Customer Reviews

Total Annihilation (Jewel Case)

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

You've probably heard of (or even played) other strategy games like Starcraft or Command & Conquer, and they were great fun, so why should you get this one? Because after playing Total Annihilation (TA for short), you'll never go back. (120 unique full-3D units battling among acid lakes and abandoned cities intrigue you? Read on.)

The story isn't really important here (basically, you fight as Arm or Core to rid the galaxy of the other guys in a 4000-year blood feud), but the giant robots, tanks, etc. allow for some spectacular explosions and heavy weaponry. A nuke's explosion annihilates everything on an 800x600 screen, unless your opponent has missile defenses, which are vulnerable to a strategic bomber strike, unless your opponent has flak cannons... and that's just the beginning!

TA's most important feature is its impeccable balance and rush defense. Instead of starting with a single construction unit, you have your persona, the Commander, the most powerful weapon on the battlefield. Your Commander can take down nearly anything the opponent sends at you for ten minutes by himself, meaning no early-game rushes will win you the game. And once you can defend yourself, you'll see that neither of the sides has the upper hand. There are no game-breaking units, because everything has a delicate speed/power/cost balance; during the course of a typical game you will use over two dozen unique units!

TA also stands out for its amazing realism. Warfare among the trees can start forest fires, which damage units around them and spread according to the same wind speed and direction which turns your turbines at varying speeds. Explosions produce shrapnel which arcs realistically and damages units hit by it. Every weapon has an area of effect, and shells often miss fast-moving enemy units and crash into hillsides or even your own troops! Aircraft act like real planes: bombers can take out several targets at once, but then have to swoop around for another pass, fighters do barrel rolls to avoid enemy fire, and seaplanes run along the surface until they have the speed to get airborne.

For seasoned strategy veterans, you'll be happy to know TA has over TEN DOZEN unique units. That's more units for each side than all the races in Starcraft have combined! Instead of researching new technology, just build a different factory to access a new slate of units! Your options include two levels each of vehicles, robots, aircraft and ships; free downloads on the company website give you everything from hovercraft to minelayers to resurrector units to underwater fusion plants.

The maps in TA are bigger than any of the competitions (up to 63 by 63 screen lengths), allowing for full-scale, 4-6-hour epic battles. Players routinely run into the 500 unit limit! To control all this, the interface is amazingly easy: just hold Shift to queue up unlimited orders for anything, from factories to infantry to construction units. Want your guy to repair this building, move to that area, build a radar tower, and then patrol the area? Would you believe five clicks? (Not just waypoints, but a starting target, repair order, and patrol route direct from the factory!)

In conclusion, there has never been a better time to pick up the "best game of all time" (PC Gamer magazine). For ten bucks, you can find more fresh gaming experience than you can in the forty bucks you'd pay for the latest two-dimensional Warcraft knockoff with 30 guys that all look the same. And when you're ready, you can check out the still-active fan following (over 300 players every day on the MSN Gaming Zone).

Forget spending $40 on the next new game or more when for half that you can buy the best RTS game of all time for you and a buddy.

I have played most of the top RTS games, C&C seris, starcraft, warcraft, age of empires ect. and any fan of those games will love this game. First of all no game gives you the breath of weaponry, units and structures to wage war with. The concept is sci fi but the units don't seem that out of touch with what you will find in red alert or tiberian sun. There are two different teams you can play with the ARM or the CORE. The main difference is in how the units look rather than function though there are some subtle differences. You begin the game with one powerful unit called a commander. The commander can build any regular level factory or structure and can go anywhere over any terrain and even under water! You need two resources to function energy and metal and even here you have many options. If conditions are windy build several cheap windmills, if not solar units will do. You obtain metal by building a metal maker over any patch of silver on a map. Once the commander builds some factories construction units can be made and those units(vehicles,robots,air or naval) can build advanced factories from which you can make advanced construction units. Now you have a virtual cornacopia of choices for units and structures. If you see some steam coming out of the ground a construction unit can build a geothermal energy plant over it. The advanced contrution units can make nuclear energy factories and advanced metal makers as well as nuclear missles and anti-ballistic weapons.

