This Troper stumbled upon this game by pure coincidence back in 2000. Curious about what to expect from a C&C game titled Tiberian Sun they decided to try it out.
First of all it kind of surprised them how gloomy did the atmosphere turn. At times this Troper had a hard time believing this was still Earth. This feel played a crucial role in the gameplay experience.
Tiberian Sun took a real sci-fi turn, maybe even too much compared to the previous game which sometimes had nearly WWII feel. First moments into the game it was actually hard to identify certain structures. Their design was quite alienating.
What was more alienating though and also made up considerable portion of the gloomy atmosphere were all the tiberium lifeforms. They were actually fascinating in some disturbing way. Especially the Veinholes were quite a good example of how the tiberium ecosystem works. Along with the Visceroids also an abundand source of Nightmare Fuel.
This Troper also liked the play with environment lighting - actually the first time such feature was introduced to the RTS genre.
The gameplay seemed to be rather slow-paced at times. Not that it was much faster in the previous game. But many times just getting through a single line of defense required multiple assault with sizable forces, especially in the early scenarios where only low-tier units were available.
Speaking of which the hiher-tier units didn't seem to perform much better (compared to the previous game). The GDI Disruptor's range was desperately short. Mammoth Mk. II was sluggishly slow, bad at cooperating with other units (friendly fire) and you could only have one at a time. On top of that now all units were the same size (baring the afforementioned Mk. II) which really didn't leave a good impression about their power.
Luckily or unluckily there was the Nod Artillery - one of the most effective unit of the game. This had a way to backfire though. Especially 2nd level AI in skirmish had a nasty habit of spamming their base with artillery units which rendered it nigh-impossible to mount a successful offensive. Air-raids were also a problem - air units were expensive, took forever to train and due to extensive anti-air defense deployment mostly didn't survive even a single raid.
This Troper is not saying it is a bad game. It's more of a Flawed Prototype. Definitely designed to test a new engine but didn't quite unleash its true potential. And required some better balancing.
Fun fact: The supposedly Boring, but Practical GDI Disc Throwers had a nasty habit of blowing up en masse if deployed in large numbers regardless of their health.
C&C: Artillery Wars
This Troper stumbled upon this game by pure coincidence back in 2000. Curious about what to expect from a C&C game titled Tiberian Sun they decided to try it out.
First of all it kind of surprised them how gloomy did the atmosphere turn. At times this Troper had a hard time believing this was still Earth. This feel played a crucial role in the gameplay experience.
Tiberian Sun took a real sci-fi turn, maybe even too much compared to the previous game which sometimes had nearly WWII feel. First moments into the game it was actually hard to identify certain structures. Their design was quite alienating.
What was more alienating though and also made up considerable portion of the gloomy atmosphere were all the tiberium lifeforms. They were actually fascinating in some disturbing way. Especially the Veinholes were quite a good example of how the tiberium ecosystem works. Along with the Visceroids also an abundand source of Nightmare Fuel.
This Troper also liked the play with environment lighting - actually the first time such feature was introduced to the RTS genre.
The gameplay seemed to be rather slow-paced at times. Not that it was much faster in the previous game. But many times just getting through a single line of defense required multiple assault with sizable forces, especially in the early scenarios where only low-tier units were available.
Speaking of which the hiher-tier units didn't seem to perform much better (compared to the previous game). The GDI Disruptor's range was desperately short. Mammoth Mk. II was sluggishly slow, bad at cooperating with other units (friendly fire) and you could only have one at a time. On top of that now all units were the same size (baring the afforementioned Mk. II) which really didn't leave a good impression about their power.
Luckily or unluckily there was the Nod Artillery - one of the most effective unit of the game. This had a way to backfire though. Especially 2nd level AI in skirmish had a nasty habit of spamming their base with artillery units which rendered it nigh-impossible to mount a successful offensive. Air-raids were also a problem - air units were expensive, took forever to train and due to extensive anti-air defense deployment mostly didn't survive even a single raid.
This Troper is not saying it is a bad game. It's more of a Flawed Prototype. Definitely designed to test a new engine but didn't quite unleash its true potential. And required some better balancing.
Fun fact: The supposedly Boring, but Practical GDI Disc Throwers had a nasty habit of blowing up en masse if deployed in large numbers regardless of their health.