While it does borrow sci-fi unit designs from competitors like Starcraft, Tiberian Sun’s units are a blast to control, with unique abilities and sensible pathfinding mechanics. One particular hitch is that you cannot order your units to stand still as they attack, making them easy targets for ambushes if you aren’t too careful. They won’t seem all that alien to longtime fans of the series since they’ve all been crafted with C&C tactics and strategies in mind. Even the puny infantry troops come equipped with pulse rifles and disc-shaped grenades. Tiberian Sun is unafraid of the fact that it is a science-fiction game. Weakened Nod cyborgs crawling with only their upper bodies as they fight with their last ounce of strength is subtle but poignant nonetheless. The special effects are bonkers, with robots coughing up realistic smoke and sparks as they take damage. Not all of them look neat, the Devil’s Tongue looks more like a shoebox than a flame-belching tank. Infantry units are still miniature animated sprites that make ants look like AT-AT walkers, but vehicles and other larger units are drawn using voxels, lending them a rough but appealing three-dimensional appearance. Battles are often merciless, forcing you to employ tactics and counter-strategies to prevent an onslaught. Conceal your troops or raze civilian buildings to the ground to get the drop on your foes. Urban environments change things up a bit. From amphibious and airborne units to those that can traverse the plains via underground tunnels, the topography is merely an element that can sway the tides of dystopian wars. But units from both sides of the conflict can use this to their advantage. Terrain plays a bigger role here than in the games that preceded it. Explosives leave craters on surfaces and can even knock down bridges. This very fuel is extracted by both the GDI and Nod’s forces to power their armies, perpetuating the deadly spiral into an impending ecological disaster. Tiberium, a valuable resource, has corrupted the landscape, causing blizzards and nuclear deserts to pop up across the planet. Tiberian Sun throws a dizzying array of locations at you to engage in conflict. But realistic topography and advanced lighting merely scratch the war-torn surface. The fact that every C&C game after Tiberian Sun adopted all of these features is a testament to their success. Night-and-day cycles, dynamic lighting, and eerie weather effects all lend the game a sense of weight that its predecessor lacked. The game feels and plays much like its precursor, making it instantly familiar to longtime Command and Conquer veterans. While it had its fair share of bugs and issues at launch, a landslide of patches fixed most of them. It had a lot at stake, but the return of the tireless tussle between the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod was anything but predictable. From vibrant destructible terrain to novel additions to the repertoire of interwoven systems that its predecessor pioneered, it did justice to its past, and then some. Westwood’s Tiberian Sun didn’t introduce groundbreaking changes, rather it took an iterative approach. This meant that its sequel had a lot of hopes riding on its shoulders. C ommand and Conquer set the RTS (real-time strategy) genre on fire when it first came out, introducing mechanics that paved the way for contemporaries to dive in.
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