Tempest Rising Review – Single Sports
Blog Andrew Joseph 18 Apr , 2025 0
Note: This review specifically covers single player activities for the Rise of the Storm. For multiplayer ideas, stand up until after release.
It's only a matter of time before someone gets tired of waiting for EA to announce new commands and conquer the real-time strategy game without canceling it, Danish developer Slipgate Ironworks has become the one who takes things into their own hands. The Tempest Rising drama, like the C&C game, has serial numbers submitted and does a great job of tickleing the effect of this fast-paced action, two very traditional but well-crafted campaigns set up a familiar soundtrack, partly made up of the unique C&C Composer Frank Klepacki. However, considering how the template relates, it is disappointing that it doesn’t have more interesting architectural personality and atmosphere between tasks.
How close is it? Aside from how it replicas the plate-spinning gameplay and basic tech tree (as many have done over the past 30 years), you could easily just change a few names – GDF to GDI and Tempest to Tiberium, for example – and Tempest Rising would be fairly indistinguishable from a C&C iteration as you're harvesting resources, building a base, and craneking out infantry, tanks, and aircraft that die in seconds if you're not paying close Paying close Paying attention when they encounter enemies. Some similarities are interesting on the nose: the nodded dynasty faction’s barrack structure is shaped like a giant hand that stretches out from the ground, and they do not bother to change the name of the Mobile Construction Vehicle (MCV), which fully extends to the base’s central building yard building. Yes, it's very close!
The story of the campaign is treated almost the same way as derived, redescribing the gdi/nod conflict as a “good guy” global defense initiative Force and paramilitary dynasties fought for territory in Europe and North Africa, although here was after the Cuban missile crisis, and the situation was much worse there than we did for us. You really don't know, though, that's a post-War Third World, because the area maps in the briefing look normal except for some destructive roads on the battlefield, and none of these missions can be identified anywhere. But more importantly, it lacks some of the secret ingredients of C&C – including a good guy.
Most of the personality of the classic C&C game comes from the evil nodding faction and its mysterious eternal leader, Kane (the wild passion of Joe Kucan). Granted, the dynasty leaders introduced to you before each mission are more characterful than the GDF's universal, rough and messy general, but the constantly ridiculed Aleks can't get the candle to Kane. You can't build personality cults around a grumpy guy in a beret, and there's not a lot of ideological happenings in the dynasty except being a black leather fetishist – they don't even explicitly frame as a fascist bad guy (especially when compared to Shaingy Councils, none of us would be like the strings of GDF compared to the Scounty of GDF), so we don't have the Yearder offer torker teerter teerter teern eartir ternerfer tears ternerfer tears the Etiff tear the Etiff the ear the ear the Portagon. There is no such thing to invest – plus some ridiculous vocal performances – I don’t have the motivation to sit in multiple optional conversations, which makes your background on knowledge more bland, but nothing else.
In an era where anyone with a smartphone could replace the zoom background with a high-tech command center or a dark and ominous quasi-military headquarters, I was sad that Slipgate didn’t grant resources for C&C-style live performance cutscenes and let someone follow the legendary footsteps of Tim Curry by chewing the virtual footsteps. These generic animated characters can’t compete, especially when there is obviously no budget to match the oral action to most conversations (obviously, both factions have lieutenants who give you orders through gas masks for no reason).
But when it comes to actual real-time strategies, the rising fare for the storm is much better. It may play with very well defined types and styles, but it looks good and works well (it hits me only when a particular saved game is loaded), it has a modern and friendly interface and is very good at finding ways to have a creative faction design. Once you pass through the basic infantry, almost everything has special abilities or twists, you need to spend some time learning to use and determine if it's worth micromanagement rather than picking everything and sending it to the meat-hand grinder that attacks the motorcycle. Too many are listed, but the heavy use of the drone controller unit of GDF is an interesting place: you can control them independently to reconnaise within the radius, you can pack their pilots into an APC or transport chopper, and they will still fly around and if they are destroyed, they will only reappear for free in seconds. Creating resources for special abilities by taking extra steps to mark the extra mark before destroying the target is also a good option – for some extra micromanagement in small engagements, it's a great reward.
When GDF poses, I can't help but praise and answers what would have happened if GDI's Mammoth Tank and Starcraft 2's Siege Tank are so in love. This is a great wish to come true for fans of both series. These Trebuchet hybrids are deployed and the Un-Deploy are so swift (about a second) that it does drive the way micromanages heavy storms rise. You don't have to flip back and forth constantly between moving and fixed modes, but if you do, you'll get more firepower and range.
On the opposite side, the dynasty scrap truck is a powerful unit that automatically repairs every vehicle or building in a radius when fixed and can be deployed as a turret structure with a larger repair range. You can then use it to expand the basic building area and stock up with flame and missile turrets (Dynasty can build a structure ahead of time and place it immediately, while GDF places the structure and then build it), then quickly create a vehicle with self-healing defense and be on the enemy's doorstep. Combining its extra-long range of Porcupine missile trucks and deadly Sam launchers makes the dynasty a fantastic offensive turtle faction. And, when you want to be more aggressive, they can literally push a giant metal ball if they can't destroy it first, thus flattening any tank or infantry on its path.
All in all, once you go beyond the previous few tutorials, a variety of tasks are considerable, but expected, including a large number of foundation cracks, defense holdings and final stances, as well as commando missions led by strong professional infantry, all with optional goals that you can cross over might encourage replays. Interestingly, unless you search the entire map, these targets don't even pop up – that's why you go back and replay, but it can be a bit stupid if you try to do everything in one go. All of these tasks are done well, but equally traditional. There is nothing to think outside the box here, nor does it effectively build mini-game modes around unit abilities like StarCraft 2. They are a good time to smash, but few stand out.
Just like nearly all RTS campaigns produced by RTS campaigns, Tempest Rising gradually gives you access to new units and air strike capabilities, but here you also choose a new global upgrade from one of the three linear trees for each mission – in addition, you can unlock and perform a hybrid upgrade, then populate the number of slots that you expand. Some upgrades are small but useful, such as increasing burn damage to dynasty burners or statistical bonuses over time, or starting units at the veteran level. Some people will feel a little exploitative, such as increasing the visual range of infantry by 50% (which makes them very effective in artillery). However, some are meaningful choices and I would definitely consider it if I was going to play again on higher difficulty. For me, the biggest of these is the “stolen plan” capability that allows you to build some opposite faction vehicles without having to capture buildings. Some of these, like the Trebuchet Tank and the Porcupine missile launcher truck, are game-changers who can help me quickly break through the tough defensive line. Indeed, relying on these can even the battle rather than highlighting what makes each faction unique, but I’m glad to be able to customize my power. Again, the ability to repackage dynasty scrap trucks after deployment was a huge upgrade that prevented me from having to build an entire fleet.
This doesn't ruin anything that isn't said on the Steam page, and in both campaigns that follow the same events from the opposite perspective, the story suddenly introduces a third technologically advanced faction associated with the glowing resources they're both fighting, a sentence I could copy directly from Command & Companimb's Wikipedia page. Multiplayer, so it’s a bit tricky to understand how they work, but for variety shows, they’re great. Fighting with heavier armies is not very different than the GDF or dynasty in the campaign – they have similar bases and defense structures, tanks, aircraft and infantry – but they do have some terrible late-stage units, and GDF and Denostasty cannot appear with Me and require ME to encounter a completely different pillar on a column that appears.
