Welcome to the first entry of The Game Room. It is one of the short series I talked about in my previous ULog. I plan on writing about games that I play when I have free time.
Today, I want to talk about a standalone Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun mod called Dawn of the Tiberium Age. You may visit their website on Moddb at https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dawn-of-the-tiberium-age. This game is completely free to play, including online.
The logo found on their main mod page
When it comes to real-time strategy games, I grew up with Command and Conquer. I have played every single game in the franchise minus C&C4, or Tiberian Twilight. You can thank EA for destroying a beloved series. I will share some screenshots from the game menus to give you an idea of what you could be signing up for when you download this mod.
Main menu
Dawn of the Tiberium Age, will be referred to as DTA from hereon, allows gamers to revisit the good old RTS days by offering them a four-way battle between GDI, Nod, Allies, and Soviets. You read correctly. Those four factions can fight each other! Obviously, there are certain limitations due to the fact the mod was based on Tiberian Sun, but the team has done a great job in putting together a working game.
DTA has several game modes that address different demographics and preferences:
New Mission
List of currently available campaigns
New Mission is basically campaign mode. In DTA, Classic Mode refers to the more vanilla versions of Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert mechanics, in terms of stats and units. Enhanced Mode is where you'll see the unique spin the mod team has put into place to make their project stands out.
CnC Net
I was never good at the PvP aspect of RTS games. However, DTA offers you the chance to play against other players as well as finding games to some of the other C&C titles such as Yuri's Revenge and its equally favored mod, Mental Omega.
Skirmish
Skirmish is where I spend most of my time when I do play DTA. The LAN option seems to be a legacy feature for those of us who are nostalgic about a bunch of nerdy guys crammed into a room with their computers. The same multiplayer options can be found when you head over for online play. The sheer number of toggles offer an insane number of possibilities for each game.
You may choose to play as GDI, Nod, Allies, or Soviets. Some people have no preference and a random option is available. In fact, if you just want to see AIs duking it out with each other, you may set yourself as a Spectator. Besides the Default game mode for Skirmish, there are others such as Co-op, Scavenge, etc. These should be familiar terms for those who have played any Command and Conquer games.
As you can see, you can select starting locations. The interesting part about DTA is that you can have 8 players on a 2-player map. The game allows it. However, it can cause the game to crash sometimes.
There are many multiplayer options and most of them are intuitive. The only ones that may require clarification are Extreme AI and Turtling AI. Extreme AI means that the AIs will "tech up" and utilize multiple production facilities. Turtling AI means that they attack much less frequently and tend to camp within their bases.
Extra
Extra shows game statistics and more importantly, a gateway to the map editor. I personally am not familiar with Final Sun, so I seldom use the program. However, for those of you who like to make your own fun time, it is a game that keeps on giving!
Options
At first glance, this should be the boring section. You could be right, except the team did put some effort into making it less boring than it should be. The main perks of this menu is changing the main menu display and choosing Red Alert and/or Tiberian sound effects based on your personal preference.
Conclusion
If you enjoyed old school C&C games, DTA is definitely a great addition to your library. It caters to both PvP and casual commanders. For me, it satisfy my quick gaming itch due to time constraints. Feel free to download or even support this project!
The Game Room is a sporadic series where I talked about the games I play with my spare time.