Rally Point: Tempest Rising is clearly Command & Conquer, but more importantly, it isn't

No va Kane

The Rally Point is a regular column where the inimitable Sin Vega delves deep into strategy gaming.

I wasn't sure if I wanted Command & Conquer to come back. Some things are just gone, a product of their time, your fondness for them tied to some ephemeral capacity or limitation long since stretched out or hammered in by time and, in the case of games, a wealth of fresher and more convenient alternatives.

But Tempest Rising is not C&C again. Even though I've summarised it as such in a few emails, given the clear similarity of its design and setting. It feels more like an original work made with modern tools by a second team with roughly the same remit, and while I don't love it, I enjoy and respect it so much more than a flat remake.

Tempest Rising builds an identity of its own. Two factions (a currently AI-exclusive third is in playtesting) in a nearish, possibly apocalyptic future, face off. The NATO-esque Global Defence Forces match C&C's GDI, and Tempest Dynasty are a fairly fanatical resistance army rooted in Eastern Europe and Asia, which suffered the brunt of a nuclear war. Tiberium crystals are replaced with tempest; sinister invasive tentacles and pods that produce valuable sap. There is, of course, a war over it.

Tempest works slightly differently than you'd assume. Crossing it slows most vehicles, building up to "overcharge" if undispersed, which neutralises and slowly kills them. The Dynasty, being more at home among the stuff, have several weapons that instantly kill overcharged vehicles. They're a bit more repair-focused, too, and can run their power plants ragged to produce units faster. Mostly, though, they work by hitting harder, and switching between three "combat plans" to boost building, harvesting, or attack, for some flexibility.

The GDF are more fancypants, with shiny lasers and unit powers leaning on stealth, suppression, passive bonus radii, and a secondary resource acquired mainly through tagging and killing enemies. There are more differences between factions, most notably how they place buildings. None of it is outlandish (although I enjoy the audacity of the Dynasty's salvage van/centres, which can convert careless enemy vehicles back into cash), but they feel different enough.

Much of GDF play revolves around choosing targets to mark and weaken, moving maybe a little faster and more opportunistically, while the Dynasty suit hard shock assaults. Or, at least, I think so. In practice I found some of the detail too fiddly; while there's some rock/paper/scissors interplay that keeps things mixed and loose, managing the active abilities of individual units feels cumbersome.

GDF jeepy things can mark enemies, but you have to tell them to switch to special ammo for that, and then to switch back again to fight infantry, because units don't manage targets well (and often kite themselves if not told to stay put, when I mostly need something in between). Scouts can throw a mine, but you have to manually command it for each of them. Technicians can place tiny minefields, but will then stand next to them and get shot without a babysitter. Specialists have obvious utility but pull away too much focus outside of segments devoted to them (not helped by their introductory briefing implying I'd be penalised if they died, so of course I did the Starcraft thing of parking them safely in a corner, and learned to do without).

Trying to find that one technician with a ready cooldown is difficult too, as Tempest Rising has a unit differentiation problem. I appreciate that units can belong to multiple control groups at once, but infantry are tiny and die in droves, and though everything looks great in motion (explosions and laser effects in particular), there are an awful lot of grey tanks and blocky grey armoured cars. The silliest vehicle is a charmingly '1940s war office guy frowning around a cigar' giant sphere that rolls over you, and even that is mostly grey. It's not ugly, and there are exceptions (Dynasty refineries are vehicles that carry little baby harvesters), but units don't feel like the characters they ought to be. Moreover, they're harder to pick out at a glance, and easier to throw into a blob instead of bothering with anything clever.

I was never frustrated, though. At least, not in a game-ending way. The campaign's few difficult parts are more surmountable than they felt with my mediocre clicking skills, and none of the levels feel phoned in, or set up to dick you about. Frustration is not necessarily bad in this kind of RTS. Levels that seem impossible, situations that feel like you've reached a no-win situation, but in fact aren't, are arguably something to strive for. Though I wouldn't say Tempest Rising is heaving with them, it's that kind of frustration - the good kind - that some of its moments flash-fried me in.

