Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun

aka: C&C 2, C&C:TS, Command & Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun, Command & Conquer: Soleil de Tiberium, Command & Conquer: Teil 3 - Operation: Tiberian Sun
Moby ID: 589

Critic Reviews add missing review

Average score: 80% (based on 30 ratings)

Player Reviews

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 128 ratings with 9 reviews)

Misunderstood GREAT game! Forget other reviews, Probably best online multiplayer westwood game, Great air forces in this game!

The Good
This game had very imaginative units with distinctive looks and feel, from the GDI titans and Mammoth Mark II with the Starwars Return of Jedi look to them. They also had slow air bombers. GDI had the feeling of being a brute military force. They took longer to build their base but for the most part their units were stronger and slower. Now Nod had a very different look and feel to their design. They had units like the sneaky Cyborg Commando and subterrain transports, as well as stealth technology that allowed them to cloak. They also had quick UFO design planes with a weaker attack. Their units were in general fast and had weak armor, were very sneaky, and they built a base faster. This worked effectively and each had different strategies to their winning. This made for some fun multiplayer people, and since that is what this game was meant for then everyone who reviewed it without playing online forget about your review. This game surpassed Starcraft in many aspects. Westwood online offered a tournament and players could compete for rank and for 1st place that offered actual prizes. Also this game was not the mindless lets build mammoth tanks (tanks,tankstanks) and send them like other westwood games. It had strategy and you could rush someone who totally ignored a certain defense in the first 4 mins of game and win. Gdi had air transports for their super base destroying units. Of course this could easily be defended and if it didnt work u were done. So that was 1 strategy, others were for go for a quick air rush, you could go all out on defense for the base and prepare for a longer game as well. Nod had similar rush methods involving underground surprise attacks but could be stopped as well by a good player in which case he would win as the other player would be in shambles for money. There was more strategy to this game than most RTS as certain units worked great against certain things. A GDI disruptor only worked good on buildings not units, etc... Most people didnt notice this and said I miss mindless sending tanks and didnt see the depth of multiplayer gaming in this one. It was actually like chess but better. So after this westwood met the demand and since has put out WORSE AND WORSE GAMES year after year. It went Red Alert2, Yuri, Renegade, Emperor BAttle for dune etc.etcetc. The only thing great about singleplayer is the great movies but Westwood usually does pretty good job on those.

The Bad
Ok as for gameplay etc in singleplayer it wasnt the best of the Westwood games. Story was bad and most missions you didnt feel real strategy to take out your opponent. But multiplayer made up for this. No naval units, but that doesnt detract from the game but would prob lessen it anyways. I didnt much care for naval units in most westwood games. In very long games bases and defenses can become overwhelmingly tough, but not more than any game ie.. StarCraft, Red Alerts etc

The Bottom Line
Awhile ago this game and Starcraft used to be the funnest online RTS games out there. Just as CC1 was fun as well at one time. Overall I'd say CC1 is the best command & conquer then its succesor, Tiberian Sun. Red Alert series is next and didn't offer as much in strategy. This game is great and marked the end of the Westwood era of great online gaming. I now just hope Blizzard doesnt sell out like WW did and quit putting the TLC in the games. my mobyscore would be 4.0

Windows · by Jay Gand (4) · 2003

This game ROCKS!!!

The Good
The units are balanced and look really cool. The whole game looks stunning.

The Bad
The super weapons are tooooo powerful. The multi missile and ion cannon cannot be guarded against at all and this makes skirmishes unfair when the AI takes at your construction yard.

The Bottom Line
Well worth buying but not as good as say Red Alert 1 or C&C 1

Windows · by Ben Burton (3) · 2002

Uderrated, disliked and hated. I like it.

The Good
Graphics, sound, AI, balance, FMV... everything in it is GOOD, if not EXCELLENT. This is currently (summer 2001) the best rts-game I've played. With computers powerful enough, you can set resolution as large as your display can show (although menu only gives you choices up to 800x600, but with tweaking of ini files you can get it as high as you ever want).

The Bad
Well, some missions are pretty hard (I mean those missions with limited units... especially NOD has a lot of them). Some people say, that NOD is way stronger... If I remember right, in the original C&C NOD had no decent land units, and no air units at all (well... er... it had the nuclear missile... It was cool), so now it's GDI's turn to be the weaker side. And in single-player NOD has way harder missions than GDI. Another thing that is bad is that there are a few "super units" (namely Cyborg Commando and Mammoth Mk.2), which can destroy huge bases easily. Luckily, their number is limited to only one at a time.

The Bottom Line
A great real-time strategy game. Many people say it sucks - but I don't see any reason for that. It's a great game.

Windows · by Aapo Koivuniemi (41) · 2001

A decent, if uninspired RTS game.

The Good
The graphics are much better than previous games. The cut scene movies are some of the best you'll see. It's a decent real-time strategy game.

The Bad
It feels like almost the same game with new graphics. Gameplay is a little slow, especially compared to other games on the market.

The Bottom Line
If you're enjoyed the original, you'll like this 1. Just don't expect too many new tricks from this old horse.

Windows · by jeremy strope (160) · 2000

The low point for the C&C series

The Good
The colored lighting is nice.

Its still RTS at least (although barely).

errrr.....

The Bad
It takes a bit to run without chugging. Even with a good computer, the gameplay itself is slow. The tiberian trucks dump slow, it takes about two minutes for most types of units to get from one side to another of a regular sized map, units fire slow, units get hurt slow (it can take over six shots for one infantry to kill another infantry), even the PLANES fly slow. Its almost slow enough to call it a turn based strategy game. Its just slow, and that ultimately makes it very boring.

