Command and Conquer
 Tiberian Sun

DEVELOPER : Westwood Studios
PUBLISHER : EA
Careers at Electronic Arts

 

System Requirements Pentium 166 Mhz, 32 MB RAM

Recommended Pentium 233MHz, 64+ MB RAM,

Ratings
Code Issues Graphics: 7.0 Audio: 6.0 Interface: 7.0	Play Issues Gameplay: 7.0 Replayability: 6.0 Multiplay: 6.0  Learning Curve: 7.0
Other/Notes Documentation 7.0 Comments: I really am disappointed with what should have been a genre-leading game. Having said that it shows some promise, it is extremely stable off the CD (a modern marvel of computer games) and Westwood did put a LOT of effort into the presentation of the game, and for these reasons I have increased the game's overall score to 7.25. This game could be called "OK", but if you're at all tired of basic RTS give it a miss. Pros: Stable, fun for awhile. Cons: Lack of originality Overall: 7.25

Let's face it, the RTS genre is so stale you couldn't grow a microbe colony on it. Since God gave the world Starcraft, there really hasn't been anything worth changing to, Starcraft has dominated without challenge for nearly a year and a half now. But it was all set to change. Westwood, the only company that can jointly claim rights with Blizzard for having given birth to RTS, was to unleash the prodigal son, the sequel to their much beloved Command & Conquer, upon an unsuspecting public. We have been waiting for this game for 5 years now folks. Very few among us can claim to have not liked the original C&C, so astoundingly good a game was it for its time. We were teased from the outset with a trailer for TS at the end of the C&C CD. While we waited Westwood churned out Red Alert to keep us happy. While certainly not a bad game, it was basically C&C with a facelift, and it never attained the same cult status as its older cousin. But now ladies and gentlemen, after what seemed like forever, C&C2:TS, is here. And it is not good.

I don't know where the disappointment starts with this game, it seems to be everywhere. I installed the game, impressed by it's snazzy installation slideshow, but hell even the original had that. I fired it up for the first time and was greeted with the familiar 320x200 EVA interface. After a brief transmutation (and the ringing of bells and blowing of whistles), the screen reverted to the more acceptable 640x480, and the words flashed across the screen: Welcome back, Commander. "Oh mama, this is gonna rock." I thought. I immediately jumped into the GDI campaign, because, hey, I like to be the good guys. The much-touted FMV fired up into its first sequence, and Westwood wasted no time in playing their trump card: James Earl Jones. I like Jones, he's a good actor and I'm a fan of a lot of his work, but he seems totally lost in this game, and the result is not too flash. The rest of the acting is downright ugly, with a foul smelling cocktail of cliches and one-liners being riddled through the sequences. I loved C&C's movies, and believe it or not the movies in TS have gone backwards. For all the fancy sets and animated sequences, the piss poor acting and lacklustre script left me cringing.

"OK this is cool, long as the game is fine I'll survive." I was thinking with a dazed sense of disillusionment. The first mission opened up. "What the h*#@ is this?" I said aloud, as I was presented for the first time with the game that was, graphically at least, supposed to be light years ahead of everything previously seen. The graphics are pretty damn ordinary, I can best describe them as a mix of SimCity 2000 and Starcraft. Yeah that's right, that nice pseudo-3d terrain we were looking forward to is just simcity-like levels. The cliffs etc. are just tile based, much like Starcraft. The trees, buildings, doodads and so forth look much the same as those in C&C, which isn't exactly BAD, just really really average by today's standards. The first units I saw were the infantry, and man they are DOG ugly. They look less realistic than those in C&C or RA, appearing very cartoonish and extremely out of place over the terrain. This is a huge annoyance, because unlike in the tank-riddled previous games you see LOTS of infantry in TS, more on that later. The vehicles are somewhat more impressive, looking fairly realistic and sloping nicely when going up or downhill. The buildings are basically the same good stock we have come to expect from the series, and though not mind-blowing, I personally thought they fit in well with everything else. Nonetheless the overall graphics left me feeling very sour, being just barely beyond those of RA. Strike Two.

