Tempest Rising review - like a new Command and Conquer, but with its own ideas

It’s an RTS series, but the secret of Command and Conquer, especially in the older games like Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, is that it doesn’t actually demand that much strategy. Instead, it’s all about volume. As long as you have more money, more buildings, and more troops, chances are you can brute force a victory – even the most expertly designed network of turret guns and infantry patrols will be swiftly obliterated by an opponent who’s got 25 Mammoth tanks. That’s why C&C is so striking. It’s a bloody and grotesque caricature, a parody of the idea that you can apply meaning to warfare. Taken at face value, Tempest Rising could for a new Command and Conquer game, but while it stands on the shoulders of Westwood’s greatest works, its mechanical subtleties, aesthetical quirks, and the rhythm of its battles separate Tempest Rising from its spiritual progenitor. This is more than an homage.

For the first hour, yes, RTS game, Tempest Rising is your ouija board.

But even by the second level (you can choose to play as either the GDF or Dynasty, and they have individual campaigns), the influence of classic Command and Conquer starts to feel less important. On the harder difficulties especially, Tempest Rising is more of a strategy game, where the individual abilities of different units and the savvy deployment of buildings and defenses play a greater role in securing victory. The rock-paper-scissors combat typical of the genre is still present, and forms the rudiments of Tempest Rising’s major systems – tanks beat four-wheeled vehicles; four-wheeled vehicles beat rocket soldiers; rocket soldiers beat tanks. But each unit and facility has its own buffs, special attacks, and unique strengths, demanding a more exacting approach to battles than Tempest Rising’s overtones imply.

Your construction yard, for example, can be tuned to speedily produce defensive structures at the expense of extra power consumption – during missions where you have to protect a base against waves of GDF or Dynasty troops, that function becomes vital. As well as a standard rifle, one of the entry-level GDF units also possesses a drone, which you can command to follow behind your soldier, automatically providing cover, or operate manually, using it to scout ahead and inflict bolstered damage against structures and armor.

Particularly flexible are the specialist units. The Dynasty’s Operative, for example, remains invisible so long as he’s immobile, and can destroy tanks from long range using an anti-materiel gun. He’s backed up by the Commando, who’s only invisible when she’s not attacking, and can spend $700 to call an airstrike. Given the number of abilities and permutations, there’s a risk that the game could become fussy or fastidious – Civilization 7 recently ran afoul of an imperfect interface and menu layout. But in Tempest Rising, it all feels well-connected, legible, and fluid. The problem is in pacing.

Tempest Rising is at its best when battles are smaller scale and lower stakes. It works when you’re controlling a limited number of soldiers and vehicles, and when your objectives are specific. More than just mechanics, the game feels more broadly constructed around tactical, micro-level combat. Environments are rich and busy. Every unit has a distinctive physical weight – your heavy-weapon troops lumber along, encumbered by their equipment, and you can watch vehicles accelerate, brake, and struggle along the camber.

The visual style of Tempest Rising feels inspired by Warhammer 40k. It’s maximalist and clunky, a world of smog, sweat, and environmental destruction. When you zoom in, during the levels where you’re commanding a single squad, you can appreciate all of Tempest Rising’s superbly drawn details. You can also make the most of the game’s intricate, molecular systems.

Zoom out, however, in the levels where you’re harvesting mounds of Tempest, commanding a giant army, and trying to destroy an entire enemy base, and the game’s visual and mechanical peculiarities become moot. When you’ve got eight battalions of flamethrower tanks, there’s no use in fine-tuning your infantry’s weapon selection, and so Tempest Rising’s fundamental idiosyncrasy turns into a hat on a hat. Again, you win not through shrewd strategy, but sheer overwhelming force, the difference being that Tempest Rising doesn’t have the same satirical teeth as its mid-90s sensei.

On the contrary, even when it becomes a game of who’s got the biggest stick, Tempest Rising finds ways to challenge you and encourage more sophisticated battle planning. There’s a real showpiece mission early in the Dynasty campaign, where your objective is to destroy a manufacturing plant at the opposite end of a GDF-controlled city. You can mass produce tanks and trucks and throw everything at the main target, but you can also play the flanks, and use targeted strikes to destroy three smaller bases ing the central hub.

On the eastern side, the GDF has more air units and a higher concentration of troops. On the west, you’re against static defenses and auto guns. And while you’re building your army and allocating the most suitable units to each battle, you’re also being attacked down the middle by probing sorties of GDF tanks. It’s a sprawling, high-casualty-rate mission – the RTS at its biggest and most dramatic. But the finer, unique parts of Tempest Rising still come to bear. There aren’t many levels where the solution is just right, where the game’s own mannerisms complement the ebb and flow of the traditional RTS, but Tempest Rising occasionally pulls it all together, and in those moments transcends its influences.