YMMV / Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun

• Awesome Music: The game has been praised for its dark ambient soundtrack, which arguably does half the lifting when it comes to establishing the game's mood. Many of the tracks feature slow, low, electronic melodies that embody the alien and apocalyptic nature of a Tiberium-infested world, the creepiness of all the horrors spawned by it, and the utter hopelessness of seeing our homeworld slowly dying.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In an optional Nod mission called "Free Rebel Commander". There is a lone GDI Light Infantry that managed to escaped captivity from Hassan's Elite Guard, took down one of the soldiers on his way out, took control of a grounded Orca and bombed a deployed Tick Tank at the other side of the tunnel. Even though Hassan himself acts as a puppet leader for GDI, there's no explanation as to why his guards attempted to take a lone GDI operative prisoner when they could simply let the operative pass without incident. Not even CABAL, Slavik and Oxanna comment on this occurence and is not bought up afterwards.
• Demonic Spiders: The Hunter-Seeker Droids. They have the ability to instantly kill any unit or destroy any structure no matter what their strength. This includes even critical structures like Construction Yards and Tiberium Refineries, meaning that all it takes is a single droid attack to severely cripple a player and put them out of the game. What's worse is that there's no way to stop them once they're released. Not even GDI's firestorm walls. However, it's worth noting that the droids choose targets randomly when you release them (meaning that there's a random chance they will sometimes kill an inconsequential unit instead). Still, many players hate them due to their insta-kill ability and being virtually unstoppable. They're thankfully absent from the campaign, but many a multiplayer/skirmish match is ruined thanks to these droids.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Anton Slavik, the Player Character of the base game's Nod campaign. Unlike McNeil, he was popular enough to reappear in Firestorm as the Nod campaign's commanding officer opposite to GDI's General Cortez, assigning directives to a new unseen Nod commander. There was great mourning when it was revealed he was assassinated by Marcion's forces in Tiberium Wars: Kane's Wrath.
• Game-Breaker: The EMP Cannon is one when used right. Its blast covers almost the entire screen and disables anything that isn't airborne or fully organic (including Nod cyborgs, dug-in subterranean units and both super units) for a full minute. That's an obscenely large window of opportunity to wreak some havoc unopposed, there's absolutely no way to defend against EMP attacks, and the blast affects not only units but also any and all powered defense structures like Nod's Obelisks, Stealth Generators, SAM sites and the GDI Firestorm Barrier. The cannon's mediocre range keeps it from being completely unfair, but if you encounter base defenses you can't crack, deploy a secondary construction yard vaguely near your target, plonk down an EMP cannon, nuke the base and overrun the enemy with next to no resistance. Needless to say that this is also a great counter to massed tank armies approaching your own base. To add insult to injury, EMP Cannons have a small 2x2 footprint, are easily unlocked at tier 2, are dirt-cheap to build, and have an A.I. Breaker effect that effectively neutralizes even units that survived long enough for the EMP to wear off.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • The most irritating units that you have to deal with in the GDI campaign are Devil's Tongue Tanks and Mobile Artillery. Devil's Tongue Tanks will always try to pop up in the middle of your base which required wasting money on building pavement (which prevents subterranean units while making your own units faster on it plus preventing terrain indentation from strong weaponry).
  • Mobile Artillery was so overpowered in the vanilla version that it was badly nerfed in the Firestorm expansion which goes to show how hard it was to deal with them (And GDI got their own artillery too).
  • The Subterranean APC makes many of the other infantry into this, all because of it's ability to literally pop up in the middle of your base. It doesn't help that the AI loves to rush engineers with them too which can result in your construction yard being sold off (or destroyed) right from the get go.
• Good Bad Bugs: The disc launchers wielded by GDI grenadiers bounce their projectiles off of the ground a few times before they hit the target. Using forced fire with these units can make the discs travel hilariously long distances under the right circumstances, to the point that skilled players can level enemy bases from across the map with a bunch of grenadiers throwing explosive frisbees at nothing.
• Growing the Beard: This installment is where the signature aesthetics of GDI and the Brotherhood of Nod first appeared, as instead of using conventional vehicles and technology like in Tiberian Dawn, the GDI now use suits of powered armor, bipedal walkers, as well as variants of the Orca aircraft, while the Nod now have their signature black and red palette alongside their streamlined and futuristic vehicles.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the base Nod campaign, McNeil is captured and forced to watch a nuclear missile destroy the GDS Philadelphia. Although this destruction isn't canon, it happens canonically at the beginning of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars in both the GDI & Nod campaign (both stories are canon, happening along side each other).
  • The Firestorm expansion introduces two mobile base units called the Mobile War Factory (for GDI) and the Fist of Nod (for Nod, of course). Both are mobile factories that can produce vehicles out in the field and can be packed, repacked, and unpacked to move elsewhere. Unfortunately, these two units sort of serve as a precursor to the now-infamous "Crawler" game mechanic from Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. The difference is that the mobile bases from Firestorm were mostly optional and the game still used tried-and-true base-building. Tiberian Twilight, on the other hand, mostly eschews the base-building and makes the Crawler mobile base mechanic mandatory. The infamous Crawler mechanic ended up ruffling a lot of feathers among players and was one of many, many factors in Tiberian Twilight tanking rather badly. ^note  And sadly, Tiberian Twilight went on to be a huge Franchise Killer for the Command & Conquer series in general (at least for now).
