Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun

First Impressions

The first impressions were good. The box (Platinum ed.) is kickass, and I got my figurine and the special Platinum Edition manual, with the soundtrack CD. If you have a regular box, you should receive the game CDs, some garbage flyers and the game manual, though slightly smaller (lacking the interviews/background stuff, and signatures printed on the cover.)

Tiberium veins eat heavy units for breakfast

MCV can deploy into a construction yard

The manual is decent, but lacks any real setup for the game or history of the C&C universe. The interviews/comments in the back are done with a handwriting font, not real handwriting, which kind of takes away from the credibility and makes it disappointing. :( Still, everything is covered and done in an interesting enough fashion to bother reading the manual. There seem to be some slight factual errors, like guard mode… which doesn't work, at least not as described in the manual.

Command & Conquer: Tiberian Movie?

Well, I loaded the game up and watched the intro sequences, which rock. If you are playing in high res (800x600), don't bother expanding them to fit the screen. The extra graininess isn't worth the size. Obviously the movies are top notch with excellent acting (Joe Kucan resumes his kickass role as Kane, James Earl Jones is GDI leader General Solomon, and Michael Biehn (Terminator 1) is Commander McNeil, your alter-ego in the GDI game.) The supporting cast and other leads are pretty good too, leaving the flash and dash to the stars, without trying to upstage anyone. I actually really liked two major NOD characters aside from Kane - Colonel Slavik and General Vega. Though they aren't given the witty, ironic roles played by the 3 Soviet leaders in Red Alert, IMHO they do a better job acting their parts out.

Deploying tick tank

Deployed tick tank

Unfortunately, I can't comment or give examples without giving the plot away, and the plot is good enough to be worth saving. I'll just say that it involves more explanations about Kane, Tiberium and the aliens. It doesn't solve anything and often produces more questions than answers, but that, I assume, is saved for the final game in the series.