of confidence with people that have lower end systems does it? I guess the smart thing to do is definately wait till a demo and just see how well it runs on your system.

Agalloch

[BrainofJ]

Yeah I'll probably get it eventually. I just got a new laptop so I'm playing catchup. Have picked up, Mafia, Warcraft 3, No one lives forever 2, and Jedi Outcast recently. Also picked up Freedom Force, which is very cool. So I need to finish off some of them before I buy my next batch of PC games. I want Deus EX 2, IGN.com had a preview of it and it looks awesome. What's everyone's system?


I got a

Pentium 4 2.4 ghz
512 mb ram
64 mb V-ram with Radion 450M 3d card
40GB harddrive

So I hope this does me for awhile. I'm hoping to make it threw this year. The games that I want the most this year are.
Halo
Deus EX
Star Wars:knights of the old republic
Doom 3(going to be hard to run probably)

[Damian]

I'll pick it up. I got a beefy enough system for it. I'm still playing Red Alert 2 to this day so I've been kinda waiting for Generals to come out.
It's out now?

[Mr. Furious]

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.

[littlebib]

Thanks for the info. Given my system specs (above), I'll be skipping this one.

[Damian]

Originally posted by Mr. Furious
[*]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).

THey've patched the multi-play twice already. They are up to version 1.02 of the game now.

[Mr. Furious]

I just downloaded the update to 1.03. Be prepared for problems if you have a router and you are doing NAT. You have to open a number of ports on your Firewall, there are still connection issues.

As a side note, I've added more RAM (I'm up to 512). It has made a hell of a lot of difference. The performance is night and day in this game. I'm actually starting to get into it a little more too.

[Damian]

Uhm...anybody else bothered by the fact that this game has only been out for two weeks, and they've patched it three times already? I don't play online so I'm not really affected by the bugs but still. How much work actually went into the beta testing of this game?

[Mr. Furious]

I'm not sure how much time went into beta testing. I can say that on-line play is still buggy after three patches.

If you are just getting it just for single player, I have a feeling you're going to be disappointed. I've only played a few multiplayer games - but this is where the game shines. The single player portion of the game is almost more like a long training simulation to prepare you for playing with people. The single player game has virtually nothing for story and it slowly introduces units. I found the single player game to be extremely easy, and I completed it in a few days (a total of about 8 hours).

If you aren't planning on playing multiplayer - I'm not sure I would recommend this game. Just FYI.