Krush Kill 'N Destroy Xtreme

In the late 90's there was quite a wave of RTS games which were pretty clearly clones of either C&C or Warcraft 2, mostly the latter, however. Like Dark Reign or Earth 2140 KKND pretty clearly belongs to the C&C clones. The resource gathering, the base building, the unit behaviour, even live-action FMV sequences - at first KKND appears like a cheap C&C rip-off but when you take a closer look you will see that KKND not only manages to be different and original, it's a game that somehow ended up being more carefully designed than either early C&C game. KKND sacrificed gimmicky features in favor of more solid and streamlined basic RTS gameplay. Gone are transports and air units, gone are silos and power plants and instead of building support structures all over the place you upgrade existing ones. Most importantly KKND already introduced unit queues and even infinite loops, so once your income is high enough you can just focus on expansion and combat rather than having to click unit production buttons over and over. And the scale of the encounters is quite huge, big forces consisting of a variety of units clashing regularly between the bases. Admittedly the game is also pretty simple. It pretty much boils down to getting the better resource income and being able to produce more units than the enemy. Also the unit relationships, while present, are very simpe and odds are that you won't really care about them until very late into the game and cheaper units tend to quickly become obsolete and ignored. And yet, the game is surprisingly challenging and fun to play, also thanks to its crazy and largely comedic post-nuclear setting. The technical execution is also pretty great, excluding a few pathfinding issues, and it certainly looks better than the old C&C games, particularly the hand-drawn environments are gorgeous. The biggest letdown is probably that the factions barely differ gameplay-wise but that doesn't keep KKND from being one of the best truly oldschool RTS games.

Perfectly playable classic RTS. It has occasional difficulty spikes but nothing too crazy. Some units are certainly better than others, and repair buildings aren't worth making, but hey, balance is alright. The time to kill is fairly high compared to C&C. The music, graphics, and general atmosphere help make the whole game feel solid and satisfying despite its age.

Been a fan of this game since it came out. Always loved games that know how to be silly.

...it was the cheating POS bringing in units from off-screen, building towers and such where they couldn't be built according to the rules, and generally being a POS. I hate games that don't play by the rules the player has to follow.

Still good and fun to play. A classic!