Annihilates the competition
Pros:
Graphics, sound, gameplay, interface, low requirements, game balance, cheap.
Cons:
Weak storyline.
The Bottom Line:
This 1997 game is still beating too much of todays strategy competition. If you haven't played it yet buy it.
|
|
Overall Rating:
|
 |
|
Author's Review
Background
I have been a heavy strategy gamer and tend to prefer the slow but sure type of game and have no qualms with micromanagement.
Performance
The minimum requirements are very modest. I recommend playing this with no less than a Pentium 133 and 32MB. You do not require a 3D card. Multiplayer gaming requires internet access or a LAN. The game always runs smoothly on my system and should be acceptably smooth at the recommended requirements too. The game will slow on lower specification computers when the action gets intense though.
In all the time Ive played this game Ive never found a bug despite the occasional patch released by the company that made it.
The Game
Total Annihilation is not a young game and was released in 1997. It is a real time land-based futuristic strategy game.
This game comes on one disk; but there are two long campaigns as well and single and multiplayer maps. Installation of the game was simple and without problems. You play a commander of one of two sides who is also present on the map as a strong but fallible unit and may optionally set the game to be lost if either commander is destroyed. This feature is best kept off though.
The storyline is not strong, just a classic excuse for carnage so great that total annihilation is the result for the opposing side. No peace treaties here. Basically humans discovered the ability to transfer consciousness to machine with the bonus of immortality being conferred. Humans disagreed on the ethics and half decided it was good and became the living machines of Core. The other half resisted and became the Arm who are people driving the machines. The two were evenly matched decimating a million worlds. Sigh. At any rate the weak storyline opens with an opportunity for eradicating the opposite, which is precisely what you do over many varied maps.
The Core and Arm are somewhat reminiscent of the classic Commies versus the Allies. The campaigns start easily effectively being a tutorial and introduction to the units and structures.
The product is very polished and there are new downloadable units provided on their website as well as support and patches even after all this time. The Cavedog company is certainly a good one. There are two available expansions for the game and its worthwhile getting these as a pack included with the main game if you can.
Graphics
You would think a game from 1997 has bad graphics by now. But as a matter of fact this isnt so. In fact the graphics of Total Annihilation were groundbreaking and even ahead of its time when the game was released and even today could be considered very good.
The structures and units are all 3D models but do not need a 3D card to be done. This in itself is nothing too exciting but it allowed the Total Annihilation developers to make those units and structures much more realistic. The little robot movement looks real and the tanks etc will lift when moving up a hill. Fixed and tank turrets will turn toward their target and the explosions near your units will move them. The guns will recoil and the exploding units can have pieces of them fly off rather than just little red flash, boom. The windmills turn to face the wind and the solar cells will close when hit for self-protection. There isnt a single strategy (possibly any game) that has such kinetic detail. The units are not perfect though as they are just a little too small occasionally making discerning their differences a bit difficult.
The fighters and bombers will also fly realistically. Most have to fly past as they attack and cant conveniently hover. They bank and sweep very convincingly too.
The maps are beautifully rendered 2D, which have been faithfully drawn though the sea part is added over the top for more realism. The maps are well designed.
The introductory video is very good but there are no cut scenes. There is also no night-day transition.
One final word is that the resolution for this game can be varied from a close but small 640x480 to a huge 1280x1200 or more. The higher settings do require a fair amount of computer power though.
Sound
The music is also very good and is up there with the better new releases.
The sound effects in this are excellent with appropriate booms and explosions that are distance dependent. The only thing that grated on my ears was the robots starting to move. It was vaguely like the fingernail chalkboard thing.
The speech acting was good.
Gameplay
Another of those games with great eye-candy and no real gameplay huh? Wrong! The gameplay inherent in Total Annihilation still beats a lot of the strategy competition. Its one of those up to 4 oclock in the morning wondering what sort of excuse to give to your boss games.
The interface is very good and once you learn the shortcut keys it is even better. You can change unit orders like halt and patrol and change their hostility stance. You can select all air units for example, in order to carry out an air raid. Patrolling builders will automatically aid construction of any structures they meet on the way. You can queue production of units and even structures in separate locations.
The maps are 2D but have an excellent height level system, which has been copied by many strategy games since 1997. From this, the game gives you line of sight, proper fog-of-war as well as the ability to use terrain strategically (for more range or for hiding behind).
There are over 150 units in this game and plenty of structures. There are land, sea and air units. All the units are diverse and can be useful depending on the tactics you like to employ. As an example, the sea units include battleships, submarines, aircraft carriers etc.
Building structures is done with specific units and they basically cost resources and are slowly sprayed into existence using a nanite concept. There are plenty of very useful structures provided in two distinct levels. You need to build a specialised constructor using the existing technology to build the second, more powerful structure types. This is what passes as research in the game so be warned this is not the games strength. There are lots of defence structures and some are so long ranged you could use them as offensive weapons if you wished.
There are only two resources in the game, which are metal and energy. You can provide energy by solar cells, wind generators, tidal generators or similar things but metal is comparatively rare being produced by mines at specific locations.
This game is exceptionally well balanced. Each Core and Arm unit is different but there are a lot of similarities between some of them. However, most units have a specific strength and weakness and the balance between this on both sides is excellent. The classic weak-minded tank rush tactic is terribly risky in this game.
The balance between the air, land and sea units is also very good and each type could conceivably beat the other. This means that naval and amphibious assault can be useful, as can air raids.
Best balance though, is between the cautious, expansionistic defensive strategy and the riskier but more devastating assault strategy. If you use your skill you can win either way.
Pathfinding is very good unless the map is huge and there are chasm obstructions. In that case youre better off moving land units to a pass first.
The computer AI difficulty has three settings and the difficulty varies acceptably with each. The AI is quite clever in the campaign mode but is decidedly weaker in the single player maps. It will feint and will also retreat rather than have the whole lot slaughtered a la most strategy games. It tries to find a weak spot in your defences and prioritises defence of and taking over metal rich areas.
There are many nice minor additions to the game. There are amphibious tanks that can go underwater for a sneak attacks. The trees will burn in some cases with the fire spreading and damaging units and structures much like Populus 2 or Black and White. One of the better additions is that sometimes structures and units destroyed will not just explode but will rather break down turning into grey masses reminiscent of their former selves. These masses are very valuable if recycled for their metal. One well-designed map even makes these broken shells the main source of metal in that map.
There are a few gripes though. Your weapons will not automatically target non-hostile enemy structures so you have to do that manually. Weapons will also only shoot hostile units in visible range automatically but not those in radar range even if the weapon has the capability to hit it. To do that you have to force it manually.
There is no map or new unit editor.
Multiplayer
I did not the multiplayer aspect of this game much but it is quite good.
Comparisons
Its a little like Red Alert 2 but better.
