Tempest Rising review: A safe war

Tempest Rising is happy to play it safe. That's fine, sometimes. Games don't have to constantly innovate or be daring to make themselves interesting. However, Tempest Rising takes so few risks and does so little with the real-time strategy formula that it's hard not to see it as a missed opportunity to use strong mission design and a potentially good setting for something more ambitious.

What if

Tempest Rising takes place in an alternate timeline where the Cuban Missile Crisis – a Cold War event where Russia moved nuclear missiles to Cuba as a threat to the United States – had no peaceful resolution. After several days of nuclear warfare, the bombing stops, and a new threat emerges a few decades later: tentacles. Or more to the point, a mysterious force that spawned the tentacles and other unusual growths across the European continent. That force happens to be a powerful replacement for fossil fuels, and the next conflict is already building around who's going to control it.

It's another in a line of recent games, from Sumerian Six to Grit and Valor - 1949, to use history as a framework for a story. I get it. The idea of alternate timelines splitting off from major events is exciting and cool, but if the concept is only a gateway to lead into something else that has nothing to do with the setup, then you might as well just not use that setup. Tempest Rising's conflict over supernatural energy sources and the violent alien civilization that spawned it could stand on its own as an independent sci-fi piece just fine.

Still, for as little as the lengthy prologue actually has to do with what happens later, Tempest Rising makes sure to give each mission a remarkable amount of context. Your immediate officers have personal motivations – albeit not the most complex or engaging ones, since battle is very much still the focus here – and there's some unexpected commentary on the GDF's outsized influence in pseudo-Europe. 

It's not hard to see that as the U.S.' outsized influence on post-war Europe as well. At the start of your solo campaign, you choose to play as the Global Defense Force or the Tempest Dynasty, loosely coded as the US and a conglomeration of disgruntled European alliances fed up with the GDF taking advantage of their homeland. The tension between the two groups is handled well, and the difference in perspectives goes deeper than "we think we're right, and they're wrong." It's a welcome difference from most games of this nature, which are happy to just throw you into repeated battles without doing much to make them feel justified or worthwhile.

War never changes

It's a shame, then, that Tempest Rising is just sort of mostly okay when it comes to those battles. They're fine! They're just really familiar. Each army can deploy a mix of unit types, from standard soldiers to flamethrower units, tanks, recon vehicles with a knack for running over footsoldiers, and a few types specific to each nation. They all have specialties. Incendiary units, for example, are perfect for clearing out bunkers and other infantry installations, but not quite as effective at taking on vehicles. Meanwhile, rocket soldiers make short work of vehicles, but are slow and prone to being quickly defeated by even just an average infantry unit.

There's nothing wrong with this. It's just almost identical to how other, similar games play, from Command and Conquer to Company of Heroes 3, even down to the predictability of enemy waves and reinforcements.

The annoying thing is that Tempest Rising lacks a handful of features that make the likes of Company of Heroes 3 easier to play and more natural feeling. Cover is one thing. It seemingly just doesn't exist in Tempest Rising. If you direct your soldiers to a wall or even a thick patch of plant growth, they get no defensive bonus, and the only available interaction involves blowing it up. It's also far too difficult to identify unit types based on their icon in the campaign list, as they're tiny and mostly look the same, and tooltips are equally tiny. I'm sitting about a foot away from a 27-inch monitor and still had to lean forward to read skill descriptions, an issue born as much from tiny font as it is from a difficult-to-read style.

Safe and sound

At least the tooltips issue is something that gradually becomes less of an issue as more missions pass and everything becomes more familiar. Slipgate Ironworks designed some excellent maps with challenging objectives, which helps make up for how familiar everything else seems. Even the tutorial map has a split path. You can push toward the enemy base immediately, or take a detour to liberate a small settlement and earn help from some militia units holding out there. These extra challenges usually require more strategy and risk, along with offering more rewards – and not just a few weak militia units. Later missions let you co-opt enemy military designs and use your opponent's forces against them.

Calling Tempest Rising "familiar but fun" sounds damning, but it's the most accurate way to describe it. Most of what Tempest Rising does, it does very well. There's nothing particularly exciting about it, and it's all been done before.

The publisher provided the PC copy of Tempest Rising used for this review. Tempest Rising is available now for PC via Steam and GeForce Now.

Josh Broadwell

Contributing Editor

Josh is a freelance writer and reporter who specializes in guides, reviews, and whatever else he can convince someone to commission. You may have seen him on NPR, IGN, Polygon, or VG 24/7 or on Twitter, shouting about Trails. When he isn’t working, you’ll likely find him outside with his Belgian Malinois and Australian Shepherd or curled up with an RPG of some description.