As for the combat units you have almost an unlimited selection from fast scout like tanks and bots to a medium and heavy vehicles not unlike what you see in red alert. There are regular and advanced missle launchers with long range but less armor and almost everything in between. Small bots that move fast are good for scouting and special ops like work and if you have the metal and energy you can build ultra devastating energy vehicles. You can win either with more smaller units or fewer large units. Want to build a kick butt air force? Then you can choose from a variety of bombers and fighters as well as transports. You can also build a full fledged navy with destroyers, crusiers, missle launching ships and the motha of all vessals the battleship. You can even create energy(if there are tides) and metal in the water as well as defensive missles. Also construction ships can build on land off the shore.

What really sets this game apart from most is the awesome selection of defensive structures that can be built. The commander can build a basic single laser that while not very durable will give you some basic land and air defense. Because they are cheap you can build many of them in a cluster. Then there are the advanced anti-air missle launchers which also provide some land support and there is a double laser. Probably the best all around structure is the plasma cannon with double barreled fire power, exellent range and heavy armor. At the most advanced level you can build powerful energy weapons and the ultimate structure big bertha! Big bertha will destroy most units with one salvo and has awesome range that can reach halfway across some smaller maps. Then there is my favorite the pop up cannon. While roughly equal in effectiveness to the plasma cannon this unit stays below ground only to pop up when enemy units are spotted, really cool.

There are other strategic considerations as well. For example in this game unlike most others a unit doesn't disappear when destroyed. It will leave at a pile of metal at the spot. It's not hard to imagine a major battle leaving huge amounts of metal scattered about. This metal can be left there to help block out the enemy and lasers and cannons built strategically among it or you can use your commander and construction units to suck up the metal. A destroyed battleship or crusier will have enough metal build several tanks. Speaking of your commander he has great strategic value as well. See you can make things faster by using more than one construction unit. Tell any construction unit to guard a factory and the factory will build units faster or guard any structure during construction and it will build faster and the commander is most effective this way. The commander has an enormous amount of energy stored inside so he can help build things the fastest and that includes things he can't build himself. For example only an advanced construction unit can build a nuke launcher but you can use any construction unit to help and once started they can finish it without the advanced unit. Also because the commander has all that energy he can deliver awesome fire power with his D-gun but don't let him die because he'll cause an explosion similar to a nuke. If he is going to go make sure it is in the other guys camp.

Over all this is a great game, the ultimate RTS war game! You can play the missions which are fun but multiplayer is where this game is at. You can play an opponent directly modem to modem or you can find opponents at cavedog.com or mplayer.com. Even though the game is now 4 years old the graphics are not bad with similar 3D mapping to what you see in tiberian sun. The only negative is that when you are well into an epic battle the game will slow down. Since you can play with up to 500 units it makes it almost impossible to play a 2v2 game online. It even slows a little in just a 1v1 game. There is a helpful patch that can be downloaded at cave dog which will increase your units and maps. For rts vets this game can be learned quickly and will be very hard to put down. One of the all time classics!

..................socks

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.

Total Annihilation, though now an older game, was one of the best Real Time Strategy games ever made. I still play this game, and recommend it to anyone that would like to see what RTS games are all about. I hear talk that TA II will be coming out sometime in the next year. I hope they can live up to this game - its going to be hard to follow.

After playing Command&Conquer, Warcraft 2, Diablo 2, this is the one game I still play every now and then. I think when it was first released it was way ahead of its time. It still looks great even when compaired to the games coming out today. Sure the AI needed some work, but that was solved later using the patches. Downloadable units from the net, I wish there were more, such as big [space]ships capable of interpanetary warfare with big guns (something better than Conquest Frontier). I enjoyed this as multiplayer game rather than the campaign game. If they decide to come up with TA2, I'm buying it.

