Gods and Generals (video game)

Gods and Generals (video game)
This game makes you wanna forget that civil war happened.
Genre(s): First Person Shooter Platform(s): Microsoft Windows Release: NA: March 1, 2003 Engine: LithTech Jupiter Developer(s): AniVision Publisher(s): Activision Value

Gods and Generals is a historical first-person shooter video game developed by AniVision and published by Activision Value. The game is based on the movie of the same name from 2003, which itself is based on a novel of the same name by Jeff Sahara, the son of Michael Shaara, the author of The Killer Angels, which was the source material for the 1993 film Gettysburg, also by Gods and Generals’ director, Ronald Maxwell. The player commands a soldier in the midst of the American Civil War, choosing either to side with the Union or the Confederacy, and plays alongside hordes of other soldiers. The player is tasked with various missions such as raids and reconnaissance, in addition to leading a full army company. In large-scale battles ranging from the Second Battle of Bull Run, the battle of Chancellorsville and the battle of Fredericksburg, players are equipped with muskets, revolvers, sabers and other weapons. This nine-part campaign game uses various scenes from the film.

Gods and Generals was released on March 1, 2003 as a PC exclusive, and was critically panned by the media and gaming community.

Why There Are No Gods

1. The enemy A.I Soldiers are completly broken as they will not fire at you unless you attack them first, and will usually just stand there and shoot at you.
   • The melee enemies will try to attack you at long distance but can't touch you instead of running towards you.
   • They also sometimes can kill you in one shot at the long distance, even with full health and armor.
   • The allies aren't any better as their pathfinding can be sometimes broken.
2. Bad Hit Detection: Sometimes one bullet will kill an enemy soldier, other times it will take several attempts even with all the upgrades.
3. The enemy soldiers make no noise/sound when they die, unlike other Lithtech Engine games so it's hard to tell whether you killed them or not, unless you see them fall down.
4. There is one level where you have to stay right next to your allies, if you try to get away from them, it's an instant game over, and staying with them is hard because while there is cover to crouch behind, you can still die very fast.
   • Heck, you can even sometimes fail missions for no reasons and abruptly.
5. The game's weapon selection is completly lackluster, there are only 6 weapons to choose from: An Revolver Pistol, An Combat Sword, An Musket, An Scoped Musket, An Bowie Knife and Hand Grenades.
   • It doesn't help that out of all these weapons, the revolver is probably the only weapon that will be used, as it can carry more ammo capacity and does enough damage.
   • The musket and the scoped musket only allows for one bullet at a time, and the scoped musket has bad hit detection. Half of the time the scoped musket will miss the target. What makes it even worse is that unlike every other FPS game there is no ammo pickup system, so you will have to look for other guns if you're out of ammo, which is extremely uncomfortable.
6. The grenades have the worst hit detection out of all. Most of the time they will explode and not kill enemies, or sometimes not even explode stuff when they need to, like say there is an objective where you have to blow up some cannons using these grenades, yet it sometimes takes one and sometimes two which makes absolutely no sense.
7. Extremely linear and bad level design that is surrounded by invisible walls.
8. Some of the objectives in the levels are nothing but a bunch fetch quests, and you can complete each level without having to finish them all.
9. Horrendous graphics that looks like an rejected PS1 game, which is surprising considering the game runs on the LithTech Jupiter Engine, which was also used for No One Lives Forever 2. Actually, there is even a "model" of horse, which is literally just a wooden statue.
   • It doesn't help that it came out in 2003, the same year as Contract J.A.C.K and TRON 2.0 which both also uses LithTech Jupiter Engine and they look miles better than this game.
10. The animation are extremely broken.
11. The game can be completed in less than two hours!
12. The soundtrack consists of the same two musics repeated over and over, and it overlays at certain points, which can be very annoying and drive you crazy, and makes you wanna turn it off because of how loud it is.
13. There are stairs that you can't go up so you have to jump in order to climb up.
14. The whole game is completly Buggy and Glitchy as hell.
15. Bad Difficulty Balance: Sometimes you have to fight alone against hordes of enemies.
16. Due to various problems like bad hit detection, glitches and horrible design of levels and objectives, it is extremely difficult to complete certain levels, even when you think that you're doing the objective right.
    • The Battle of Fredericksburg is completly hard to complete because of an key that needs to be found from an dead enemy, the problem is that the dead bodies dissapear fast, and if you didn't got it at the right time, you have to restart the level from the beginning, unless you saved at the right time.
17. Poor grasp of source material. In fact, you would not even know that it's based on the movie of the same, unless you look up the information.
18. The ending is lackwarming, instead of a cutscene for completing the game you get a text telling you "Congratulations!, You just completed the final level of the game".

Reception

Gods and Generals was panned by critics. It has an aggregate score of 19 based on Metacritic. GameSpot named it the worst game of 2003 right next to Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, describing Gods and Generals as "a shoddy afterthought of an unrelated marketing campaign. The game was ranked 92 of Tats top 100 worst games.

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