Another change that fans of the first game will notice is the use of artillery. Artillery was a double edged sword in GC because while it was mightily impressive and fun to use it unfortunately made the game way to easy! Their overall power and effectiveness was partly due to the daft reactions of the enemy A.I. of course (who would just stand there as shells rained in from afar), but many thought that these artillery attacks were just too devastating.
GC2 readdresses this. You see although artillery is still extremely fun to use (and beautiful to watch as they stream across the sky) their accuracy and power is far less impressive this time round. The developers have managed to make sure that artillery is still a useful weapon in the right hands but made sure they are no longer the ultimate battle-changing weapons they once were.
Likewise, as in most sequels, some things have been removed or changed that will upset fans of the original. Whilst aerodynes (aircraft to non-GC players) are present in the game in the form of air strikes, there are no controllable fast moving aircraft in this sequel. Yes there are helidynes (helicopters to non GC players) but I used to love controlling fast aerodynes! Additionally for those who can’t get used to relying on Rocket terradynes for your anti-aircraft support needs I think most old fans will miss the Anti-Aircraft tanks that were in the original. I think that airpower from the helidynes is a bit unbalanced in my opinion, so having anti-aircraft tanks would have solved this. Nevertheless these are small issues, ones that certainly don’t change my overall opinion of the game.
Big bangs for your bucks
Overall the game is a great RTS. Without the need to build bases you do focus on combat and with the addition of AP points where you can call down as many units as you can afford this brings GC2 more into the line of other RTS’s on the market. Missions within the game are extremely varied, ranging from offensive objectives, to defensive outpost defending ones. There are even a few Special Forces style stealth missions thrown in for fans of the old game where you have no landing zone and only a limited number of men to look after. These missions are played out over huge playing fields, meaning there is a lot to explore and capture.
There are about 12 missions to play though too for each campaign, which will keep you occupied for ages if you don’t play on the easy mode. If you complete this there is also a good enough single player skirmish mode and multiplayer missions to keep you battling for hours. Although it must be noted that the A.I. for the single player skirmish mode is relatively poor (which is like most other RTS’s anyway).
The graphics are really fabulous too, both for the units and the backgrounds. What’s even more brilliant is that with the wheel mouse you can zoom really close to your units without them becoming blurred or losing that much detail like in most other RTS games (although certain terrain, like trees, do look terrible close up)! This truly is a 3D game as you can rotate the camera view wherever you like. If you look to the sky you can see awesome backdrops that are really quite stunning, so do look around if you have a free moment. The screenshots show you some of the stunning alien backdrops you’ll see.
In most other 3D RTS’s that offer a fully rotating camera the default view is usually adequate enough to play throughout your game, but in GC2 you have to use your camera view constantly to fight properly which may annoy some players unaccustomed to this. To me this just means I can enjoy the games awesome graphics and battles from multiple angles!
Like the original also all the missions briefings and in-game events are played out using audio speech from the main characters, which certainly makes the story more enjoyable. Apart from one character who winds me up, which is unfortunately the main one, Captain Jacob Angelus. Jacob you see has a VERY heavy British accent. Coming from the UK myself his voice sounds very put on. It’s the stereotypical British accent that you get in American based films. Honestly, we don’t all sound like that! LOL.
The adult theme throughout the game also adds much needed humour and atmosphere into it. Certainly making it more realistic to actual combat than a younger audience RTS would do.
