Dead! Comman-D'oh!

He's not pleased

Hampton Roads. It's some sort of naval base. I think. It's also the scene of my ultimate demise. The NOD juggernaut stopped in this place on this day. So I guess in a way that's good, right? NOD are the bad guys so we should be pleased. Hooray! Anyway, read on for the sorry tale of my final mission.

So I'm here to knock out a big boat with guns on and blow up a tall cylindrical building. As you can probably tell all the objectives are sort of blurring into one at this point, so removed are they from my interest in the game. I just want to build a giant army and roll over a base but there hasn't been a single mission where I control my economy. And now I'm playing a commando mission but the NOD commando suuuuuucks. She is good at killing troops and destroying buildings but doesn't have a jump pack and does no damage to vehicles.

Things start off as always with a few puny mobs to destroy and then I get to blow up the boat. Woo! Presumably that's good! Yeah! Take that you hulled prick!

Boom

This prompts a delivery of reinforcements - explodey, running men and helicopters. The helicopters are good because they rinse troops and detect stealth. Since my next goal is to find and kill some snipers these are perfect. Off I fly then,

around the map killing snipers and machine gunners with ease and avoiding rocket troops where I can. With the snipers removed I need to clear a path to the cylindrical building. Between me and the building is a bridge and some turrets but I'm pretty sure my explodey men could destroy the building if I just clicked on it. There's loads of them. But there's a secondary objective which is to find an engineer and capture a building. Since this is supposed to be difficult I set about doing that. Finding the engineer is easy, getting him to the building is not. You seem to have to go past 8 buildings full of troops and a barracks surrounded by troops and a few tanks. I'm pretty baffled as to how to do this. I could kill most of them with my bomb guys but not all and I need them for vehicles really. I decide to try some tricky helicopter work. This is mostly successful but buildings with rocket troops in are my downfall. I don't think I'm really thinking clearly about what to do here. I should send everyone in together and use different troops for different targets, but I'm a poor micromanager so I use my helicopters till they're all dead then switch to something else. In the end I get fed up and just click my exploders on the cylindrical building.

But they do not cross straight over the bridge. The bridge is closed by some hard to see artwork... My exploders run all the way through the buildings full of men and past all the troops and vehicles. By the time the survivors reach the cylindrical building they are few in number but still fervent and they throw themselves at it. It is half destroyed.

So now I have to get my commando in solo.

Easy

Difficult. But not impossible. I can get in, blow up a building, kill the garrisoned troops and get out then wait for my health to regen and do that again. My issue is vehicles. My progress against them is painfully slow and they have stealth detection. They hardly damage me either but there's only one of me and several of them. In the end I can't do it. I don't have the patience or the skill and I'm eventually whittled down by four rocket buggies and a tank and it's over.

It's pretty clear now what I should have done. I should have cleared out the garrisoned troops and barracks with my bomb guys and then cleaned up the mess with my helicopters and commando. Then I could probably have handled the rest. Alas, it's too late now.

Next it's Command & Conquer: Generals!