I have no idea what they did for the difficulty levels in Tiberian Dawn (the original game didn’t have them so I’m assuming they ported over the Red Alert values), but holy crap are some of these missions brutal. I passed GDI mission 4 by the skin of my teeth on the fifteenth attempt and have zero idea how anyone would to it in a straight-up legitimate manner.
This package makes a hell of a first impression in spite of all that, and I think I’ve made it just over halfway through the campaign before I decided to take a bit of a break.
Totally agree with this!! I was also surprised that it seemed harder than I remember. I had forgotten they did not have difficulty levels in the original game. I remember the game as being easier than this - maybe I am just older and more incompetent!
Yeah, a lot of it is just that classic 90s Command & Conquer difficulty. Some missions have a spike in difficulty, some mission paths are easier than others, and that kind of thing. I had trouble completing certain missions as a kid, so I don’t think the difficulty has been adjusted much if at all.
Some missions (I’m looking at you, GDI mission 7) are brutal under any circumstances, but the original C&C was never designed for difficulty modifiers and it makes everything into an unfun, trial-and-error slog if you crank it up to Hard. The stat changes reduce the cost and build time of the enemy by 20%, reduce the rate of fire of your own units by 20%, and increases the rate of fire, armor and firepower of enemy units by 20%.
So your enemy gets 25% more stuff that does over 40% more damage than usual while your own units do 40% less damage than usual (roughly). Now think about some of those set piece missions where you can’t replace losses under any circumstances, and mission design starts to completely fall apart.
I’ve decided to swallow my pride and just play on Normal so I don’t have a stroke. The game glitched out and set that for me anyway and it has been much more enjoyable.
Kinda regretting buying this, really. Which I sorta knew I would.
I can’t fault the work that’s been done here, but despite the polish it definitely hails from a time of jankyness I no longer posses the tolerance for. We’ve come a long way, and while I can still see fleeting moments of the genius that effectively birthed the RTS genre, they’re… just not enough.
If you’re on the fence about this at all, leave it. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been done substantially better elsewhere.
What new RTS games are there to play that are harvest, build, and attack? What’s out in the last two years? Not contending that this was the pinnacle, but revisiting it seems like it would be enjoyable. And people are playing it now too, which means multiplayer is a real thing.
I kinda feel like that style might have peaked with Warcraft 3 or Starcraft 2 (though I always loved the Blizzard take on RTS until they gutted WC3 in the remaster), depending on if you like more tactical or strategic. AoE2, Total Annihilation, and even later C&C/RA entries would all also probably scratch the “harvest/build/attack” itch while not drowning you in painful mechanics and obnoxious mission design.
Act of Aggression really was the modern Command and Conquer. Arguably it had sort of the same plot, evil sneaky organization. You collected resources with harvesters, built tanks and infantry, and fought over chokepoints and resource deposits.
A lot of people - maybe all the people -didn’t like it, but i had a lot of fun in skirmish.
I felt as though Total Annihilation & Supreme Commander were the peak (though I’d hardly call those new). TA is free on GOG for the next 12 hours or so if you somehow STILL haven’t played it.
I picked it up too and see what fox is saying. However, I’m hoping that since there’s mod support and they released the source code we’ll see a lot of fan improvements. I just hope they find a way to let the changes be available in multiplayer. Like having a classic channel and a modded channel.
There’s already an improved zoom mod, which is very nice, but not allowed in mp.
After sitting through all three hours of Crapoo the Poop-Clown Saves New York on your recommendation, I’ll admit that I trust you more than ever, Brian!
This is the only game in the series that I played, but it was very amusing. You missed out by not playing the Soviet campaign too. Red Alert always did a good job in varying up the campaign. They’ll hit you with a few missions of “AI is constantly throwing enemies at you while you build a base”, but then let you go destroy some shit as Tonya, etc.
Petroglyph should just straight up take the name back and rename themselves to Westwood and then proceed with remastering RA2 and Tiberian Sun to the quality level of this remaster (which is fantastic) and then make new CnC 4 game.