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.

Total Annihilation is the best real time strategy game ever made. Using real-world physics to create over 150 units, TA surpasses newer games like Command and Conquer: Generals. There are 25 campaign missions for both sides (Arm and Core), with Total Annihilation: The Core Contengency, and Total Annihilation: Battle Tactics, the expansion packs, you get over 100 more missions. When you get tired of the 150+ units and the 200 unit limit (and believe me, you will!), you can download a patch that raises the unit limit to 500 from www.tafansite.com.

The company that made TA, Cavedog Entertainment, has gone out of business. Currently Infogrames holds the copyrights. You can also download new units from www.tafansite.com/unitshop/.php. www.cavedog.com/totala/, the official TA website, offers the TA 3.1x patch which gives you new units and fixes some bugs.

THE OUTCOME OF THE GALACTIC WAR IS YOURS TO DECIDE!

If you get this game, I really suggest searching on the Internet to find user supplied maps and units. Some of them are really good. I also suggest getting TA: Core Contingency and the Battle Tactics is not bad (look for the Commander Pack that has them both).

Anyway, you control either Arm or Core forces. Although the units for each are very similar, the details are different. The particular strengths of each unit is different. You control mechs (kbots), vehicles like rovers and tanks, gun emplacements like rocket towers, lasers, and a variety of huge cannons. You can also make planes, hovercraft (with the right extras), boats, and submarines. The models are all rendered in 3d and they look really cool. The basic game has maybe 150 units and with the downloaded units and the expansion packs it is over 300. There are lots of great maps to choose from -- you can have a battle in a crumbling city, mountains, between islands, at sea, in a lavascape, or many other exotic locations.

The game balance is a bit iffy. When playing multi player, we had to put limits on the types of units that could be built. Some of the long range cannons and assault aircraft were too powerful. But multiplayer is really a blast!

The computer AI is not too hot, once you become familiar with the game. In the single player missions, the pieces and scripts seem like they do a pretty good job, but in single player skirmishes, the AI really does a poor job.

My overall assement is this game ROCKS!

This is one of those oft-overlooked jewels. Total Annihilation (TA) is quite simply one of the best games of all time. It has true 3d, compared to the fakey 3d employed by Starcraft. Terrain affects everything -- what you can see, what you can shoot, where you can go.

Cavedog made a brilliant move when they released the specs for making new units. Anyone can build their own unit, and many people have -- giving the average user hundreds, if not thousands, of new ways to alter the game. Where Blizzard and Westwood released new maps, Cavedog released new units (and a few maps, but still). You can change the game into a low-tech battle between humans, or into a battle whose largest machines of destruction require unimanginable amounts of resources. The diversity is truely amazing.

As to resources, the TA series is the only one I know of that has limitless resources. That is, you build, say, a solar collecter, and every second you get 20 energy. This is somewhat different from the typical harvesting-style of resource management, and provides an interesting economical model for those who enjoy that aspect.

TA has a great balance of land, sea, and air. All too often games focus on only one or two of those three, but TA has got that down. Depending on the map, you can have battles entirely fought in any one of those three, or some combonation thereof, or all three. This can make games very interesting.

Finally, TA has the best queueing system of any RTS game, bar none. You can set the next fifty moves for a given unit, _including_buildings_ (for builder units), and then leave it alone until it finishes. Time and again I've wished for this ability in other games. Small things like the interface make a big difference.

All in all, a truely great game.

This game is one of the best PC games I've ever played. I was a strict console gamer with no intentions of switching to PC, but when i played this game, i quickly changed my mind. I now play it regularly, and even on-line. The sound is amazing with a musical score to rival the masters, and when you select a unit, they hum to life. Graphic wise, this game is good. When it was made in 1997 this was exceeding the norm overhead 2D. Overall I give this game a 10/10. With a re-play factor that will make you keep coming back for more.