Cast your mind back to the dawn of time ... well perhaps not that long ago. It may be hard to believe now but once upon a time the RTS genre was something new, fresh and exciting and for a fair while the original Command and Conquer was king of the hill. It wasn't the first RTS game ever released but it was one of the first that got nearly everything right. It had extremely solid gameplay, an interesting story and high production values and this of course meant it sold like hotcakes.

Fast forward to the present time where shelves are clogged with stock-standard RTS clones. The Command and Conquer titles have always done well at retail but fans have been a little disappointed with the direction some of the games have taken. Red Alert 2 and its expansion set Yuri's Revenge were a major return to form so the groundwork has been laid for the latest title, Generals, to make a real impact.

Generals was not playable on the show floor at E3 but instead was being shown in a special demo room which the public had to queue up for and hope they would be admitted. Important journalists from New Zealand were of course allowed to jump the line. The demonstration certainly looked very promising. At first it looked simply like Command and Conquer brought bang up to date with a very tidy looking 3D engine (which is far from a bad thing) but after a while the smaller details started to become clear.