[BlackThornn]

I got this a few days ago along with my radeon 9700 pro. After a while of getting it to run correctly I was impressed with the graphics and the way you can sit back and wow at all the purdy explosions.. but found the gameplay pretty much lacking.

With the emphasis I'd seen on infantry abilities like the Red Army's numbers bonus and all the abilities of Army Rangers and the GLA's foot soldiers I was thinking this game would be in multiplayer at least a ghost of it's building-by-building fighting as in the Single Player campaigns. Eh, I guess you can't control the habits of tank obsessed human players. *shrugs* Doesn't help that there is only one official multiplayer city map, but hey.

Besides that, another thing that severely annoyed me is THE PATHFINDING. It sucks, period. Tank armies mull around with themselves rather than going to the rally point you've selected, if you have more than one kind of unit selected to move through an area even infinitely large there are going to be half the faster units hanging behind stuck behind slow infantry, one tank in the middle, and the rest stuck behind the infantry with everyone else. Makes for very frustrating base assaults. In addition I've seen my chinook copters circling the supply base up to five times before finally landing with the meager 600 supply payload.. this should be fixed, 'cause when somebody is being assaulted with a massive overpowered chinese tank rush you need the money quick, even if only to save some dignity by killing a few tanks.

Also.. IMO, the chinese are overpowered in general.. there is little to nothing that will stop even just fifteen chinese tanks with horde bonus, the flame tank kills everything just too quickly, especially garrisoned buildings.. and thier base defenses are about ten times more effective than the other side's, making thier bases extremely costly to assault save by a massive specialty player assault with one players' aurora bombers taking out the defenses and copters worrying the garrisons, another's tanks riding in to clean up and take out buildings, etc.

..And the GLA sucks. Nobody I've met uses them effectively, mainly 'cause they suck. ....though they're strangely deadly in the hands of a computer opponent.. stupid terrorists and scud storms..

Pretty good game despite all this though. I've primarily shifted back to skirmish mode though.