• Inferred Holocaust:
  • Huey the Cyborg in Firestorm is never mentioned again in the main game after being featured as a reprogrammed, virus-infected cyborg used to deactivate Cabal's Cyborg Processing Plant. Supplementary material reveals that he was "decomissioned" but do not go into details of what that entails. Similarly, it's best not to think about all of the people who did get robotized against their will, but remained with Nod after the crisis (since they become disillusioned with cyborgs and phased them out of their armies by the third game).
  • The Kane's Wrath expansion to Tiberium Wars reveals that Kane mothballed the cyborg armies as a contingency measure to be recalled into service as the "Marked of Kane" should the need arise. It's still best not to think about their gruesome origins too much.
• Moral Event Horizon: Nod's endgame has Kane launch a massive terra(?)forming missile which instantly converts Earth into a Tiberian planet. In all likelihood this leads to the extinction of mankind and indeed all carbon-based life, and is made all the more chilling by the fact that Kane explicitly orders his soldiers to 'emerge from their bunkers and factories to partake in the technology of peace'. He knows what he is doing, and he wants to leave no loose ends in the creation of his 'virgin paradise'. The above arguably makes the Second Tiberian War Nod the most morally reprehensible faction in the series, far outstripping even the GLA.
• Narm: While there's an all-star cast lending their talents, there's still some performances that can be unintentionally amusing.
  • The infantry death samples from Tiberian Dawn's make a return, but they're also accompanied by new samples that sound more disgusted or disappointed than like a soldier who is facing death. The sample that sounds like "Ewwwwwgh!" might stand out.
  • The cyborg voice actors may come across like something out of a cheesy b-movie, acting like they're trying to channel cyborgs from hit movies but not quite having the intended effect.
• Narm Charm: As mentioned under narm, some of the voice acting can feel cheesy, but that can make it memorable as well.
  • Francesco Quinn plays a hammy Caesar Vega who is addicted to his own drug he deals called Eye Candy. One of his major scenes has him pleading with Kane for reinforcements and seeing Kane push his launch button to send a nuke to wipe out his command center. He proceeds to fatally overdose on Eye Candy before Michael McNeil arrives to give him a good shake down for information while he's strung out.
  • Michael Biehn as Michael McNeil also lends almost-comic relief to the story with him treating the war almost like he's playing a sports match. His one-liners help lighten the mood throughout the GDI campaign in contrast to the existential Tiberium crisis.
• Porting Disaster: The version included in Command & Conquer: the First Decade consistently fails to install properly, barring some Computer Magic that involves file copying.
• That One Level:
  • "Weather the Storm". You'll have to defend an stranded Kodiak from NOD during a Ion Storm and they'll attack you constantly from every direction. And yes, their arsenal includes Artillery. It becomes a bit more manageable once you realize that the initial waves are scripted to always consist of the same units attacking from the same specific spots, but even then you'll have a hard time fending them off with the limited resources at your disposal.
  • "The Needs of the Many", the sixth Nod mission from the Firestorm expansion. With CABAL going rogue, Nod needs a new tactical AI unit and Slavik orders you to steal one from a GDI outpost. You start with only a few (badly damaged) stealth tanks, a Subterranean APC, some engineers, and Mobile Stealth Generators. Since the GDI base has a HUGE air force in the area, you have to somehow sneak an engineer into the base's radar tower while creating a distraction by attacking civilian villages with your stealth tanks. Timing is everything, because if the ORCA fighters and bombers return to base, they'll kill your engineers and you'll fail the mission. Furthermore, you're forced to cross a river via a very thin patch of ice (since the bridges are heavily guarded by GDI ground units and base defenses). Save Scumming is quite a must for this mission.
• Vindicated by History: While the game was hardly underwhelming at launch and sold a significant number of copies, some reviewers didn't find the game all that revolutionary and it didn't have the major innovations that Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 brought to the game engine like a better organized battle control panel that sorted base-building into refined groups like giving base defenses / superweapons their own build queue and sorting infantry, vehicles and aircraft into their own queue groups. However, Tiberian Sun has fans who appreciate the gloomy atmosphere this installment brought to the game with its soundtrack and the Tiberium wildlife taking over the planet with its very own ecosystem. Michael Biehn and James Earl Jones making an appearance in this installment helped make this game stand out too. Joseph Kucan's brother, Daniel Kucan also made an appearance portraying Jake McNeil. Tiberian Sun was well remembered enough that the Kane's Wrath expansion for Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars brought back GDI's Titan and Wolverine mechas for the Steel Talons faction, and brought back cyborgs mainly via the Marked of Kane faction. Kane's Wrath also has missions that take place between Tiberian Sun and Tiberium Wars to add additional back story.
• The Woobie: The Forgotten. The amount of hell they suffer through in Tiberian Sun and Firestorm (where they lost two leaders) must take some form of record. In the end, they just give up on the rest of the world and go to the Red Zones where no one would follow. Except the Scrin arriving several decades later.