Ground Control Anthology

I missed this game the first time around, and I'm glad GOG has given me a chance to correct that mistake. Ground Control is a fantastic RTS that is fun, action packed and deceptively complex. In many ways it reminds me of Lucas' Arts abortion of a game Star Wars: Force Commander. However, Ground Control gets everything right. There's no mineral collection, or action points, or base management whatsoever, so if you consider RTS gameplay to be frantically climbing a tech tree as quickly as possible, you'll likely be disappointed. Instead you're dropped into the action with a small force of highly specialized soldiers. The game requires you to use the specializations of those troops, the contours of the land, and your own creativity to beat back overwhelming enemy resistance. In Ground Control, you get a selection of troops which you can customize. Do you want to go quick, mobile and hard hitting? You can do that. Do you want to go with heavy ground pounders supported by artillery? No problem. Do you want heavy air support? Add it. You're only limited to which troops you start with and the room you have on your drop ships. Each unit also has a selection of special abilities that are absolutely vital to success. Each unit is strong against specific other types of units, and weak against others, requiring you to carefully manage your forces on the ground. Each mission is varied, requiring you to simultaneously complete objectives and safeguard your own troops from harm. This forces you to be invested in your units. They aren't just little bits of cannon fodder that can be easily replaced, they are vital chess pieces in your overall strategy. It's easy to pick up and play, with a helpful tutorial, so no frustrating learning curve to overcome. If like me, you missed this great title the first time around I recommend you give it a god You'll be gleefully marching past the wreckage of your enemies in no time.

I don't which off I should start. I love this game! It's IMO one of the best non-base building RTS'es released. I still have gold edition release with mousepad. When games was realeased, presented very refreshing aproach to RTS genre. Developed by Massive Entertainment, which by the way produced second of my favourite strategies, World in Conlict, game was released almost ten years ago but games is still fresh. Producing the game, Massive focused totally on element of combat in RTS genre so you don't have to gather resources or build anything. Mission must be finished with units you have got from start. Graphical side of game is awasome and even today is defending itself very good. Nice textures of terrain, very good detailed player's units. With good modelled fog and nice lense flares from sun games looks like real terrain photos. As one of the first games used Transform & Lightening found on first (and current of course:-)) GeForce cards. Units controlling in game presented also fresh approach at time games was released. Units are pre-grouped in squads which simplifies menagement. Basicly thera are 3 main types of units: aerodynes, terradynes and infantry. Each main type of units has sub-types like fighters & bombers, scout terradynes or heavy ones, combined with different types of chasis (hoover, caterpillar track). Each mission is started by brifing with 'talking heads' dialogue, presenting objectives and most important followed selecting units for the mission by you which are arriving in one or more dropships. Some player may think "I bring heaviest terradynes and the mission is mine!" Sorry, it's not. Few Aerodynes end your units end in big fire... So wise management is advised, mission succes and their easiness depends on units your choose... Mutliplayer is also are where we must congrat Massive for their job. Because you have limited number of units that are thrown to battlefield via dropships gameplay and strategyis similar to shooters. Multiplyer in game is client-server based. Teamplay also avaiable. What can I say for finish.. Again I love this game. It's absolutely marvellous. I bought it an hour ago instantly when I saw it was released on GOG and I had jaws wide open little moment :-). Can't wait to finish this review and start playing. Now I hope there is chance for Homeworld in GOG cat. too... Establishing battlefield control. Standby...

I got this game way back, now, though not when it first came out but instead when it was re-released on a Sierra Best Sellers budget title that contained both the game and it's expansion pack. First off, forget the base building and resource accumulating as this is all gone. Forget the unit training too, so no tank rushes. This is an RTS with a difference. Before each level you get a loadout. The available tanks, infanty, artillery units and air units must be allocated between three dropships. You can also modify the units you take, choosing between different types of vehicles or infantry types. Do you go for heavy damaging or more defensive units? Air attack or for scouting? Then there is when to bring down each dropship. As you progress through the map of a level you will find alternative drop points to bring units onto the battlefield, which could be strategically valuable, so not always is it worth bringing all your units onto the field at the start. Another difference now shows itself. The units are not singular. A tank unit will consist of a small number of tanks which you control as one unit. The unit is only dead when all the tanks in it are destroyed. The same applies for infantry and planes. Only the big, heavy hitters like the artillery get a single vehicle for the unit. Because you can't rebuild your army you need to take care of what you have available to you. You have your own vehicle, too, for the protagonist of the campaign you are playing. This vehicle will heal a nearby unit, so if your attack fails, retreat and regroup, recover and plan your next attack, hopefully before the enemy strikes whilst you are down. The graphics of the game were very good for the time of release but are now dated. However, graphics don't make a game. That said, though, you can zoom right up to the units to experience a sight akin to that of a first person shooter. Then having the camera follow the unit around means you can experience what they are doing. The camera control is nicely done. So, instead of long and dragged out resource hoarding to be able to build up a base of operations you can instead focus on the mission objectives which is a nice change and very different from any other RTS I've played. I don't know whether my old copy will work with Vista 64, so I might just get it from here. Especially as I never got to finish it. It has been said that the game is now available for free, but I believe that this is only for the main game and not it's expansion pack.

There are no resources, unit production, base building, or mid-mission saves in this game whatsoever. Instead you choose and customize a group of units based off the mission briefing, and then deploy them via dropship to landing zones. You can only bring enough units to fill up to three dropships, and those units themselves have limited resources (for example an infantry squad carries 3 anti-tank rockets and once they're gone, no refills until the next mission). You always have a command APC which can repair units for free, but you will automatically fail the mission if it gets destroyed. This leads to Ground Control having the exact opposite feeling of your usual RTS game: you don't start weak and eventually build up your forces, instead you start at full power and must manage limited resources and learn to play around losses. No bases means that you're on the move constantly. This game is offensive where most other RTS campaigns are defensive. Scouting and picking your battles suddenly becomes important when you can't just win every battle through attrition. Playing Ground Control almost feels like playing a tactical shooter like Raven Shield, Ghost Recon, or SWAT. I like how Ground Control is also one of the few RTS games that makes effective use of 3D space. There is a ballistics model (projectiles actually have to travel through space) and terrain can block attacks outright. You actually have to move the camera around frequently, for example you need to angle it upwards to see where artillery shells are coming from in order to dodge them. The graphics hold up pretty well for such an old game. The models are primitive but the visual clarity is great and the lighting looks cool. There is no native widescreen support but thankfully there's a fan patch for that: https://gitlab.com/fkrull/gc-resolution-changer If there's a downside to Ground Control it's that it requires a lot of patience from the player. Remember: you have to do every mission in one go.