The damage bar over units doesn't seem to work logically. It starts at full, but after one hit from anything it drops one box. Then down through to the last box it takes a varying amount to drop from one health box to the next. When a unit or structure has one health box left it usually takes two to three times the damage to get rid of that last bit of health and finally destroy it. As an example in one game I had a tic-tank attacking a laser, and it went fine till the last little bit, and then it just wouldn't die. The laser ended up killing my tic-tank, with that one last infuriating red health box still left.

There's no unit balance. You wouldn't want to make most of the units, because quite frankly, they suck. All the games are pretty predictable, because GDI and NOD can each only do a couple things and still hope to win.

Westwood pretty much patched the life out of it. Right out of the box I thought it was a decent game, and seemed to have more ways to play, but Westwood just kept rebalancing and retweaking, and basically neutered most of the units. It's also annoying to have to find a new killer strategy just when you've found one that is your favorite. Normally finding new strategies is fun, but not when its forced upon you.

The AI, like all Westwood games, is horrible. The computer opponents offer no resistance, and pathfinding is terrible. Sometimes units don't seem to notice they are getting shot.

There's no out of the box map maker, just a rather lame and pathetic random map generator. Map makers made by third parties helped a bit.

The single player game is frustrating and needlessly challenging. And not challenging in the enjoyable way, but challenging as in puzzles and obstacles tossed in just for the sake of having them. I got about halfway through the NOD ones and just was so fed up with reloading and the banal action that I couldn't go any farther.

Finally, its pretty dull to look at. Its all browns, like some wannabe quake level. Would a little color have been so hard to do?

The Bottom Line
A slow, boring, uninspired game. Inconsistencies, poor AI, and a sluggish pace bring it down. Don't bother

Windows · by Dr. Elementary (273) · 2004

I LIKE IT!!!!!!!!!

The Good
The story is great, especially the BIG 'toys'(mammoth mk. 2 and cyborg commando kick BIG butt) You can also get awesome programs that you can modify TS with, lovely! As with most other games, you can also get software that you can modify the game with such as SE2K and final sun. Also the multi play "skirmish" feature allows you to practice for the solo missions, on any level (1-10) with is handy because you can find out what all the units can do before starting on the solo missions.

The Bad
The map maker for the multi play skirmishes could be a lot better, so be thankful you can get stuff like final sun.

The Bottom Line
Well worth the money if you like blowing things up and kicking people in battle as well as a must have for C&C fans.

Windows · by paul cairey (319) · 2002

A general disappointment.

The Good
As always, the Command & Conquer gameplay is there, and there are quite a few things to like -- the graphics are pretty, the deformable terrain is neat, and the full motion video is pretty and well-acted for a game.

The Bad
However, the same system and interface that Westwood used with C&C: Red Alert and the original C&C is still here, and the gameplay is pretty stale as well. C&C: TS is one thing that the previous two were never: boring. Missions are fairly run of the mill, and there's really nothing new to the game.

The Bottom Line
If you're a total neophyte to computer games and Command & Conquer, give it a spin. If you've played either Red Alert or the original, don't bother -- you've seen it all (albiet without colored lighting) before.

Windows · by Vincent Valentine (23) · 1999

A terrible disappointment; a crime against strategy games.

The Good
The excitement of waiting for a sequel for Command and Conquer; the false belief that a game with a long development time is a good game.

The Bad
Everything. This game took everything bad in the original C&C and made it worse, and then took all of the good things in C&C and made them terrible:
The AI is terrible. You'll have to work very hard to lose to the computer, or to two computers, or to six computers, including the campaigns which are ridiculously easy. A good multiplayer aspect would've covered it, but Westwood just has to keep using her Westwood Chat system, and it's buggy and laggy.

The game isn't balanced, with some of the units being an unbeatable powerhouse. The engineers were always annoying, but the new Superweapons are a menace, with one of them easily destroying a base on itself. The two sides are not balanced either, and the NOD is much better than the GDI.

The plot and movies. Yes, Kane leaves, ah, lives, and he should've stayed dead. The plot is uninspired and the movies are terrible, backed up by bad acting and having no real relation to gameplay.

The graphics and sound are B-A-D. The graphics are outdated, with no support for 3d rendering (why does the soldiers look like clowns?!?!), and the sounds is terrible, so you'll usually prefer to completely disable it.

The Bottom Line
This is a bad game which tries to ride the fame of the original; I hate it when companies do that, and I'll never buy a game from Westwood again before playing it thoroughly at my friend's house.

Windows · by El-ad Amir (116) · 2000

A discredit to the Command and Conquer series

The Good
The full-motion video sequences were very well done, and the music was great, but not much else.

The Bad
I was accustomed to the previous C&C games (the first Command and Conquer, as well as Red Alert) and Tiberian Sun just doesn't show the same creativity; it lacks the spark the previous games had.

Most, if not all, of the missions in Tiberian Sun seemed hackish, and loosely thrown together. In addition, many of them had very tight time limits imposed, as well as strict unit restrictions. When you're assigned to take out an entire enemy base in ten minutes, and all you have is a few troopers and an engineer, frustration sets in pretty quickly. There is a very high degree of reloading saved games or restarting entirely, for such missions.

The Bottom Line
Don't bother - even though it bears the Command and Conquer logo, it's nowhere near as enjoyable as the previous games in the series.

Windows · by Dave Schenet (134) · 2001

Contributors to this Entry

Critic reviews added by Jeanne, Plok, vedder, Patrick Bregger, Solid Flamingo, ALEX ST-AMOUR, Alsy, Klaster_1, jaXen, Tim Janssen, Foxhack, nyccrg, Cantillon, Cavalary, lights out party, Martin Smith.