Total Annihilation: Commander Pack

I remmber playing this Total Annihilation in the late 90's. It and Comand and Conquer series are the best RTS ever. If you love base building, huge armies, resource gathering, then you'll love this game. When I saw I could get it and its add-ons for a little over 5 bucks, how could I turn that down. Its a must for your RTS collection!! Still one of the best RTS's ever!!!!

TA was and will always remain THE RTS game. Preceding Start Craft it really is the game that defined modern RTS as a genre, no game before or after it did manage to be so much fun in so many ways and at so many levels. You can basically play this game 4 ways: 1 - strategically - using strategic weapon: Long range artillery, heavy bombers heavy navy etc. Building fortified areas and defending them and advancing by strategically taking map areas. 2 - tactical - Using cheaper medium range medium armor weaponry and moving after a predefined pattern through the landscape 3 - rush & ambush - Using the base fighters, light airplanes/navy etc and building up eventually continuous production of units to send to the battlefield. OR 4 - Commander - This is at times the most fun to play really... You build sufficient ore/energy producers and then you just go and wipe everything from the face of the planet. The commander is an incredibly powerful weapon - when you use it right - and you should always keep this last option open. Playing will provide through the missions a chance for each and every of the mentioned game styles making it at times hard to chose one. But the flexibility offered by the myriad of units you got at your disposal makes it an easy pick after all. The ai is also quite smart for the time this game was released (97!!) I frequently had to deal with the fact that the enemy will outflank me ... will attack my unprotected resources... will at times sneak attack - which is odd considering the fact that most of the maps have one half covered by you and the other by your opponent... Oh, did I mention your dependence on resources? Well... both you and your opponent need resources for 2 things building AND operation of buildings. This means that if you run low on energy/metal or you have been sabotaged you're pretty much doomed, the commander generates some energy but not nearly enough to power a base he can't even power his own weapon continuously so watch out! Plus the big guns need huge amounts of energy & metal (making it ridiculously hard if not impossible to maintain continuous fire). I always said that TA actually is a player playing against me which of course makes the game much more entertaining. To me TA represented in 97 what Dune2 was in 92 - a huge step forward both technologically and from a fun-factor point of view. For me the game scored a home run! And will allways be a part of my list of "THE games": 5/5. The "drawback" with the sorry is a stupid one this IS a game at the very core of it not a story, not a sim, it is a game and it's doing what it's supposed to do: BEING FUN... and a heck-a-lot of it!

Then and now, this is one of the best RTS games I've had the pleasure to play. It was overshadowed in its time by Starcraft, but to my thinking at least, had several things Starcraft couldn't touch. The game has a truly 3D environment. Hills and trees will block direct fire (though the tree may be blown away or catch fire in the process), making indirect fire weapons truly relevant and tactically useful. An excellent variety of ground units (Mech-type units called "Kbots" as well as tanks), aircraft (and bombers actually act like bombers, flying around for runs over their targets!), naval units (both on and under the water), and static defenses, already provide a tremendous variety of tactics in the base game. Core Contingency adds a great variety of them, including hovercraft that can move over land and sea. The classic nuke is included, but it's also possible to build antimissile systems that will defend a given area from nuclear missiles. Radar (allowing you to see units outside your units' viewing range as dots on the map) is included, but radar jamming units can keep radar from seeing the area under their influence. Sonar allows the detection of surface and underwater vessels. Finally, what I consider TA's crowning achievement-the Commander unit, which each player starts off with. The Commander is responsible for getting your construction started, but is no defenseless construction drone. Instead, this unit is the centerpiece of your army, and is armed accordingly-with the D-gun, capable of instantly destroying anything it touches. The Commander is also capable of building all first-level structures, armed with a standard laser for times when firing the D-gun would risk friendly fire or cost too much energy, and is capable of capturing enemy units and buildings. The Commander is also amphibious and can move (though not fight) underwater. Of course, power comes with a price. If the Commander is destroyed, not only does the player lose immediately, but the equivalent of a nuclear blast goes off from the vanquished Commander's location. Why is this such an advance? Especially in multiplayer, it prevents the "little guy rush" from being an effective tactic. The Commander can easily dispatch a good number of small units with his laser and a few larger ones with the D-gun. Challenging a Commander requires skill and a significant force. Because of the nuclear blast, it also is not advisable to D-gun an enemy Commander, as your own would have to get close enough that it would be destroyed as well. For these reasons, you do not play multiplayer games of TA that are over within the first couple minutes. To account for this, resources do not have an all-time limit. You must use energy and metal to construct units, and energy to power and repair some of them, but this is limited only by current production and reserves. A metal deposit is always a metal deposit, a solar collector is always a solar collector. Games are long and require strategy and skill, not a cheap rush. So, all my rambling aside from rediscovering an old friend, the point is: play this game. You won't be sorry you did-at least not until you look up and several hours have passed.

Loading up this old but timeless classic instantly brought back fond memories of just a little over a decade ago when it was first released. I was overjoyed to see the intro movie in all its glory just the way I remembered it, as it sets the stage for the gameplay that was to follow which is no less deserving of five out of five stars. This is one of the very few RTS games that strives to implement a plethora of laws of physics and dynamics that are absent in most other titles of the genre, and succeeds with flying colors. There is line-of-sight, advantage of terrain height, splash damage, friendly fire, unguided ordnances can miss moving targets, artillery arc-fire over small obstacles, and so on. It requires you to intelligently manage all your units, not just mass produce your favorite Kbot, vehicle, aircraft or ship and "zerg" your opponent's base because all it takes is a few strategically well-placed base defences by your opponent to wipe them all out. In the case of the Arm side, a small group of six or seven Maverick Kbots, supported by anti-air defences, can cut down an advancing army of lesser units in short order. In terms of graphics, it is considered outdated by today's standards but it is by no means sub-par. It used what was available back in the day and used it well to make the units, terrain, explosions, vegetation and wreckage look aesthetically pleasing to the eye. When a high value target like a Commander is destroyed, it sets off a thermo-nuclear explosion that destroys everything on the screen and sends bits and pieces of debris flying all around and leaves piles of mangled wreckage in its wake. While the storyline may be a bit lacking, this does not detract from the overall enjoyment of the game as the gameplay more than makes up for that. Sure, a good backstory would have given it an even deeper level of appeal and character but given a game of this calibre, such an shortcoming can be overlooked. In terms of AI, the computer opponent can put up a good fight but isn't very intelligent as it produces random units and uses them to varying results. After a while, it would stop building new units altogether and just sit there waiting to be annihilated (an intentional design choice?). Against a novice player, however, the AI will tank-rush very early on and employ high-end weaponry like the Buzzsaw (Core) or Vulcan (Arm) rapid-fire long-range fusion artillery cannons to single-handedly wipe the player off the map, forcing you to be quick and gain the upper hand before the computer opponent does. If you've never played Total Annihilation before, you are missing out on something which is, in one word, EPIC. What this game has manage to achieve is nothing short of legendary, as today's simplistic, mindless and unsatisfying RTS clones and wanna-be's leave much to be desired.

I don't know about the 'Battle Tactics' expansion, but TA itself is one of the best pre-2000 RTS games, and is still a very strong title despite its age. EVERY self-respecting RTS fan should play this. One of my all-time favourites. Despite owning the basic game, I will buy this pack whenever the opportunity presents itself.