Finished GDI campaign of C&C: Tiberian Sun.
I previously had trouble enjoying the Allied campaign of Red Alert because I felt it was too fast paced and messy. I wonder did Westwood feel the same or was it just a design decision but damn did they do a hard 180 with Tiberian Sun, if Red Alert sometimes felt to me like IHaveADHDAndIJustDrankAGallonOfCoffeeAndEverythingIsHappeningAllAtOnce then Tiberian Sun was like s-l-o-t-h s-l-o-w-l-y- m-a-k-i-n-g i-t-s w-a-y a-l-o-n-g t-h-e t-r-e-e b-r-a-n-c-h.
And I loved it! Gone was the feeling of racing against the clock in every mission, Tiberian Sun is so slow paced that even the very few missions that do have time limit give ample time to the player, you never are in a big hurry and it just lets you enjoy the game. The difference between the two felt really jarring at first coming from RA, it felt like an eternity just to get a tiberium refinery built at first, everything happens so much slower here. A bit too slow in fact, even for me, but I rarely had a problem with that. But the folk who play RTS games for fast paced micromanagy clickiness will find only excruciating drying paint levels of boredom here I bet.
I really like the setting, apocalyptic dying world where every mission happens during the night (or sunlight is blocked by something, it seemed to get brighter and darker occasionally). I remembered liking the atmosphere and it still holds up. I also liked the nods to the original C&C, you can find ruined structures from the first game on some maps and on the last mission you can even get 3 original mammoth tanks, I love it when games do stuff like this.
But I do have three issues with the game:
1. It's way too easy. I played on normal difficulty as I always do and the second to last mission was the first one that felt like it offered at least some challenge. Then the very last mission was again a walk in the park. I think the AI is really handicapped and either isn't allowed to use all the tools it has or simply is incapable of using them. The meek attacks it does are hardly a challenge. Add in the very slow pace and being able to sit still and do nothing should be listed as an requirement in the box. Thankfully I am one of those rarities who does possess that talent.
2. It's too long. I think I skipped one mission and mission 18 was my last so I think there are 19 missions total in GDI campaign if you do them all which is not required. I started to feel like I had my fill around mission 14 but it just kept going.
3. The FMV's... they aren't great. They got Michael Biehn (Aliens, Terminator) and James Earl Jones (voice of Darth Vader) which seemed pretty ambitious and ballsy thing to do because the further I got in the campaign the more it started to look like nobody else in the production had any idea what they were doing. The story, if you can even call it that, jumps around in ways that felt a bit jarring at best and so hilariously nonsensical at worst that it made me wonder did they run out of money really early and intended to film a lot more footage that never got in the game or was the screenplay really just that bad. At least they must have realised things could have gone a bit better since Red Alert 2 has awesome FMV's.
Overall I like the game a lot, excellent game for gloomy november nights. Next in line is the Firestorm expansion unless I decide to take a break with something else first.