Tiberian Sun Shines Brightly
Years ago, Command & Conquer took the strategy gaming world by storm, with a game based on the old Dune game, but with great graphics, resource gathering, strategy, you name it. We've played each successive sequel and enjoyed them greatly. Now, the latest version has just hit the streets - Tiberian Sun. The game was worth the wait.
First off, the graphics are excellent. The video looks flawless in the cut screens, like you're watching a DVD movie. Then, to the game. There are floating units, tunneling units, walking units, you name it. They all look very cool! The buildings all have great detail on them. The landscape is also extremely detailed.
There are lots of "neat little features" that they've added to this version, even up and over the large-scale overhauls. Power Plants now have add-on turbines that plunk onto them to give more power. When you select buildings, a 3-D box shows its entire space occupation, with little cubes showing current damage. Another neat little touch is shown when you blow up cars and motorcycles - little tires come bouncing off them! The game is just chock full of these little touches that make you go, "Woah!!"
There are big changes too. Times of day affect visibility, like in Dark Colony. There are all sorts of terrain types that affect visibility and movement. There are abandoned cities to roam through, civilians to intercept.
They did a great job with selection. Stretchy lines indicate where the units are moving to in an easy to understand way. When you use waypoints, you set up a "trail" with little pointy arrows showing each spot. Want a group of units to follow this trail? Simply click on the units, then click on spot 0 (the first spot). They will dutifully follow your trail to the end!
Multiplayer is even more fun. There are an infinite number of maps, thanks to their nifty random map generator. You can choose proportion of water, hills, cliffs, vegetation, you name it, all on sliding scales to give you complete control. Then click "preview" and it shows you what it's done. Don't like it? Adjust a few numbers a bit and generate again!
Bridges can be repaired and destroyed, units can gain "veteran" status when they've fought a lot. The tunneling APCs are an easy way to get units up against your enemy quickly, although they don't guarantee the units will make it past the gate!
The system ran at a good clip on both of our systems here. The only things I might complain about involved little things - if you were trying to guard the civilians, your units would still walk over them and sqaush them by accident. Even more annoying was when we set the multi-player onto "harvester truce" by accident. The harvesters became invincible, yet went around squashing all of the infantry! If you can't kill harvesters, I don't believe they should be able to squash others with impunity. The solution is simple, though - NEVER enable harvester truce.
We are enjoying this new game immensely and I imagine it'll keep us quite occupied until the next version comes out. Until then, I'd love to hear your notes about favorite units and strategies!
Buy Tiberian Sun at Amazon.Com
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