Total Annihilation, now there was a very good game – such a shame that Cavedog never survived to make the killer sequel the original promised, and lead to Chris Taylor’s departure to Gas Powered Games, and years of Dungeon Siege. Sigh. Still, the memory of Cavedog lives on in that Total Annihilation is still a very popular game today, mainly because it was so ahead of it’s time. It was you see, one of the first true-3D real-time games, and as such had a realism of combat imperatives, landscapes, units – the whole shebang, far superior to the sprites of it’s then competitors. It is with pleasure then that we finally welcome Pacific (formerly Westwood) and the ubiquitous to the twenty-first century, with Command & Conquer Generals, the first in the series to dabble in the black art of polygonal visuals. We’re salivating at the very thought…

Picture it; true-line of site, rich and detailed environments, units that look more ‘alive’ (as opposed to the jerky little pixelated things of previous C&C games), more interactive worlds; greater scope for terrain and it’s many tactical uses… the list is endless and quite frankly I can’t wait any longer. We need the C&C world in now, and no, Renegade will not satiate my appetite until it’s ready.

Still, at least I won’t have to wait that long, for C&C Generals will apparently be arriving on shelves at the end of this year, though we’ll believe that when we see it. The game is being developed by the same team behind Red Alert 2, and will be based around an entirely new premise – centred around a global power struggle between the US, China, and a terrorist organisation coined the ‘Global Liberation Army’. Apparently, the plot differs in it’s entirety from all previous C&C plots – Westwood are creating a new world set twenty years in the future for this game. What’s more, story progression will feature heavily in the game throughout, whichever side you’re the General of.

The menu system has all-changed too, the team working on a brand new, and more intuitive system, that does away with the complications of the ‘deploy’ command – the new interface being horizontally located, a la Age of Empire. Buildings will no longer build themselves either, you have to use your Bulldozer for that task, and the same goes for repairs to buildings too. But the changes don’t end there as the designers are doing away with ore and the old resource system, now you’ll have to use supply trucks and depots, each map having several supply depots for the use of your trucks to collect materials.

In a departure from previous titles in the series, Generals will also make you choose a General, whom you will then assume the unique talents of, depending on the side they represent – a bit like special moves, and also adding a bit more personality and uniqueness to each individual side. Each General will have three of these special powers at his disposal, thus making things a bit more varied and tactical.