Hi,

I'm thinking about picking this up in the Summer Sale and I was wondering:
How do you guys think about Act of War in comparison to C&C Generals? In which points does it differ? What does it do better? What is worse about it?
I found the style and setting to be quite similar that is what my choice of comparison is based on.
Thanks in advance for any answer :)

Hello.

I cannot remember much about C&C Generals, but off the top of my head I would say Act of War is more realistic than Generals, has a better story and more action oriented FMVs.

When I say higher level of realism, I mean you have Fat-vees which perform very much like humvees. They are fast and ram infantry easily, but at the same time one hit by a rocket and BOOM. Snipers take out infantry in one shot. Infantry can ambush behind terrain to do more damage. The Tunguska AAA not only takes down aircraft, but also works well against infantry. Bradley can carry few troops with moderate fire power. Basically the game's units perform how I would expect them to in real life, but take this with a grain of salt as all my knowledge comes from books movies and other games.

There are also unrealistic things about Act of War. Heavily armed exoskeletons, stealth tanks and severely short sighted helicopters to name a few.

The single-player story of Act of War: Direct Action is a very big plus point.
The same way how Rainbow Six had Tom Clancy to help write the story for the game, Act of War: Direct Action had Dale Brown to help with the story. One difference though, where Rainbow Six the book's story is better than the game's story, for Act of War, the game's story is far better than the actual book of the same name. Act of War still ranks top on my website for having the best story out of all RTSs I have played. High Treason's story was good, but not as good as Direct Action's.

FMVs in Act of War is great. I cannot remember if Generals had FMVs, but I reckon Act of War's FMVs are better than C&C3 Tiberium Wars.

Act of War plays much faster than C&C Generals as I remember it. I find that my troops tend to die very quickly in Act of War. Not as fast as Dawn of War, but still fast.

There are three very different sides in Act of War. This I would say is on par with Generals.

Infantry plays a very important role in Act of War. Infantry must be used to capture other infantry units to be POWs which is an important source of income for Act of War. Gives a very good reason to try and rescue that chopper pilot that crashed on the front lines.

One thing I did like about Generals over Act of War is the balanced difficulty of the single-player campaign. Act of War: Direct Action's campaign was way too easy on the highest difficulty. Then High Treason's campaign was way too difficult on the easiest setting.

I have not played Generals multiplayer, but the few games of Act of War online was a lot of fun. Once again, it plays quite fast. Sent a bunch of tanks to an area, went back to manage my base, went back to find all my tanks taken out by a few hidden AT infantry.


I don't have C&C Generals ranked on my website, but if you are interested, here is my page that compares Act of War and C&C 3.

Hope that helps.

I absolutely love Act of War.

Wow, thank you very much for this detailed review.
I think I'll give it a try, as it sounds right up my alley. Spend a lot of time on C&C3 and Dawn of War so it might not be far off.
+1ed and thank you again

Not much to add to the above review. The more realistic story is a major plus, the fact that Dale Brown is one of my favorite authors is a major plus (Shadows of Steel and the Dreamland Series), and the fact that the buildings and units in-game are more properly scaled (example-tanks not larger than a house) allow it to stand out. Plus, it will allow practice for the upcoming Act of Aggression, made by the same developers and hopefully to be available here on Good Old Games at some point in the hopefully not too distant future.

I think Generals was GENERALly the overall better game. Airstrikes are probably handled a little better in Act of War, and the campaign cutscenes were better.

Otherwise, I'd have to say Generals was smoother. Act of War is just too fast for it's own good. As soon as you catch sight of the enemy, you're in range and every anti-vehicle weapon is high damage, long reload shots. So as soon as you catch sight, everything fires off a one hit kill sniper shot or anti-tank missile. You've lost a bunch of units before you can even react. I've also found anti-infantry stuff to be worthless since everything kills infantry in one or two shots anyway. Stuff that's supposed to be specialized anti-vehicle still not only kills infantry quickly, but kills a bunch of them if they're clumped up. All vehicles can run over infantry too so you might as well ignore all anti-infantry stuff and just spam tanks (with just enough anti-air to take care of helicopters that pop up). In Generals, sure it wasn't realistic that it took 50 tank shots to kill an infantry, but it worked for balance.

Generals also had more character. For fun & humor, it was a blast. Act of War takes itself fairly seriously (despite some extremely silly units).

I strongly dislike the POW system in Act of War. It makes it so you don't dare harass an opponent. You go all in with an all out attack or you don't go in at all. Leads to too much turtling since no one dares try anything short of an all out attack. The cash you're handing your opponent with POWs is just way too much to risk it.

Speaking of turtling, the super weapons. The whole point of super weapons was a way of cracking turtles. But then the static defenses can shoot down super weapons so it's like what's the point then? They're just expensive air strikes at that point.

The expansions...okay both games had expansions that shot the balance to hell. High Treason, the Task Force Talon faction is ridiculously overpowered. There is nothing the other factions can do to stop a sniper/OCFW infantry rush. The OCFW is totally ludicrous. It's basically like a heavy weapons team from Dawn of War, except with no setup time, no limited firing arc, and it can switch between damage type (anti-infantry/anti-vehicle+building) at will. It has a long range (farther than your average line of sight) and it only costs $1000! There's no counter to them at that point in the tech tree; everything just gets chewed up by them before they can get in range and even if you kill one they're so cheap it doesn't matter. You could counter them with heavy vehicles or air units but the rush kills you long before you can get those units.


If you want a flashy campaign and just blow stuff up without worrying about digging into a fine tuned RTS, then Act of War is just fine. If you're asking if it's flat out better than Generals, then no it is not.




An even more interesting comparison is Act of War and the same company's recent release Act of Aggression. AoW is MASSIVELY better even though they're almost the same game. Same exact factions, same exact units, same exact POW system, same exact buildings. The difference is that AoG's campaign is atrocious (still image cutscenes!!!), there are 3 different types of resources you have to worry about and it's a pain in the ass to harvest and store them, it's zoomed too far out to tell units apart (you can't even tell vehicles apart, forget about infantry), and the road system means everything gets traffic jammed on maps that are way too large and drag on way too long.