Posted August 17, 2010
Move aside Starcraft, and make way for Her Royal Highness Total Annihilation! Well, Starcraft had to be mentioned since they were of the same era. Jokes aside, Total Annihilation is One of the Best Games You've Never Played. It had a rubbish storyline, true, and even whatever remnants of storyline it desperately tried to clutch at and present to the crowd was a rather half-baked attempt.
But that would be it's only shortcoming, because it more than makes up for the lack of a decent storyline with unrivaled gameplay; till today, no game - not even Supreme Commander - has surpassed this masterpiece in terms of providing truly tense, epic battles. In fact, besides being one of the pioneers for pushing polygons in a top-down strategy game, it was also one of the first games where your units could move while shooting, and where every bullet was a projectile that did not always hit its target with pinpoint accuracy, unlike RTSes of yonder days.
It's been a while since I last touched the campaign, so I shall not go into that, but the music is worth mentioning. I am hard pressed to find a word that can clearly define the awesomeness of the music, but the orchestral nature of the music goes very well with the game. Late game battles can be huge, like Supreme Commander (well duh since Supcom is TA's spiritual successor), and you truly get the sense of being there to dish out the hurt. Who can forget the battles where your base gets swarmed by a massive platoon of Wombats, only to scare the pants off your enemy when your first Kroggy marches right up and obliterates all of them within seconds? Or taking the enemy's base by surprise by an onslaught of Mavericks to take out their artillery, only to realize that their aircraft has attacked your base from it's Northern flank?
These are but a few of the grand moments that you will experience in Total Annihilation. All the praise it got in the media back then was well deserved, even though it did not sell well due to poor marketing on Cavedog and Atari's part, as well as a few other strong competitors that were in the running that year. This, my friends, is the ultimate RTS. At $6, it's almost paying you to get it. Unless you really loathe RTSes - and I mean to the extremity - you will get your money's worth from this, even if you're just a casual player.
Note: there are also a lot of mods for TA, and I mean a LOT. From space-battle mods to new units, there's almost something for everyone.
But that would be it's only shortcoming, because it more than makes up for the lack of a decent storyline with unrivaled gameplay; till today, no game - not even Supreme Commander - has surpassed this masterpiece in terms of providing truly tense, epic battles. In fact, besides being one of the pioneers for pushing polygons in a top-down strategy game, it was also one of the first games where your units could move while shooting, and where every bullet was a projectile that did not always hit its target with pinpoint accuracy, unlike RTSes of yonder days.
It's been a while since I last touched the campaign, so I shall not go into that, but the music is worth mentioning. I am hard pressed to find a word that can clearly define the awesomeness of the music, but the orchestral nature of the music goes very well with the game. Late game battles can be huge, like Supreme Commander (well duh since Supcom is TA's spiritual successor), and you truly get the sense of being there to dish out the hurt. Who can forget the battles where your base gets swarmed by a massive platoon of Wombats, only to scare the pants off your enemy when your first Kroggy marches right up and obliterates all of them within seconds? Or taking the enemy's base by surprise by an onslaught of Mavericks to take out their artillery, only to realize that their aircraft has attacked your base from it's Northern flank?
These are but a few of the grand moments that you will experience in Total Annihilation. All the praise it got in the media back then was well deserved, even though it did not sell well due to poor marketing on Cavedog and Atari's part, as well as a few other strong competitors that were in the running that year. This, my friends, is the ultimate RTS. At $6, it's almost paying you to get it. Unless you really loathe RTSes - and I mean to the extremity - you will get your money's worth from this, even if you're just a casual player.
Note: there are also a lot of mods for TA, and I mean a LOT. From space-battle mods to new units, there's almost something for everyone.