Playing a new real-time strategy game in 2023 feels fantastic, especially when the parallels to C&C are as great as in Tempest Rising. Now there’s a demo; we’ve already played inside.
Game developers are people like you and me. Many of them played the same games we did when we were kids, loved them, adored them, and installed them over and over again.
And then, when they eventually are able to, they memorialize their favorite game – as their own game in the same genre, heavily inspired by the legendary template.
Tempest Rising is such an homage, a love letter to Command & Conqueras you rarely see these days. In any case, a playable demo mission brings up so much C&C nostalgia that it warms the heart of a beleaguered real-time strategy fan. I mean, just look at this trailer:
It’s not like developer Slipgate Ironworks is making a secret of its source of inspiration. The studio from Denmark has big fans of the Westwood games in its ranks, so there’s some kind of Tiberium resource in Tempest Rising (including collectors), typical base building with sandbags, a single-player campaign from two perspectives, cinematic cutscenes and mission briefings from the first-person perspective, even super weapons.
Okay, the supposed good guys of the story are called GDF instead of GDI and instead of an ion cannon you can expect an air strike. But if you know C&C, you’ll immediately feel right at home in Tempest Rising.
Want to try it out for yourself? From today until August 28, (a demo is available for download on Steam). What that reveals about the finished game, I’ll tell you now.
Nostalgia in a mission
Two campaigns with about twelve missions each and a playtime of about 15 hours await you in Tempest Rising in addition to skirmish battles and the multiplayer mode, in which a third faction is playable. The demo offers a small excerpt from the campaign of the Global Defense Force (GDF), which with its specialized troops is strongly reminiscent of the USA from Command & Conquer: Generals
The mission design is quite old school: With a few paratroopers I land in Iceland and follow up on reports of troop movements of the Asian-Eastern European Dynasty, then at some point I build a base and finally destroy the enemies’ construction yard.
The story takes place after a global conflict, the warring parties have divided the hemispheres among themselves in much the same way as NATO and the Warsaw Pact did during the Cold War. The mission briefing is given by Colonel Fisher, I get to ask questions in a multiple choice interview and get more information.
In the later game, it will also be possible to upgrade my troops similar to Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty in the armory , plus there are the currently classified doctrines that will probably give bonuses for certain play styles.
Between Attack Move and Micromanagement
Titan Rising plays wonderfully familiar, there is never a moment of uncertainty for me: I group infantrymen and jeeps into control groups, send them per Attack Move towards enemies and only occasionally assign specific targets, such as the generously distributed explosive barrels.
As a mobile construction vehicle appears, which turns into a construction yard on my double click, the following sequence is taken almost 1:1 from Command & Conquer : I select the power plant, barracks, refinery, and satellite uplink from the menu on the right side of the screen, plant them on a grid in the landscape, order reinforcements from another menu tab, build sandbags and defensive towers, and later walls and gates.
None of this will surprise genre veterans, at most details like the fact that the Tiberium called Tempest damages vehicles on contact here, while in C&C infantrymen were the most vulnerable units.
In addition to money, the GDF collects another resource, information Its extraction can be improved by certain special abilities, but it is also needed for the use of unit talents:
- The Medic can set up a healing tower.
- The drone pilots send forward their flying missile platform.
- The Scout places a sensor that informs you of enemy movements.
The special abilities certainly give you room for tactics, but overall the very tight story corset of the demo mission only allows for a few deviations from the predefined path; I even solve the side missions in passing, so to speak.
Whether Tempest Rising will still be released in 2023 is currently open. Currently I rather guess that the return of C&C in a new guise will take place next year.
Editorial conclusion
Gosh, this is exactly the kind of Tempest Rising I needed right now! Just click together my base a bit, build up a powerful army and waltz through the enemy positions (which now explode quite nicely thanks to Unreal Engine 5). None of this is surprising, clever or even special, but this game principle has been out of fashion for almost 20 years now. What you can only guess at in the demo is what I like most: the mission briefings, cutscenes and story snippets remind me a lot of the very first Command & Conquer and already trigger similar feelings in me. I want to play this campaign and hope that the story and staging keep the high level of the appetizer. Then I don’t care about multiplayer and skirmish; I’ll play Tempest Rising for the campaign alone. And for the Tiberium, excuse me: Tempest.
