Hands-on C&C: Tiberian Sun

On Wednesday, Westwood Studios visited the GameSpot office bearing the latest beta of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Fans have been waiting for the upcoming game for almost five years. In those five years, the company has watched others try and reinvent the idea of what real-time strategy would become.

As of right now, the title is still being held back until late summer, and the latest beta indicates that it still needs some tender loving care before it is released to gamers. But new features include new options with, cyborgs and other infantry that crouch down for better armor coverage. Cyborgs also have many other advantages. Cyborgs run on tiberium, and when they die, they leave piles of the precious mineral behind. The good news is that you can harvest the minerals for your own operations. The bad news is that any cyborg standing beside the new clump of tiberium begins to heal. So if you start battling a group of cyborgs without enough firepower or units, healing borgs are going to make your victory extremely hard to achieve.

The new game also adds multiple waypoint paths to the mix, so you'll be able to send troops on far-flung scouting missions or send bombers off to repeatedly make bombing runs over an enemy city. In the next few weeks, we hope to uncover more of the game - stay tuned.