TL;DR – Command & Conquer: Generals is the black sheep of the C&C series, but it’s still a pretty enjoyable RTS experience. I’d highly recommend getting it with the “Zero hour” expansion, which adds a ton of much needed variety and extra content to the game. With that being said, the base game itself is still perfectly playable and dare I say it, fun. It has it’s quirks, including call-in abilities that are frankly a little bit overpowered sometimes alongside a surprisingly short campaign mode. Yet it’s still a worthwhile RTS game to play and one that I can easily recommend to anyone who enjoys the genre. As for RTS novices, I’d still recommend it as the game is relatively fast paced and not particularly challenging.
Quick note: This game runs like ass on Windows 11, not only will you need to manually tweak the launch options to enable wide-screen resolutions, but it also crashes a lot if you Alt-tab. Multi-monitor setups are going to have a rough time of it, so I’d suggest saving often and disabling any extra screens if you want to play online.
Command & Conquer: Generals is the off-shoot of the venerable C&C series after Westwood was left for dead by EA and consequentially a scattered band of survivors were merged with another studio to make a new entry in the series. As such the gameplay is both familiar and yet new, with the same base-building mechanics but a larger focus on abilities. Of course Red Alert 2 had unit abilities, at least for some units but generally these weren’t a big deal. In Generals by contrast, almost every unit gets a couple of abilities or bespoke upgrades that can have a big impact on how they’re used. Whether it be GLA rebels gaining the ability to turn invisible by standing still, or US rangers having the ability to clear out occupied buildings with ease via the flash-bang ability. Then there are the purchasable drones for US armoured units, the ability for GLA units to acquire supplies from defeated enemies (or upgrades for certain units) and a whole bunch of other stuff. Alongside these unit abilities are a bunch of new call-in abilities, unlocked via the introduction of quasi-skill trees. The way it works is simple, each faction has a range of specific unlocks such as gaining access to certain units or commander powers. These can include calling in an artillery strike, spawning friendly units, defensive AoE healing powers or having new units of a certain type spawn in at veterancy rank 1. You won’t be unlock all of them, and they don’t carry over between games. The system is fairly intuitive, you get XP for defeating enemy units and after enough carnage has been caused you’ll level up. Once you’ve levelled, up you can choose from a variety of powers that are structured in a tier-list. This encourages you to purchase these unlocks as soon as they’re available, but you can just save them up for the “stronger” abilities. From my own personal experience, trying to get all of the free damage call-ins like bombing runs and so on is generally the best way to do it. Because you get infinitely respawning free damage, and while there is a cool-down it generally pays off. Especially for the later abilities like the fuel bomb and the EMP blast, which can either wreck an enemy base or army respectively. Outside of these changes, the game is pretty much classic C&C. You’ve got a handful of unit types, they all basically hard counter various other unit types and the tone is pretty silly. Arguably the tone in C&C Generals is a bit more po-faced, but honestly everyone is at best a stereotype in this game. One last thing to mention, is that resources are clustered in specific spots, and don’t respawn over time.
As mentioned, while there are tweaks and changes Command & Conquer: Generals is still fundamentally a classic C&C style RTS at it’s core. Sure the call-ins are a tad overpowered and resources run out scarily quickly, but everything else is par for the course. You’ve got 3 asymmetrical factions, some basic base building that never gets too intensive, a campaign for each faction that’s both fun and yet slightly short alongside a ton of skirmish maps. I guess you could argue that having base building units that can build anywhere, instead of MCVs that can deploy anywhere is a big change. Personally I don’t consider it particularly different, as all it does is make it easier to setup resource gathering stations around the map. As for the combat, while there are a lot more unit abilities going around each unit type is pretty familiar. You’ve got standard infantry that can get run over, anti-tank infantry that shred tanks, tanks which are a bit hopeless against infantry, air units that are great against everything that can’t shoot back and then some artillery units. There are a couple of unique cases like the fully upgraded Chinese overlord tank (OP against basically everything) and the GLA terrorists and bomb trucks which can disguise themselves but really there isn’t anything radically new here. Instead the charm of Command and Conquer: Generals is that everything is just done pretty well. The three factions: The United States of America, China and the Global Liberation Army (GLA) are all fun to play and do feel quite different. The USA has strong tanks and the best air-force but can be a resource-sink and requires decent micro, while a lot of Chinese units get bonuses by being mobbed together and thrown into the fray. Then you’ve got the GLA who are fairly unique and get a bunch of mechanics like stealth infantry and bombs, tunnel networks, claiming supplies from fallen foes and the like but who don’t get any air units and have relatively weak tanks.
Fortunately each faction is fairly simple to understand and use effectively, with the campaigns basically serving as a series of tutorials. There are one or two missions in each which give you the full arsenal and the chance to use it, but most missions are focused on a handful of available units and you’re just trying to make the best use of them. Each of these campaigns follows the same broad structure and while you do occasionally get to see missions from different perspectives, they’re too short to have much of an impact. For context clearing through all 3 campaigns took me around 7 hours, factoring in half a dozen crashes to the desktop (in a game with no autosaving). The campaigns are fun, but more experienced players are encouraged to try them on Hard or even Brutal as otherwise they are very short and not particularly challenging. Then once those campaigns have been cleared up, there isn’t much left to do but play through the skirmish mode. The map variety is decent and there are just over 20 maps to play, but as mentioned earlier the amount of resources on each map depletes surprisingly quickly and the AI can often be relied upon to squander the funding available to it. Each faction can construct building which let it gain more income over time, or in the case of the Chinese a unit that can gain income over time. Trust me when I say that you’ll either want to do this, or rush the enemy ASAP. You don’t have much time at the apex of the tech tree before resources become a distant memory.
Speaking of the AI, it’s not great in many situations and will reliably trickle through forces in multiple attack waves instead of trying to aim for a killing blow. It’s not the end of the world, but this is a game where the real challenge is in the multiplayer mode. Fortunately there has been an active modding community which has produced swathes of maps and conversions, although at that point you may as well just grab the expansion pack. The good news is that all stores still selling a digital copy of the game now bundle in Zero Hour, although you do also get basically every other C&C game included as well (even C&C4). As for other criticisms of the game, I do have a few. Again the campaigns are really short which is a shame as they only really let you get a feel for each faction towards of the tail-end of their missions. Furthermore I’ll also re-iterate that this game loves to crash to modern operating systems, a problem that the unofficial community version didn’t have. Thanks EA! In terms of problems I haven’t mentioned yet, there are a couple of smaller ones. Unit pathfinding straight up sucks and controlling large blobs of units can be a pain, which is a problem because playing as China explicitly encourages this. The early 3D graphics can be off-putting to some, but I’ve personally never had a big issue with them because that was the style at the time. Finally there are some weird aspects of the UI, that were fixed up in Zero Hour and later games in the series but weren’t quite resolved in the base game. Super weapons need to be activated from their building and don’t appear on the side bar and neither do other building call-ins. Of course the AI doesn’t have an issue with this, but for human players it can be a bit counter-intuitive to actually use the full breadth of abilities that are available to them.
Yet in spite of these niggles, I have no problem recommending Command & Conquer: Generals to pretty much anyone. It has a great soundtrack, good voice-acting, multiple factions that feel different, fun campaigns (even if they’re short), solid combat and plenty of skirmish maps. The expansion pack definitely brings everything to the next level, but the base game is still enjoyable. Even if the new hero units do feel a bit useless compared to the sheer base destroying insanity of Tanya (for example). As such I’ll end my short review by saying Command & Conquer: Generals is a fun game and if you haven’t played it, then you should consider grabbing it on Steam or Origin.