Relive your Command & Conquer glory days with the free demo for Tempest Rising
The music is particularly on point
While we continue to hope and wait for news of another Command & Conquered Remastered Collection, I'd recommend giving Tempest Rising a look to tide you over, especially now there's a free demo for it over on Steam. You don't have long to give it a pop - it will disappear on August 28th - but this base-building RTS harks back to the C&C days of yore with its diverse set of units and industrial metal soundtrack. I played a version of this demo earlier in the year and had a great time with it, so it's worth seeking out over the weekend if you get a spare moment.
In Tempest Rising, you play as one of three factions who are all desperately hungry to claim as much of the planet's last special resource macguffin (the titular Tempest) as they can. They'll each have their own campaign you can dip into, but the demo I played a couple of months ago focused on the Global Defence Force, who were battling it out with the appropriately named Tempest Dynasty for world domination. As you might expect from a C&C-like, that meant manoeuvring troops into advantageous positions and absolutely wrecking the joint so there were no traces of the Dynasty (warriors) left.
It's very over the top, but not in the same patently-unfunny way as I found, ahem, Jagged Alliance 3. Rather, this is a 90s throwback done right, if you ask me, just prettied up for a modern audience. In truth, the latest trailer (embedded below) doesn't really tell us anything new about how Tempest Rising plays - you'd be better off watching the 20-odd-minute gameplay trailer they released back in April if you're curious - but it does show off some of its chunky vehicle units, and features a very agreeable number of tank explosions. Some of the tanks even have flamethrowers, which is neat.
In any case, it's certainly on my RTS watchlist after playing the demo (along with Frontier's upcoming Warhammer RTS Age Of Sigmar: Realms Of Ruin and Frost Giant's Stormgate), so I'd recommend checking it out if you're keen. There's still no release date for Tempest Rising yet, but you can find out more (and play its demo) over on Steam.