Total Annihilation

Real time strategy is a tricky genre. As Westwood Studios proved with the Command & Conquer series, when you get the balance right, you have a hit game on your hands. However for every successful RTS, there's a bargain basement full of disasters! Let's see how Cavedog Entertainment's offering does...

A series of single player levels are included in the game which slowly become more complex and utilise more units as they progress. This acts as a great tutorial for new players. However, this game is really designed to be played as a multiplayer offering. You can pit your wits against up to 9 other players or AI opponents either online or on a LAN.

Each player starts off with just one unit, the Commander and a limited amount of energy and metal resources to get you started building your base. The Commander is equipped with a number of guns, including the all-powerful D-Gun which can destroy any opponent with just one hit. However, he's slow moving and can be a vulnerable target. For emergencies he is able to cloak himself to make him invisible to your opponent, but it costs a lot of energy resource to do so. Once the Commander has built a few level one factories, construction vehicles and army units can be produced to do his fighting for him.

Total Annihilation is certainly an ambitious attempt. It has more unit types than any other real time strategy. The vast array of units really makes for varied gameplay. Every unit has its strengths and weaknesses and assembling an army in just the right proportions to thwart your enemy's legions can be quite a tactical battle. Cavedog are currently releasing one new unit every week available from their web site with expansion packs promised for the future which can only add to the longevity of the game.

Rather than opting for finite resources, Total Annihilation opts for a more flexible approach. Energy can be gained anywhere from wind turbines, steam generators, solar panels or nuclear power stations. Metal can be gained from metal ore deposits found across the maps, but unlike you'd expect the metal never runs out, meaning that you don't have to continually search for new sources of metal, and potentially allows for much longer games although you only have a limited storage capacity so there's a limit to how much you can have at only one time. Through some hitherto unknown futuristic technology, metal can also be produced from thin air using special energy-powered metal generators! Each unit or building takes a specific amount of energy and metal to produce, and as long as you've got the resources you can speed up development by adding more and more construction vehicles to each one as it is building.

The battles in Total Annihilation take place on a massive scale. It's not unusual for a single player to take upwards of one hundred units in to battle at any one time. You'll need to be a quick thinking strategist to master the battles, but that adds up to the challenge!

Total Annihilation is a fantastic real time strategy. There's plenty of depth and variation to the units and each game you play is different. It's an exciting step forward in the genre.