Each campaign mixes things up some with opportunities to use the enemy's facilities, as well as the appearance of a third, weirdo faction. Success provides points to spend between missions on "doctrine" bonuses to tweak your playstyle a little, and the "armory", whose items work more like RPG equipment, slotting in and out for per-mission perks like hardier aircraft, punchier infantry, or access to an enemy vehicle type. The doctrines suffer from some crap options sandwiching a good one, but I can be very fickle about that kind of thing.

Without just saying "modernises" and moving on, It's difficult to verbalise how the building and fighting of Tempest Rising thread the needle of resembling C&C while feeling original. Partly it's that the unit roster isn't just a collection of 1:1 stand-ins. The second GDF unit is the drone operator; a barely-armed wee guy whose miniature air unit outranges cheap defences, spots for artillery, and respawns if you don't kill him so there's no reason he won't shake hands with danger. Some of it is down to the UI, with the familiar, old-fashioned building/training side panel rebuilt for modern clarity and quick use tabs. Lots of small things add up to make it feel like the independent offspring of an ageing design, not a soulless clone, or a confused teenager forced to wear its uncomfortable clothes.

This comes through most of all though, in the narrative. Tempest Rising's plot is, y'know, fine. It loses most of the campy melodrama, but this feels an intentional shift from a clear good vs evil affair. Sure, C&C's Brotherhood of Nod were somewhat played as a Red Menace, but were an evil cult of personality foremost, leaning on the memorable look and performance of Joseph D. Kucan (also voice director for most of the series) as Kane. The GooDIes, meanwhile, were near archetypal heroes of American exceptionalism, with a few sops to mildly criticise their impact on the world easily fixed with well-meaning fervour. Anomalous bad apple out, problem solved.

For all its intentional ham, Nod were a savvy concept: widespread opposition to a militarised global hegemony, exploited by an egomaniac to form a paramilitary cult whose near-worship of the ecologically disastrous tiberium heavily outweighs any valid criticism of the GDI. The series never really went anywhere with that, but it made them feel a little more interesting.

Tempest Rising doesn't go in hard on its themes either. Campaign missions don't feel very connected or contextualised, while its story wisely sticks to few moving parts and wastes none of your time pretending to be why you're here. Its characters are forgettable, but more realistic and approachable, helped by the intimate, face-to-face mission briefings with basic dialogue options. The first you see of the GDF leadership is an American not even bothering to learn the name of the Icelandic district he's invading, and a Dynasty figure who tries to kill you expects you to just accept that it was a political thing and move on with a shared purpose and a Slavic shrug.

Rising feels more believably about "Western" (primarily US and Landlordian, let's be real) powers alternately exploiting and abandoning Eastern Europe, whose people suffered most under its fictional nuclear war and the ensuing spread of tempest, and suffered too under the USSR, and manage to somewhat unite over it. Even tempest is less sinister than tiberium: though invasive, it lowers radiation and burns clean, making it arguably an improvement, and in the eyes of a more sympathetic red faction, a resource more rightfully theirs than in the grasping hands of a distant world police.

The Dynasty are dressed to oppress, a bust in the background recalls Lenin, and their occasional po-faced lie or blatant abuse of authority are vestiges of Soviet power structures, but they're neither Russian or communist. They're their own odd thing, more appropriate for an era where your friend has an operation in Armenia, you've just got into a Polish sitcom, and you just alt-tabbed here from flirting with a Czech woman. Less "the baddies", and more politically driven, with a membership more committed to self-determination than to hero worship of a ruler, or hating the GDF because that's what the baddies do. The Dynasty, and game itself, recall their obvious historical influences, yet are distinct from them, becoming something of their own. That's a difficult tightrope to walk, and probably wouldn't work if the design wasn't contributing with a similarly "the same but different" energy.

Tempest Rising is not about these things, because it doesn't take itself that seriously, and nor should it when the goal remains pulpy sci-fi fun. But its setting and real-world themes resonate just enough to feel sincere and vaguely plausible, making it easy to care about what's happening. Not deeply, but enough to claim both its own identity and a great inheritance.