Vientiane game shops have been surprised at the increase in the number of customers after offering a new war game series in recent weeks.
The name of the series is Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars, a sequel to the popular Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 series, which proved a great hit with real-time strategy (RTS) players from 1999 to 2003.
This game is created and developed by Electronic Arts Inc, better known as EA
Games, and features new characteristic, strategies, playing techniques and high-definition graphics.
The owner of one game shop, in Thongkhankham village, Sikhot district, Mr Dexa Khanasa, said “These days more than
half the youngsters who come in here want to play this game since we made it available several weeks ago.”
“Most of the players are secondary school and college students. They usually come here in groups and play together using the local computer network,” he said.
“ In this series each unit can become veterans through battle experience. Each unit can also be customised with various upgrades. The secret new alien race called Scrin can be released after completing both the Brotherhood of NOD (NOD) and Global Defense Initiative (GDI) campaigns.”
The story in the Command and Conquer 3 takes place in the year 2047, after things have been quiet for some time between both GDI and NOD.
This has given both sides time to develop some insane new weaponry that has the sort characteristics you would expect from each side.
Mr Noy, 19, a player at Dexa's shop, said “I've been playing games for over five years. I've actually got this game at home but I always come here to play on weekends with some of my friends, because it's more fun than playing alone at home.”
Mr Noy said the new series w as more interesting than others, because of the high resolution graphics and the use of more weapons, but the basics of the game were the same, so that players could easily understand how to play it.
He said this series was definitely the best one and said that everyone who liked RTS games should not miss it.
Recommend requirements for this series include a processor of 2.2 Ghz or higher (for Vista), 1 GB RAM or greater for Vista, hard disk space of 6 GB, an Ati Radeon 9500 video card or greater, or an Nvidia Geforce 6100 or greater, plus a sound card with speakers or headphones. For the DirectX version you will need DirectX 9.0c or as above.
The multiplayer for a local area network of 2-8 players and for Internet playing supports 2-8 players for cable, DSL, or faster connection.
