Command & Conquer: Generals/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Awesome Music: But, of course.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: In hindsight, the GLA predates the emergence of an actual real-life equivalent in the form of ISIS/ISIL/the Islamic State.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Super weapons (the USA's Particle Uplink Cannon, China's nuke, and GLA's Scud Storm) can take down anything at any location once their timer counts down. Their timer is visible to everyone, but most people disallow them in multiplayer matches because unlike all other CNC games you can technically build as many as you want.
    • American Humvees full of Missile Defenders. Ask any competitive player.
      • Humvees full of Pathfinders (American snipers) may count for Chinese players. It's like having five extra machine guns on the Humvee, except that they all have insane range and One-Hit Kill. Now watch your Hackers fall like leaves as the USA shutdown your early-game economics...
      • Alternatively, putting Pathfinders in General Granger's Combat Chinooks. Friggin built-in fireports!
      • General Shin Fai's Assault Crawlers. Overpowered Infantry in a Self-healing Transport with fire ports for said infantry equals Curb Stomp Battle.
  • Goddamned Bats: GLA abilities to rebuild their structure when destroyed if left in 'tunnel' state may count as in-universe example. But in actual gameplay, it don't last long.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • GLA Bomb Trucks can be disguised as vehicles. Any vehicle, from a tiny forklift to a giant battleship.
    • Sometimes airplanes are shot to death, leaving a burning wreck... that's still circling in the air around the same point.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Some of the high-end American units are based on up-and-coming military projects that have, in the present day, been cancelled for overrunning their budget (among other things).
    • Crusader: Actually an artillery piece that was neither mobile nor precise enough.
      • Though the Crusader more so resembles a M 1 A 2 Abrams tank than real world Crusader artillery piece.
    • Raptor: Originally meant to be the main fighter of the Air Force but was cancelled due to price.
    • Comanche: A stealthy scout helicopter that was supposed to work in teams with Apaches. Also cancelled because of cost overruns.
    • Also, when the first game came out it was criticized for being more like a Blizzard RTS game than Command & Conquer. The game's lead designer Dustin Browder would go on to become the lead designer for StarCraft II.
  • Iron Woobie: The GLA Worker. Hungry, overworked, and bereft of shoes. Forced to build entire terrorist camps with just a hammer and his hands. One gets the feeling his heart may not be entirely in this whole war thing. Likely to get blown up or send to blow himself up, set on fire, irradiated, sniped, or left gasping for breath as his skin melts off his bones. And that hammer is heavy.
  • Memetic Mutation: The You Have Researched Breathing quote, "AK-47s for everyone!" is now a meme, according to YTMND.
  • Moral Event Horizon: The ending of the 1st GLA campaign and in the first USA mission certainly place the GLA as a Complete Monster faction.
    • The GLA Campaign itself is just one Moral Event Horizon after another. In the first mission, they launch an armored assault against a large Chinese force camped around a dam and fishing village. After wiping out two Chinese bases and contracting the help of the local village militia, they blow up the Dam, causing a massive flood that not only destroys the Chinese armored columns, but also the village. In the second mission, probably one of the most disturbing in a strategy game, they slaughter entire villages and steal the U.N. aid meant for them. In their third mission, they incite a riot in a Chinese held city and arm the mobs, leading to the slaughter of the Chinese garrison and the destruction of most of the city, all so they could loot it while it burns.
    • Complete Monster: Some of the atrocities they do intentionally sacrifice innocent civilians, which is a violation of The Laws and Customs of War.
    • One cut mission had the GLA slaughtering villagers with anthrax.
      • Note that they still do that in the game, only instead of villagers, it's two entire cities.
    • Another cut mission had them attack a Chinese embassy that also served as a makeshift hospital.
    • They immediately cross it when you launch the game: China's campaign (chronologically the first one) opens with them detonating a nuclear bomb in the middle of Beijing.
  • Most Annoying Sound: Every. Single. General. The challenge has them take Insufferable Genius to new heights and they just will not shut up.
  • Pandering to the Base: The ending of Zero Hour makes no logical sense at all, given China's lack of anything nearing the United States' logistics and wealth, not to mention that it required the European Union to sit sit on their asses and do nothing while the GLA invaded. It was most likely made the way it was to pander to the people who wouldn't stop talking about how much they hated America soon after the game came out.
  • That One Level:
    • One GLA mission has you holed up on a narrow mountain track while under constant attack from USA air units and armor. It wasn't enough that the jets can One-Hit Kill stingers in a single salvo, they're sent out 4 at a time, sometimes replaced by Auroras, and they'll even send the occasional fuel-air bomb. And even worse, once you eventually have enough defenses to stop turtling, they... stop attacking due to lack of money.
    • The final China level, compared to the others. You start with a column under attack from the GLA, then need to build a base with limited supplies (there are oil derricks, but they're far from the base and within range of attacking GLA units) under constant assault from GLA troops. And due to a weird quirk in the terrain, defenders often aren't able to attack the GLA. Then come the buggies. Then the SCUD Storm (which isn't revealed to you like the other levels). Then the SCUD Launchers...
  • Vindicated by History: While the Command & Conquer title and the obvious War On Terror connections keep being sticking points, there are many fans who conclude that the game itself is actually very good.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Political?: Take just about any faction unit at all: lots of its quotes are subtle messages of, well... overblown fanaticism.

USA Paladin: Enemies of the free world!
GLA Rebel: Our way is true!
PRC Red Guard: Foreign devil!

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