Total Annihilation (Jewel Case)

List Price: $39.95 Discount Price: $3.50

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

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Doesn't Get Old [Posted on 2003-12-26]
When Total Annihilation was released, it set the bar for real-time strategy. The brainchild of Chris Taylor (Dungeon Siege), its fully-3D game world was- and arguably remains- unsurpassed in the strategy genre, and the ambitious scope of the game remains incredible. To date, there are many elements in Total Annihilation that have never been successfully re-implemented.

The game resources are pretty simple- you've got metal and energy. Metal can be scavenged, mined, or generated with metal makers that essentially turn energy into metal. Power plants generate energy. You start with a special unit- the Commander- that can build all basic buildings and produces a small amount of resources. This unit will remain your most powerful for some time, due to the almighty D-Gun he packs around. In this way, TA beat Blizzard's Warcraft III to the 'hero' RTS concept by some 3 years.

Once you have resources, you can start building your army. Here is where TA is a really one-of-a-kind game. Your options are simply jaw-dropping in scope. Choose from scores of unit types, each with unique handling and weaponry. Fight on land, sea, or in the air or, if you don't like making units, just build from the awesome array of defenses available. Long before titles such as Shogun: Total War promised hundreds of 3-D units on the battlefield, TA already had it! You can engage in truly epic battles alone or with friends. Before starting, however, it's recommended you take a bathroom break and keep food and drink at hand. Most other RTS games are a paper-rock-scissors setup with one specific unit owning another, and being owned by something else in turn. This means victory is often decided by what you chose to build. To some extent this is true in Total Annihilation as well, but you have so many capable units to pick from (and can deploy so many) that it's pretty hard to lose as a result of a poor or unlucky choice. This also means that battles tend to be long, fast-paced, and utterly vicious. If you want to risk your builders, there's going to be metal hulks to salvage out there. Count on it.

Since it takes so long to win and the Commander makes a rush suicidal, you generally gain the upper hand by deploying some sort of terrifying superweapon. These range from fixed long-range plasma cannons like the Big Bertha to nuke silos and immense mechs like the Krogoth. Once you have one or more of these, you can quickly gain the upper hand. That is, of course, if they don't have one as well. The longest multiplayer games I have ever played were Total Annihilation. The next longest- on large C&C Tiberian Sun maps- got so boring I nearly fell asleep. Despite this, I've never had that problem with TA.

Multiplayer is the best part of TA, but there is a long campaign for each of the two sides as well. These two factions, CORE and ARM, aren't just mirror images of each other. Their units all look very different and some have no equivalent on the other side. Overall, however, the armies are amazingly well balanced.

The computer is pretty good at base building and not so good at defending, but AI overall is quite decent. If you don't rush in and blow up all the AI's power plants, it can put up quite a good fight later in the game. There's a skirmish-type mode available, as well as multiplayer. A LAN or high speed connection is recommendable for this, since it tends to bog down later in the game.

The graphics are still good, even in comparison to many new releases like C&C Generals. Literally everything is 3-D, and effects are well done- extremely so for the time this game was released. Dead units will leave burned-out junk on the battlefield that persists until someone comes to reclaim it. Projectiles streak all over the battlefield whenever a firefight breaks out, and when you fire nukes it really looks and behaves like a nuke should. When TA came out, many computers couldn't take the load in the latter stages of a long game due to the massive amount of units, structures, and debris. This gives you some idea of how revolutionary the technical aspect of the game is.

The Total Annihilation soundtrack merits some extra note. Created by well-known game composer Jeremy Soule, it is some of his best work and remains some of the best music I've heard anywhere- not just in games but in movies and assorted classical compositions. The music really sets the mood, and changes dynamically depending on whether your army is in action. Even if you despise strategy games of all sorts, I'd recommend you fork over the $10 for Total Annihilation just to get the soundtrack. It really is that good!

Simply put, Total Annihilation was and remains a revolutionary real-time strategy game. If you appreciate the genre, you should own a copy. Period.

The best RTS Game Ever! [Posted on 2004-04-10]
I bought this game when it first came out in 1997 and it took me a few weeks to read up on it in the internet so I could decide what my next RTS game would be. I went to the old Fry's Electronics store in Santa Clara, CA. near my work and spent the hour looking at the Total Annihilation box trying to decide if this is the one. Finally I bought it and took it home.

I was so impressed with the gameplay and the graphics of TA. The 3D terrain, the animated units, the intense battles and it was this game where I became active in playing online in the internet. I remember MPlayer, I use to play TA Multiplayer there. The most memorable game I had was a six hour slugfest in the Greenhaven map with 3 other people. We made alliances. The enemy (the two other guys we were playing against) would do a coordinated attack. I couldn't help but feel tense when I saw in the radar 4 columns of blips getting nearer and nearer to our base. We survived dozens of these attacks. Then we would counter-attack. The middle of the map was so full of wreckage that it was hard to navigate our troops through it just to attack the enemy base. Then it becaume a nuclear war where we would lob nukes at each other and send hundreds of airplanes. Sometimes the nukes get through and sometimes it didn't. We all had to cut the game short after 6 straight hours of play since it was almost daybreak. The feeling was exhaustion but good exhaustion. I had fun playing online that night, be it six hours of it.

I can't forget about the background music of TA. It's one of the best. Instead of listening to midi like music in other games in its genre, you get cd audio music to go with your battles. The music changes depending on the situation of the game, be it when there's a lull between the battles, when you're attacking or being attacked, etc. The quality is very similar to the sound track in movies like Starwars, etc.

Even now, I have this game in my hard drive. It's the only game that has ever stayed so long in my PC after all these years. When I upgrade my PC, it'll be there.

Ever wanted to command an army? [Posted on 2004-08-14]
This is hands-down the best real-time strategy game ever and could even rival the brilliant turn-based Jagged Alliance 2 for best strategy game ever.

Normally i despise games with no plot. I consider them shameless money-makers for studios too busy to come up with a plausible story line. Here, however, I have no complaints. Not only was I satisfied with the opening movie's lackluster explanation of the 1000 years of total war, i endorsed it. The combatants are machines, what plausible storyline could encompass a battle on a million worlds between two robot armies. I'll take two armies completely bent on the other's destruction.

The gameplay takes computer-battle to a new level. Infantry, tanks, mobile artillery and rocket launchers, battleships and aircraft carrier, spy planes and bombers: there are literally scores of units available at your disposal for the destruction of the enemy. Looking brilliant, sounding wonderful, fighting ferociously, the game's title of Total Annihilation is well earned. I have played skirmishes that lasted for over 24 hours (the game thankfully allows you to save your skirmishes, something not done much in strategy games), and my devotion to one side kept me awake for long nights playing the campaigns too. It seems inconceivable that there could be people who didn't or don't like this game. The battlefields are also incredibly diverse, from lush forests (that can be set alight!) to metal wastelands to barren lunar landscapes.

I can't reccomend any game aside from Half-Life more highly. 10/10

BEST REAL-TIME GAME EVER!!! [Posted on 2005-01-21]
i love this games from all the units to the maps mining goodies to built ur army it has it all never gets boring must by!!!

A tidbit extra [Posted on 2005-03-14]
You can also download units and add them to the game and use them in multiplayer wich changes the stratagy used by most people 10 fold.

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