The final, free C&C game is one of the most memorable.
Who knew a company like EA would release so many classics to the public for absolutely free?
Well, they did, and Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun is the last one which can be obtained free and absolutely legally. This game builds upon the original C&C and brings it to a new level of sophistication and depth. The game is highly exciting, and definitely something you want to try, especially since it’s absolutely free and pretty simple to install.
Just like the original C&C, the game is very similar – build a base, gather Tiberian, amass an army and then attempt to massacre your enemies. The game brings familiarity to people who have played the good ol’ games, whether it be Red Alert or the original C&C, both of which are free too, by the way.
The essential difference between this game and the original C&C is that it’s been complicated to good taste – you get more units, more buildings, and more ways to slaughter your enemies. For example, in the original C&C, you had the option of one superweapon. Now you have about three. Remember Tanya from Red Alert? In C&C: Tiberian Sun, you have Tanya-esque units, such as the Cyborg.
Tiberium Sun is a great game, especially so because it’s free and it’s quite engaging. One thing that I find a bit unfortunate has to be the lack of multiplayer capability. Out of the box, you are unable to play with your friends.
Now, my two cents. Since all three games are offered free, you do have a lot on your hands if you try to play all three at once. You’d miss work, lose your family and lose half your weight because you can’t get to the kitchen to cook. If you don’t want this to happen, however, I’d say that while Tiberian Sun is a great game, the original C&C is still a lot more engrossing than TS is.
My theory of why this is so lies in the fact that the original C&C is a much tougher game, where as Tiberian Sun is a game that follows a late-90′s-and-early-2000′s trend whereby games are gradually made easier and easier. In fact, the inclusion of a Skirmish mode just removes a large chunk of your impetus to play the Campaign – the slow, mission-by-mission release of stronger units, which keeps you addicted to playing the game just to see what cool toy you’ll have next.
Is it a bad game? No. It’s absolutely terrific. That’s why, if you’re bored, you should head over here and download it. Installation is pretty easy, you just have to copy the whole SUN folder onto somewhere in your hard drive and run SUN.exe. That will enable you access to both the original Tiberian Sun and Firestorm. It’s pretty much the easiest game to run among the three free games. In case you encounter an error stating that you are unable to open up the file, what you need is WinRAR, which you can download from here. Presumably, if you are running this on a netbook, you’d want to download the 32-bit version, that goes by the name WinRAR x86 (32-bit) x.xx.
Like
A great revamp of the C&C series with a lot of new units and new strategies.
Dislike
Graphics still looks like Gameboy Color
Not as engrossing as the first two C&Cs – IMHO, YMMV.
Verdict
Quite a sweet game for Skirmish, though campaign-wise, definitely try the first C&C.
Gameplay: Great!
Graphics: Looks antiquated.
Work needed to get game to play: Minimal – extract a folder from the RAR and run the executable.
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