Domination: Massive Assault

List Price: $39.99 Discount Price: $4.90

Features:

• Innovative Secret Allies political campaign
• 2 huge campaigns wrapped in absorbing storylines
• More than 20 non-linear scenarios, 8 planets for a World War mode
• Brand new Assault and Career modes
• All unit movement, firing and explosions are vividly animated using 3D graphics and sound

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

Domination dominates tehe competition [Posted on 2005-05-31]
This game is great. As a turn based strategy game, there is none better. With the ability to play against opponets around the world online, this game never becomes boring.

Excellent sequel to Massive Assault [Posted on 2005-06-02]
A great sequel to Massive Assault. New units makes the gameplay much more diverse and entertaining, graphics are very good also. Several different singleplayer modes available, including modifying world war options.
Been playing for a couple of months online now; pure fun!

The only drawback is that you have to patch it to play multiplayer, and then singleplayer will not work for some.
This is probably an issue that is resolved soon.

Massive Dissapointment.. [Posted on 2005-06-02]
I'll just come right out and say it. This is by far the least complete/most buggy game that I have ever played, bar none. I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy.

Where to start.. How about with the latest patch (released over a month ago) which is required for multiplayer but renders the single player game modes unplayable. Maybe the host of non-patch related freezing/crashing bugs, a large portion of which cause even ctrl-alt-del to not respond forcing me to hit the reset button. Then again, maybe I should lead off by talking about Starforce copy protection, how it was the cause of major system instability and forced me to reformat.

Sorry if I got carried away there but it get's even worse. There have been several posts on the Domination forums asking if these issues are ever going to be fixed and outside of one thread where a developer stated that they were unable to reproduce the problem they have completely ignored the whole issue. I've personally been waiting over a month for a response/patch but obviously I'm being naive.

The original MA still has several bugs to this very day (over a year since the last patch), some cause crashes to desktop/game freezing and some single player campaigns break half way through making them impossible to finish, I don't know why I expected any more from the sequel. On top of that I distinctly remember when the pay-to-play online service MAN (massive assault network) was introduced and people who signed up were promised a free new map every month. In over a year I don't think more then 2 or 3 new maps have been released.

To sum it all up I have literally never had a worse experience with a single game in my life. I can't help but feel slightly betrayed by a small time company that I remained loyal to despite numerous problems with previous products.

Domination Single Player - The king of strategy [Posted on 2005-06-06]
First of all, I don't know where the other users using this program had their crashes, because I never once had a problem with this game. I find this game to be highly polished in functionality and maturity. My advice is get the demo, and if the demo works just fine for you, the game will work just fine. If you're a strategy buff, this is a game you will NOT want to miss.

Now let me focus on the positive aspects of this game, as I don't think it has been fairly treated by the other reviewers. In a nutshell, the Massive Assault sieries is the pinnacle of turn based strategies in my mind, and Domination builds upon this and takes it to a whole new level.

* New Units - Part of what makes Massive Assault so good is its elegent simplicity. In accordance with this, there are only a few new units. But also a part of Massive Assault is how many uses those units have. These new units are superbly balanced with the previous units to make the game that much more fun. While original MA battles tended to boil down to border fights that last until someone runs out of money, the new units such as helicopters change the dynamics of the game so that these border fights are much more interesting and a lot faster paced. Naval battles are much more interesting as well with the new PL Leviathon and the FNU Subs and Battle platforms.

In short, the new units add a lot of strategy to the already deep strategy of Massive Assault, without adding needless complexity.

* New Environments - The new rivers and bridges, as well as new terrain types, all add interesting new strategy to the mix. While the Original Massive Assault had cool maps, these new features give even more personality to the new maps that come with Domination.

* The little details - Domination really draws you into it with all the little improvements they've made to the game. New commander units give you more of a sense of possesion, and draw you into the plot. The new camera views when you finish off that nasty Leviathon are gratifying. The replay going on when you finish a mission is nice. The graphics are astounding, from the waterfalls to the unit attacks. The new game modes all add tons of play to this game. In fact, its been stated that there are over 200 hours of play in the Single player mode, about 10 times what a lot of games give you nowadays. Thats pretty good value in itself.

In conclusion, I find Domination to be a brilliantly designed game with a strategic depth that surpasses every other game out there. Its not without its flaws (such as bad voice acting and poor dialog), but the value of this game to the strategic buff far surpasses its negative aspects.

Addictive...but not as good as the first. [Posted on 2007-05-14]
This game is very addictive and the new feature were a great improvement over the first Massive Assault, however the content and story lines got real cheap. The story line of the first game was great, but the sequel left a great deal to be desired. It does leave one with the idea that their might be a third MA...and I hope there is, but he AI on this game was very quirky and....CHEATED A LOT!

Click here for more details and discount information...