Tempest Rising has you step into the boots of one of two factions locked in a never ending war that’s revolving around one resource; Tempest. Deploy troops, fight your enemies, gather resources and build bases all to try and come out on top.
Tempest Rising has you either take on the mantle of the Global Defence Force (GDF) or the Tempest Dynasty in either of the single player campaigns. It’s immediate that this is very reminiscent of the old Command and Conquer games, even down to the general talking to you between missions — although he is genuinely terrifying to look at in the GDF campaign as his voice doesn’t quite match up to his speaking and comes across as a bit jarring.
My first impression: Getting to grips with the GDF forces was pretty good, it’s quite a simple roster in the campaign with a clear counter to certain units with buildings and specialists. The drone infantry are particularly interesting letting you scout and be offensive while maintaining a distance with the actual troops is a neat trick.
Mobility seems to be the way to go when playing as the GDF in Tempest Rising as they have a number of fast moving vehicles, from riot vans to lighter armoured cars that all pack a very specific punch. Some of these counters are very hard however, when I first got my hands on one of the GDF’s Hunter tanks I assumed it would just be a heavy unit to be reckoned with but they really do struggle with taking out rocket infantry, so much so that in an even matchup the tanks almost lose.
Tempest Rising has been out since 2025 and has plenty of time to tweak and adjust counters and such so it was very surprising that some units were this strong. I did find that the combat engineers were incredibly useful as well, being able to repair buildings, vehicles and commandeer certain enemy vehicles makes them a must have in any GDF army.
There is actually a third faction in the singleplayer campaign, the Veti, an elder race that once subjugated humanity, although at the moment there is no clear way to play as them, but they do seem to have a structured unit system and base layout making me think that at some point they could become playable which would be welcome.
Tempest Rising’s single player campaign also has an upgrade system that you can use on your armies before going into battle. This is very similar to the system used in the Warhammer: Dawn of War series where you would generally upgrade units and troops between missions but in this case it’s a bit more generalised and can only be applied to certain troops with certain upgrades.
The world of Tempest Rising itself is an interesting one. It’s built on an alternative timeline from the Cuban Missile crisis that peaked into a third world war, dividing the world into the factions featured. In this war nuclear warheads were dropped which created fissures, these then began to spill out Tempest into the world which bore an energy that mankind had never seen before and is the focal point of the game.
With all the fighting and eventual dying I have to say there isn’t much in the way of a story for the singleplayer. Each faction has a loose narrative but generally speaking each mission seems to mainly be, go to point A and destroy objective B, which can be fun but does get a bit stale when it happens a few times. It is actually very quick as well and relies on you ramping up fast to keep the edge over your opponent.
The multiplayer does expand on the world of Tempest Rising, it does have a ranked scene to help pair you up against players of a similar sort of skill but those that are playing seem quite devoted and skilled compared to myself. Much like with a game like Age of Empires II, you can play for hours and hours but multiplayer is something else. I think the best advice for at least winning your games seems to be to go in with a plan, learn what each faction does well and how to build/utilise units and structures to their peak efficiency and you’ll do great, there just doesn’t seem to be much room for error online.
Overall Tempest Rising is solid, most units seem to counter other units hard but once you wrap your head around how everything works and have made it through the two campaigns on offer you’ll be a master in no time.
Tempest Rising is available for PC.
