Nutmeg
Arcane
RTS Friends, I finished the campaign in Tiberium Wars (2007).
What a marathon. 36 or so missions. It's a very enjoyable campaign, and actually quite challenging. This is playing 1.08 hard mode blind. 1.09 hard mode is even harder as resource rates were halved for the sake of multiplayer balance, with no changes made to the campaign to compensate. I can't imagine doing very well playing 1.09 hard blind.
While success in the campaign very much so emphasizes the S in RTS (i.e. you better have a good plan going into the mission), this doesn't mean the missions were built with the "puzzly" cheese it or suffer approach common in the genre. That said, I know there is a way to cheese at least two missions (including the hardest in the game, the final Nod mission) from watching speed runs every now and then after I completed certain missions. Also, a handful of missions require you to be observant of any changes to the usual rules of the game (e.g. units that can shoot much further than they should, or run much faster than they should, or enemies that ignore your units) for a very easy time (as opposed to a very hard time, if you're not observant), but otherwise missions are watertight. You'll have to fight your way through them.
One pleasantly surprising source of difficulty is the AI, which, while struggling at "micro", is quite aggressive and good at identifying where your defenses are their weakest, and actually concentrating forces and moving them in formation, as opposed to trickling them in in what are unthreatening but very annoying mosquito attacks like in every other RTS. The AI is far from a formidable opponent though, especially on an even playing ground. Like in Generals (2003), the AI struggles against human control of air units. Less so against Orcas and Venoms, but very much so against GDI and Nod's bombers (Firestorms and Vertigos, though to be fair so would a human), and especially so against Scrin's Devastator Warships, which don't need to dock to reload and outrange everything.
The final source of difficulty is the bonus objectives. I almost always went for them and managed, but there were a couple of missions where I gave up on them, leaving them for a later visit (and a couple more where I seem to have missed finding some "intel", another more hidden, kind of bonus objective, that you usually pick up through the course of the regular primary and secondary objectives). Moreover, I am certain that in some missions where I completed the bonus objectives, I would have had a much easier time ignoring them.
Nod and GDI units are more C&C 95 than Tiberium Sun (more on that later), while I consider the new third faction a neat bonus (in the campaign, the Scrin appear in the final 4 missions or so in the GDI and Nod campaigns, and their own campaign is only a quarter of the length of the other two) although perhaps a bit too Starcrafty in their air units. Nod ground units especially are excellent C&C 95 fan service. The bikes, buggies, flame tanks and stealth tanks all look similar to and function fundamentally like their ancestors, but enhanced in some way e.g. buggies have an EMP weapon upgrade, bikes specialize in detecting stealth (I really like how stealth and fog of war function in this game), and the flame tank's weapon is even more devastating and has a great sweeping area of effect damage model. A more edgy "Scorpion" tank replaces the Bradley-like light tank from C&C 95, and can't crush without and upgrade, while artillery is gone (for NOD, and kind of for GDI too -- Juggernauts are intended to function as artillery, but far from in the same way as C&C 95 GDI's MLRS unit) altogether in the base game, for shame, given how important and iconic the unit is in Nod's arsenal in the original. That said, a Nod artillery unit is brought back in one of the Nod sub-factions in Kane's Wrath, which I have not yet played yet.
It's interesting to compare the game to Generals. Whereas Generals is a true step forward from and (I would argue, only true) sequel to C&C 95, this game feels more like a conservative modernization effort of the, at the time, 12 year old game. There's no radical departure like builder units or tunnel networks here, but they did include multiple production queues (cleverly managed by tabs in the GUI), and infantry units come in squads now, but here there's no squad replenishment or squad management in the form of individual squad upgrades (even Generals had individual unit upgrades), making it almost cosmetic. Those are the two most noticeable differences, the others are the large variety of building powers on hand, unit upgrades purchasable from buildings, garrisonable buildings, greater emphasis on the stealth game, and things like fog of war and air units giving visibility (remember, one of the quirks of C&C 95 is that air units do not, in fact, reveal shroud). That said, even with fog of war, you can feel the leash of C&C 95 tugging as areas remain unfogged for (what feels like) a good dozen or so seconds after units lose line of sight (remember, in C&C 95 there was no fog of war, only shroud, a primitive but not invalid design. I like Tiberium Wars meet at half way approach here. It's kind of a good way to go about it, and actually, would be nice to see more RTS games following suit). Likewise with garrisonable buildings, which aren't present in every or even most maps, and which have hard counters and cannot be repaired, de-emphasizing this aspect of the game a fair bit.
