Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun is an old game, but I’m reviewing it because it’s now available in a bundled package with its expansion pack, Firestorm, for the very reasonable sum of $19.99. Although, personally, I consider Tiberian Sun to be the weakest link in Westwood’s compelling C&C saga, for the budget price of admission, it’s still a fine real-time strategy (RTS) game.

Tiberian Sun is the long awaited "true" sequel to the original Command & Conquer. Fans of the series had been anticipating this game for four years after the first game appeared, revolutionizing the RTS genre (Westwood is recognized at the creator of the genre on the PC with the innovative and very cool Dune II).

Just in case you haven’t played Command & Conquer, here’s a brief history of the series. In the original C&C, the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) squared off against the Brotherhood of Nod, led by the megalomaniac Kane. GDI eventually triumphed, and Kane was believed dead.

At the beginning of Tiberian Sun, set in the year 2030, Kane reappears and the Brotherhood restarts its bid for global conquest. Once again, GDI is there to thwart Kane’s efforts at every step.

The big difference here is that Tiberian Sun has a decidedly sci-fi theme going on, where the original C&C was based closer to modern warfare reality. GDI is outfitted with mech-like walking tanks as their main armored forces, with hover-tanks and disc-grenade bombardiers. GDI is all about force in this game, relying on heavy-handed attacks and superior firepower to win the day. The Brotherhood of Nod focuses on stealth and surprise, with units that can burrow underground and appear in the middle of the enemy base, and stealth generators that can cloak an entire base.

Gameplay is classic C&C. You’ll build bases and create income by mining Tiberium, a mysterious, highly toxic, crystal-like substance that has become common all over the world. In most missions you’ll build a base, create a solid defense and then hunt down and eliminate the enemy forces in the area. Some missions mix things up a bit, but the majority follow the tired and true "seek and destroy" formula.

Graphically, Tiberian Sun is a step up from the earlier C&C titles. It uses a new engine, allowing for voxel-animated vehicles, deformable terrain, light-sourcing, and some pretty cool explosions. Unfortunately, the game was in development for so long that older RTS titles like Total Annihilation and StarCraft still look nicer. That’s not to say that the game looks bad, just slightly outdated for its time. You can boost the resolution up to 800x600, which helps quite a lot. There’s also some nice detail in the terrain and cityscapes in which you wage your wars.

Unfortunately, though, Westwood chose to stick to the same outdate and awkward method of building structures and units that they’ve used for all of the previous C&C titles. Two columns, one for buildings and one for units, and in the later missions (or later in the tech tree), these columns become unwieldy as you’re forced to scroll up or down to find the building or unit that you want to create. Thankfully, at least you now have the ability to queue up infantry and armor units. Still, Westwood should have learned from Age of Empires or StarCraft and updated its play mechanics to make things a little easier for the player.

Another low point in the game comes when attempting to play an open-ended skirmish against the computer. Even at the lowest difficulty setting, the AI will race up its tech tree and immediately begin taking your base apart with precision superweapon strikes, destroying key buildings and generally making the game unbearably frustrating. It becomes obvious early on in these skirmishes that the computer doesn’t have to play by the same rules that govern human players. The fog of war obviously doesn’t affect the AI, is it can pinpoint and destroy your base even if none of its units have approached your base. This kind of omnipotent AI is a sign of lazy programming, plain and simple, and it significantly tarnishes the replay value of the game.

However, the single player campaigns are generally well done, with the same ultra-campy cinematic cut-scenes (featuring James "I was Darth Vader’s voice and look where it got me" Earl Jones) between missions. The missions are a mix of base-creation and big battles and small squad tactical strikes that will be familiar to fans of the series.

The Tiberian Sun expansion pack, Firestorm, doesn’t change the gameplay, but it does add some significant changes to each side that help to balance out the game. Unfortunately, Westwood chose not to tweak the AI to make it a little more reasonable in the skirmish mode. Firestorm has 18 new campaign missions, 9 for each side, to lengthen the single player experience of Tiberian Sun, and that’s really the best part of the expansion. These missions are well done, they add some new elements to the game, and they’re hard enough to give even the most seasoned C&C vets a good workout.

At full price, Tiberian Sun isn’t a game that I would necessarily recommend to anyone but hardened C&C fanatics, but for $20, the available package deal is quite a bargain.