As you can imagine, by this point I was not a happy chappy. This was the game I had waited five years for, it was meant to be perfect, but it was infested with mediocrity. The sound and music were the source of further annoyance. If I didn't know better I'd have said that Westwood lifted the sounds directly from their previous games. Assault rifles sound like BB guns, 120mm cannons sound like drum beats, and there's that same damn "whoosh" noise for rocket launchers. The music was something I was really looking forward to in this game. The music of C&C as well as RA kicked ass, it was brutal, it was emotive, it was fitting. TS's music is not bad all things considered, but it's just so WIMPY, there is no cool guitars and drums hammering out that badass mofo "I'm gonna wreck you man!" music that made C&C such an interactive experience. Instead, think of the softest, weakest track of the previous two games, remixed to be even softer and weaker, and you've got 90% of what in TS's soundtrack. Yuk. Strike Three, but hey, this is TS, so it is not out yet.

Maybe, after all this disappointment, the gameplay will emerge supreme and absolve the game of its shortcomings. After playing through the GDI missions on the medium setting I came to several conclusions. Firstly, the storyline sucks, but I wont spoil it because it's probably worth finding out for yourself. Secondly, the gameplay has a lot of potential, but doesn't quite make it. I found that on the single player side of things, there were always two types of missions. There were "commando" type missions where you control an individual or group of individuals and must rescue someone or blow up a building or whatever. These were annoying and I was glad when I finished them. The other type was the standard "build/capture base and wipe out nearby forces" mission. These were fun, but repetitive, in that all you ever have to do is secure a few tiberium patches then crank mad numbers of mechs and stomp your way to victory. Thirdly, the AI has the intelligence of the average eggplant. It attacks with mere handfuls of units, often leaves air unit sitting on their pads when they're being attacked, and makes no attempt to cut off your supply lines. Where's this mastermind AI we heard about?

Multiplayer is bad. Westwood promised balanced multiplayer action, "no mroe tank rushes" they said. They did this by introducing the EMP cannon to both sides, which basically shafts any incoming mechanised attack, and by buffing up infantry. Well, surprise surprise, infantry rushes are now the go. I mean, DUH Westwood! The GDI disc thrower in particular is a shockingly powerful and cheap unit that makes for an exceedingly powerful rush. Conversely, if the rush fails then Nod just get artillery, which is another intensely imbalanced unit that destroys all before it, and win the match. I've played in excess of 10 games on Westwood Online, Westwood's answer to Battle.net, and they all ended up like this. Having said that the game shows promise. Things like subterranean APCs and orca carryalls mean that if a game evolves into a war of attrition it can actually be a lot of fun. Maybe a patch will solve these problems, but until it does, you can officially consider Multiplayer TS panned.

Perhaps the thing that bugs me the most about this game is just its lack of originality. It brings precisely nothing new to the genre, and while to some extent Westwood were right for not straying too far from the original's gameplay, that doesn't excuse the lack of innovation. This game costs money, and for that money you don't want the same doll in another frock (although Barbie seems to sell well on that principle). TS had huge expectations placed upon it, and I always doubted its ability to live up to them. Much like this year's Star Wars flick, it was hyped both by its creators and by the public to levels that simply couldn't be met in reality. What I have sitting on my hard drive now is an average game. I have not penalised it for not living up to expectations, though it certainly fits that description. I have penelised it because in an of itself it is not an excellent game, and in comparison to its rivals in the RTS field it can not be given more than an average score. It is ironic that at the end of my KKND2 review I stated that it was "average but would tide us over till TS arrives". As it turns out TS strongly resembles and plays like KKND2, and I couldn't in good faith give it a higher score.

TS is here ladies and gentlemen, and it is not good. Buy it if you loved the original, it'll keep you occupied for a few weeks. For me however, Brood War is about to once again have control of my CD-ROM drive.

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Reviewed by AJ Dunlop