Another good comparison is with the Tiberium Dawn mod for OpenRA (essentially, C&C 95 but balanced for multiplayer and ever so slightly modernized) to which Tiberium Wars feels far more similar, than to Tiberian Sun, Red Alert, Red Alert 2 or Generals.
Visually the game is very nice, and here it's clearly a love letter to the whole series, with environments ranging from Red Alert 2-like blue zones, to C&C 95 Nod campaign-like yellow zones, to Tiberium Sun-like post apocalyptic red zones, all done very well, sometimes spectacularly so, bordering on kitsch. I like the unit models and their visual designs, again more so Nod than GDI, though GDI infantry are quite nice too, especially from a readability perspective. Shame they didn't make the Mammoth tanks less boring somehow given how iconic they are. The game runs on the same excellent SAGE engine as the BFME games and Generals, and like those, it still looks great today, through perhaps even more so than the others due to more detailed models, textures, and nicer particle effects as it's a newer game. It also plays more zoomed out by default and is designed with aspect ratios other than 4:3 in mind. Unit voices range from OK to cool, IMO, with GDI units sounding like the war on terror era American stereotype (and quite similar to the US faction from Generals), and Nod units sounding manic (fanatics, flame tanks), "bro" and "hoohah!" (militia, rocket soldiers), highly professional (vertigo bombers), or full of zeal (black hand). Music I didn't even notice, which is a shame because every other game in the series has excellent and very memorable music. FMVs are great and deliver what is a very basic plot in an entertaining way, though I am not the best judge of such things. I heard the expansion "fixes" some issues in the plot and world building department, but I just don't really care about this at all.
Anyway good game. Very conservatively designed and perhaps lacking for it when comparing to games outside the series, or even Generals, which remains my favorite within the series, but very refined.
----------------------------------------------------
This completes my tour of SAGE engine game campaigns, for now. I have the first BFME, the Generals base game, and Kane's Wrath to look forward to, perhaps after I play Empire and Universe at war, or perhaps after a break from the genre. Also, I found out RA2 and Tiberium Twilight run on SAGE 2.0, which means I omit them at a clear objective boundary, which is always nice.
What a marathon. 36 or so missions. It's a very enjoyable campaign, and actually quite challenging. This is playing 1.08 hard mode blind. 1.09 hard mode is even harder as resource rates were halved for the sake of multiplayer balance, with no changes made to the campaign to compensate. I can't imagine doing very well playing 1.09 hard blind.
While success in the campaign very much so emphasizes the S in RTS (i.e. you better have a good plan going into the mission), this doesn't mean the missions were built with the "puzzly" cheese it or suffer approach common in the genre. That said, I know there is a way to cheese at least two missions (including the hardest in the game, the final Nod mission) from watching speed runs every now and then after I completed certain missions. Also, a handful of missions require you to be observant of any changes to the usual rules of the game (e.g. units that can shoot much further than they should, or run much faster than they should, or enemies that ignore your units) for a very easy time (as opposed to a very hard time, if you're not observant), but otherwise missions are watertight. You'll have to fight your way through them.
One pleasantly surprising source of difficulty is the AI, which, while struggling at "micro", is quite aggressive and good at identifying where your defenses are their weakest, and actually concentrating forces and moving them in formation, as opposed to trickling them in in what are unthreatening but very annoying mosquito attacks like in every other RTS. The AI is far from a formidable opponent though, especially on an even playing ground. Like in Generals (2003), the AI struggles against human control of air units. Less so against Orcas and Venoms, but very much so against GDI and Nod's bombers (Firestorms and Vertigos, though to be fair so would a human), and especially so against Scrin's Devastator Warships, which don't need to dock to reload and outrange everything.
The final source of difficulty is the bonus objectives. I almost always went for them and managed, but there were a couple of missions where I gave up on them, leaving them for a later visit (and a couple more where I seem to have missed finding some "intel", another more hidden, kind of bonus objective, that you usually pick up through the course of the regular primary and secondary objectives). Moreover, I am certain that in some missions where I completed the bonus objectives, I would have had a much easier time ignoring them.
