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Interfacing

Generals has had some massive interface overhauls to bring the C&C games into the new millennium, but some old standby C&C ‘features’ still remain. For example, while there is a status bar down at the bottom now, it doesn’t list what units you have selected, never mind their health and condition. What really flies in the face of common sense is that the giant window just stays empty when a group is selected.

NUKE READY

Targets set

Direct hit

More problems come when we get to the mouse. The sickly old dog known as the left-click interface is still present. Instead of adopting an Ensemble or Blizzard style, EA Pacific stuck with this primitive design despite suggestions that they at least include the option for various control schemes. C&C’s basic problem is that the right mouse button is not just useless, it’s counter-productive since it de-selects the group. Any of a dozen keys on the keyboard could be programmed to do that, so could the middle button or other optional buttons on a mouse. If the right button at least did attack-move by default… This is really developer pride at its worst; there is no reason why Ensemble, Blizzard and EA Pacific couldn’t provide control rebinding.

The multiplayer lobby interface certainly does not improve the situation. For a game that can be safely assumed to sell 500,000 copies worldwide, does it really make sense to prevent people from creating their own chat rooms? Up until the recent patches, there were only three lobbies – China, USA and GLA – to spread the players around in. Now there are a dozen lobbies, but they’re all named either ‘China’, ‘USA’ or ‘GLA’. How ingenious.

More interfacing

On a bright note, the now-standard Blizzard-style production queues and building methods have been adopted. Units are queued up in the specific building they’re coming from, no longer in the right-hand-side interface. This makes managing multiple bases possible, and now even necessary, thanks to the multi-base strategies that have evolved.

Boom and shockwave

Holy

Mother

Unit AI is quite awful. Units don’t respond to attacks that exceed their own weapons range, unless they are in guard mode. Guard mode is to be used at all times, since without it the units are quite honestly dumber than bricks. Attack-move is great, except if your units encounter buildings which they will skip entirely. Some units seem to have a longer active-search range in attack-move, meaning that they’ll peel off from the battle group to attack an enemy which their comrades won’t. This highlights they key problem with the AI in Generals – units on the same side are completely unaware of each others’ existence. Two tanks can sit side-by-side as one is fighting for its life and the other will sit idly by until it is its turn to get gang-raped.