Tiberian Sun: Twisted Insurrection

[80s Stallone]

Is this mod worth playing?

It looks good and there seems to have a lot of effort been put into it.

 

[Boleskine]

https://www.pcgamer.com/twisted-ins...s-been-reinventing-tiberian-sun-for-a-decade/

Twisted Insurrection has been reinventing Tiberian Sun for a decade


By John Strike 4 hours ago

New factions, campaigns, units, and a proper NOD flame tank.

Though generally not a favourite of the classic Command & Conquer series, Tiberian Sun strikes a chord with fans who find Red Alert too basic-looking and Red Alert 2 too silly. Eight years after its 1999 release, one such fan began making a mod that pushed it into bold new territory. Created by Andrew ‘Aro’ Owen, and now supported by a larger team, Twisted Insurrection is a great example of what a talented group of fans can do for the legacy of a brilliant base game.

As well as skirmish and multiplayer modes, the mod offers a variety of new campaigns. Each one is set in a universe in which NOD won the first Tiberium War by capturing GDI’s Ion Cannon and having a huge barbecue on the lawn of the White House.

The mod itself is standalone so there’s no barrier to entry, and anyone even vaguely familiar with C&C can just download it and throw themselves into its world of intrigue. Crucially, though, this mod is over ten years old and there are still missions being developed. The sheer scale, attention to detail and lack of bugs is astonishing. Almost everything is either new or improved—with the exception of some of the basic infantry and a couple of the factories, which I suspect have been retained because Westwood did a good enough job with them.

Twisted Insurrection also adds a third, new faction: Globotech. It’s a troublesome megacorporation which boasts an impressive arsenal of mechs, drones and other high-tech equipment, all backed up by the usual ‘sir, yes sir’, infantry and imposing-looking structures.

The buildings this mod adds are so much better than those in Tiberian Sun—from the way they animate when constructed, to how they look when they interact with units and, most importantly, how they crumble and explode. Something as simple as the way your base’s main gate collapses in on itself when it lets a harvester pass is a joy to watch. Although visually superior, the new structures are designed very much in the spirit of Tiberian Sun, and they look in keeping with the few original buildings that remain. But the dozens of new details, such as road markings, signage, crates and barricades, collectively play a huge part in making this feel like a richer and well-loved vision of Tiberian Sun.

Worlds apart
The world itself is much more urbanised and varied. There are new types of rare purple and red Tiberium to harvest and a host of strange mutations that fiercely guard it. One minute you’ll be having a Starship Troopers-style firefight with swarms of giant mantises, the next there’ll be huge centipedes and ginormous floating woodlice closing in. The maps are beautifully designed throughout the campaigns, and crafted perfectly to guide you helpfully through the story. GDI Mission 9, ‘Flight’, stands out as one of the best, and apart from being the biggest C&C map I have ever played, it throws punches at you until the bitter end. It’s a rollercoaster that escalates from a small task force hunting for an abandoned GDI air base to an all-out battle.

Noticeably, Twisted Insurrection’s units have a personality that set this in stone as an outstanding mod. Almost all of them have their own voice prompts, which is a treat no doubt inspired by Red Alert 2. A more predominant two-tier veteran system is also borrowed from RA2, and adds another level of strategy when managing which units to prioritise.

When blasted by shells, infantry leave blood trails, explosions are bigger, and vehicles are weighty. The NOD Flame Tank is a brilliant example of how Westwood made a vehicle worse in Tiberian Sun. More akin to how it looked in C&C, Twisted Insurrection’s Flame Tank spurts out huge fireballs that look like napalm, where Tiberian Sun’s just looked like an endless string of burning sausages.

Twisted Insurrection also has its own soundtrack which includes plenty of inspiration from other games in the series, really making this mod a celebration of all things Command & Conquer. For the most hardcore of fans, there’s even a track called ‘Space Echo’ that was remixed by Frank Klepacki—Westwood’s music composer and the voice actor of the original Commando unit.

In addition to its own campaigns, newer versions of Twisted Insurrection also include redesigned versions of the original C&C missions in Tiberian Sun’s engine. You can hunt down Nikoomba with dune buggies as NOD, or recapture the beachhead for General Shepherd as GDI. These missions are still in progress, but they’re a nostalgic low-tech accompaniment to the mod, executed excellently.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

The music's good! Campaign is quite difficult

 

[Tolias]

>Is this mod worth playing?

I can only speak for the single player aspect - I've rarely seen people online. I've finished the GDI campaign and all but the last mission for Nod (crashes a lot), on hard. Around 40-50 hours of gameplay, with quite a few reloads. If you like difficult RTS missions (a good mix of base-building, unit management, some hero missions), you'll love it.

 

[Average Manatee]

The new vehicles look awful and end up as completely indistinguishable metal boxes. Load up a skirmish game as Nod and put all of them side by side, see if you can tell the difference. The rest of the stuff still looks rather amateurish IMO.

 

[Boleskine]

https://www.pcgamer.com/our-favourite-tiberian-sun-overhaul-just-received-a-massive-update/

Our favourite Tiberian Sun overhaul just received a massive update
By Natalie Clayton about 9 hours ago

New sub-factions, remastered cinematics and a whole lot more arrive in Twisted Insurrection.

(Image credit: Westwood)

Back in 2018, we took a look at Twisted Insurrection's decade-long quest to reinvent Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun—and loved it enough to stick this decade-old mod project into our prestigious Top 100 that year. Suffice to say, the generals behind the ambitious standalone mod have kept busy, launching a massive 0.9 update earlier this month.

Over the years, Twisted Insurrection has bulked out the vanilla Nod and GDI armies with tonnes of new units (as well as adding entirely new factions. To deal with that bloat, 0.9 has decided to split those armies into two sub-factions each—the GDI's Falcon Division and Phoenix Regiment, and the Nod's Genesis Legion and Sons of Kane. GloboTech, an entirely new faction, has also been bulked out enough to be playable in multiplayer skirmishes.

Tiberian Sun modders have also been busy adding support for Bink Video's improved video formatting, with Twisted Insurrection (and other TS mods) now able to render cutscenes in higher resolutions with improved audio. TI also now features ReShade support (commonly used to give games a "realistic" visual overhaul), and while the examples given look a little garish, I'm sure some tweaking could help give the ageing game some love.

The TI developers note that this is a multiplayer-heavy update, and that the singleplayer campaigns are due a bit of an update. But it's impressive work, particularly for a mod project that's now been actively running for almost 15 years, and is available completely free—no Tiberian Sun required.