Nod and GDI units are more C&C 95 than Tiberium Sun (more on that later), while I consider the new third faction a neat bonus (in the campaign, the Scrin appear in the final 4 missions or so in the GDI and Nod campaigns, and their own campaign is only a quarter of the length of the other two) although perhaps a bit too Starcrafty in their air units. Nod ground units especially are excellent C&C 95 fan service. The bikes, buggies, flame tanks and stealth tanks all look similar to and function fundamentally like their ancestors, but enhanced in some way e.g. buggies have an EMP weapon upgrade, bikes specialize in detecting stealth (I really like how stealth and fog of war function in this game), and the flame tank's weapon is even more devastating and has a great sweeping area of effect damage model. A more edgy "Scorpion" tank replaces the Bradley-like light tank from C&C 95, and can't crush without and upgrade, while artillery is gone (for NOD, and kind of for GDI too -- Juggernauts are intended to function as artillery, but far from in the same way as C&C 95 GDI's MLRS unit) altogether in the base game, for shame, given how important and iconic the unit is in Nod's arsenal in the original. That said, a Nod artillery unit is brought back in one of the Nod sub-factions in Kane's Wrath, which I have not yet played yet.
It's interesting to compare the game to Generals. Whereas Generals is a true step forward from and (I would argue, only true) sequel to C&C 95, this game feels more like a conservative modernization effort of the, at the time, 12 year old game. There's no radical departure like builder units or tunnel networks here, but they did include multiple production queues (cleverly managed by tabs in the GUI), and infantry units come in squads now, but here there's no squad replenishment or squad management in the form of individual squad upgrades (even Generals had individual unit upgrades), making it almost cosmetic. Those are the two most noticeable differences, the others are the large variety of building powers on hand, unit upgrades purchasable from buildings, garrisonable buildings, greater emphasis on the stealth game, and things like fog of war and air units giving visibility (remember, one of the quirks of C&C 95 is that air units do not, in fact, reveal shroud). That said, even with fog of war, you can feel the leash of C&C 95 tugging as areas remain unfogged for (what feels like) a good dozen or so seconds after units lose line of sight (remember, in C&C 95 there was no fog of war, only shroud, a primitive but not invalid design. I like Tiberium Wars meet at half way approach here. It's kind of a good way to go about it, and actually, would be nice to see more RTS games following suit). Likewise with garrisonable buildings, which aren't present in every or even most maps, and which have hard counters and cannot be repaired, de-emphasizing this aspect of the game a fair bit.
Another good comparison is with the Tiberium Dawn mod for OpenRA (essentially, C&C 95 but balanced for multiplayer and ever so slightly modernized) to which Tiberium Wars feels far more similar, than to Tiberian Sun, Red Alert, Red Alert 2 or Generals.
Visually the game is very nice, and here it's clearly a love letter to the whole series, with environments ranging from Red Alert 2-like blue zones, to C&C 95 Nod campaign-like yellow zones, to Tiberium Sun-like post apocalyptic red zones, all done very well, sometimes spectacularly so, bordering on kitsch. I like the unit models and their visual designs, again more so Nod than GDI, though GDI infantry are quite nice too, especially from a readability perspective. Shame they didn't make the Mammoth tanks less boring somehow given how iconic they are. The game runs on the same excellent SAGE engine as the BFME games and Generals, and like those, it still looks great today, through perhaps even more so than the others due to more detailed models, textures, and nicer particle effects as it's a newer game. It also plays more zoomed out by default and is designed with aspect ratios other than 4:3 in mind. Unit voices range from OK to cool, IMO, with GDI units sounding like the war on terror era American stereotype (and quite similar to the US faction from Generals), and Nod units sounding manic (fanatics, flame tanks), "bro" and "hoohah!" (militia, rocket soldiers), highly professional (vertigo bombers), or full of zeal (black hand). Music I didn't even notice, which is a shame because every other game in the series has excellent and very memorable music. FMVs are great and deliver what is a very basic plot in an entertaining way, though I am not the best judge of such things. I heard the expansion "fixes" some issues in the plot and world building department, but I just don't really care about this at all.
Anyway good game. Very conservatively designed and perhaps lacking for it when comparing to games outside the series, or even Generals, which remains my favorite within the series, but very refined.
----------------------------------------------------
This completes my tour of SAGE engine game campaigns, for now. I have the first BFME, the Generals base game, and Kane's Wrath to look forward to, perhaps after I play Empire and Universe at war, or perhaps after a break from the genre. Also, I found out RA2 and Tiberium Twilight run on SAGE 2.0, which means I omit them at a clear objective boundary, which is always nice.
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