You can now play both campaigns of the original Command & Conquer in 2-player co-op, thanks to one of its best mods

Joe Kucan as Kane fondles a pistol. — (Image credit: Dawn of the Tiberium Age Staff)

Dawn of the Tiberium Age is Command & Conquer modding royalty. With a history stretching back to 2007, the standalone mod aims to enhance Westwood's 1995 classic and its Cold War spinoff Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Built in a customised version of Tiberian Sun's engine, Dawn of the Tiberium Age lets players battle together in multiplayer maps using any of the games' four factions, and features a wide array of original single-player missions, including a whole new campaign.

It's a brilliant mod as it stands, but its intrepid designers recently reached a big new milestone. As of this week, you can now play all of the original Command & Conquer's single-player in two player co-op.

This has been partly possible for a couple of years—the DTA team adapted the GDI campaign for two-player co-op back in 2023. But now, they've also tweaked the Nod storyline to support playing with a pal.

A big old battle in Dawn of the Tiberium Age. — (Image credit: Dawn of the Tiberium Age Staff)

While the mod aims to ensure that missions are structurally and spiritually as close to the original as possible, the team did make tweaks to certain missions where they saw "dumb" design. "An example is GDI mission 4, which was usually beat by just driving your APC into the crate. In our version you'll need to retrieve the crate with a truck and actually bring it back to the starting area for safety."

Presumably, the modders adopted the same approach for the Nod campaign. Alongside the cooperative extension, the latest update also brings a new custom mission called Shadow Reprisal that has been in the works since 2016, as well as a new radar dome model for the Soviet faction, improved models for Nod's Torpedo Boats, and six new multiplayer maps.

The modders don't mention whether they play to adapt Red Alert's campaigns for two-player co-op, but that's the logical next step. Either way, it's great to see the team continue to breathe new life into C&C, especially since EA seems largely uninterested in furthering the series (though the publisher recently released the source code for several of the older games). This year also brought us a spiritual successor in the form of Tempest Rising, which is well worth checking out if you're hankering for a more modern take on C&C's classic action.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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