Total Annihilation is the absolute embodiment of everything RTS stands for. Comparing videogames to board games Starcraft and Warcraft are akin to Chess and Checkers, while Total Annihilation would be RISK. Vast amounts of decently balanced units, huge maps with 3D terrain, and great physics that actually have an impact on strategy make for long drawn out battles of epic proportions. Nothing will get your heart pumping more than watching a Krogoth bot lumbering towards your base as your artillery rains down fire from the hills above, knowing the inevitable outcome. Maybe you'll have time to evacuate your commander and rebuild again in some remote portion of the map but then again, maybe not.
Another great aspect of TA is the simplicity. My father (now in his 50's) still plays TA and often pauses the game overnight to come back to the battle the next day. No other game has the scale and yet maintains the simplicity that allows young and old alike to feel like actual battlefield Commanders. The interface is exceptional, clean, and again simplistic (in the best sort of way). Queuing orders is amazingly simple yet powerful. Winning is not how quick you can click the mouse or keyboard, it's how imaginative you are. Actual battlefield tactics work, for example reading up on Sun Tzu might do you very well in multi-player battles.
The story is nearly non-existent, yet it manages to be adequate. TA is not about the story; it's about surviving and conquering. It's not about the latest gee-whiz graphics, it's about function and imagination.
To date no one has been able to touch TA for shear RTS goodness. Supreme Commander tried, but ultimately fell short (and many would say very short) of it's spiritual predecessor. Do yourself a favor and try TA! This is, without a doubt, one of the greatest games of all time.
When this game came out, it was the best RTS ever.
It remains in that place now.
It all starts with the interface, which is incredibly easy to pick up, yet very powerful at the same time, implementing build queues in a very simple and effective way (which is necessary to the gameplay!).
You will find that every unit has its uses, unlike every other RTS I've ever played. It's not simply a mad dash to the end of the tech tree.
Truly an epic game, with maps big enough to hide in, or launch sneak attacks, or other *strategic* manoeuvres. While most RTSs restrict themselves to: micromanage your resources, then micromanage your units (ie. tactical only) you will need to think strategically to master this game.
Then there is one of my favourite differences with this game compared to the standard RTS: Defensive structures are POWERFUL enough to actually protect your base, which opens up strategies not normally available in other RTSs.
If this game was simply updated graphically (the graphics still look decent, but by today's standards, obviously 10 years will start to show) and marketed properly, I have no doubt that within months people would have forgotten Starcraft.
This is the game RTSes should be, and they earned every one of their 57 awards, and In My (not so) Humble Opinion they should still be collecting more each year.
A great well thought out RTS game that is *still* ahead of its time, Even in the year of 2010.
** Summary **
TA is really a great RTS that has plenty to offer and especially for those that enjoy longer battles that are still held in real time. There are many nooks and crannies to discover in TA that create that nice Ah ha! feeling as you play.
Detailed version:
Pros:
True 3D units that take positional calculated damage - all in real time
Intelligent repair unit design - I cant stress this enough how vital this is in making TA great
Repair units can be assigned a patrol and they will: repair units, defenses, gather resources etc
No magic bank! - see below for info.
Infinite over time resource model - defender or playing expanding empire strategy - can achieve victory.
Rewarding combined arms - keeping a mix of units such as air & ground defense etc.
Terrain bonuses, shooting down from a hill top, from behind terrain, etc works!
Units actually will miss, plus electronic warfare is available as well.
Fantastic Unit variety, combining the right set of units for the object is rewarded
Land, Sea or Air - can have any battle from any direction
Lots of mods are available and still being developed today
Enemy units, structures, etc. can be captured or recycled and added to your resources
Adjustable game play - can toggle units, structures etc on or off with each multiplayer map.
Unique unit - commander unit - it can all begin and end with this unit : )
Uses pyramid style construction, basic units are needed to build more advanced units - tiers I - IV etc.
Cons:
Story is very dry but has some potential.
Not much unit or character personality - I mean its dry, no colorful story : )
Some people get frustrated due to so many units - not sure which ones to pick.
Did I mention it has not characters/personality and the story is dry?
Total Annihilation is in my opinion Chris Taylor & co's best work. Supreme commander is quite good but it does not seem to capture the epic feeling that TA did. Also I liked TA's missions better as again they feel massive. Even while writing this I am greatly tempted to go grab my cd's and reinstall just to enjoy it all over again.
RTS design pros and cons: Magic Bank: this is when you gather from a limited set of resources and store them away into a magic place that cant be touched except by the bank owner. Sounds great right? Well its fine for a ton of less work in designing an RTS but it turns the game into hungry hippo grab for resources vs focusing on a bit of longer term strategy. Basically burst mode short attention span of 5-30min battles at best. About every RTS uses this simplistic model with the special exception of a very few.
Total Annihilation design of infinite over time resources focuses on the importance of controlling the resource areas over time so you can continue to grow. Even more important no magic bank. In TA when you gather something, just like oil, where do you store it? It has to be protected because if you don't it can be destroyed or worse stolen!
In TA you have energy and metal storage structures. You can place them just about anywhere, squirrel them away in a map corner and hope that the enemy never finds them or maybe put them deep into your base center under all its heavy guns. Even more split the difference, keep your resource storage spread out and never one easy target. Its all up to you!
Eggs, Baskets, how many and where? : ) The summary difference in TA vs other RTS's is that you have to keep a more complex attack/defense. So the enemy knows where a good portion of your storage tanks are, will they go for them or go after your main base? What if the first attack is a diversion and the main force somewhere else?
In TA having good up to date info on the enemy is greatly rewarded so sending out that spy plane to do a quick fly over their territory can really pay off. Example, keeping patrols can tip you off of an invasion force that is building up. Depending on what you allow on/off you can get get into heavy electronic warfare, radar jammers, nuclear weapons, anti nukes etc. So again one fly over could be all that's needed for your heavy weapons to fire all the way across your map and drop the big one on them or even a nice group of task force teams ready to respond. Think of piles of tanks or bombers, battleships etc.
Another key TA feature is unit control: aggressive, defensive, passive and three levels of how far will it roam. For example, if you set aggressive and free roaming then it will chase an enemy unit to the ends of the planet and beyond. lol If you set it to aggressive and mid range it will break off the attack once it gets a decent distance out and return to its home position. This helps keep your patrolling units in pattern defense units holding the line.
I could keep going but my review is too lengthy already. I enjoy TA and hope that others will enjoy it as much as I have.
**minor spoiler alert**
One neat thing about the story - it starts at the END of the story. Huh? Yeah the war has gone on for thousands of years. You and the other commander are the last that are still standing. This story is about who wins this last epic fight that ends the entire war.
Pay attention now; you are witnessing history in the making.
Some say the RTS genre began with Dune 2. Others go back to Herzog Zwei, searching for a more basic origin. But it's really a matter of refinement, each game adding something the previous one did not have, until we end up with a paradigm that defined the PC gaming platform. And few others added as much as Total Annihilation did.
3D units and terrain with elevation, line-of-sight, and ballistic artillery. Army-size unit counts. Huge maps. All-aspect, all-terrain warfare. Long range combat. Sensor denial and stealth. Advanced unit selection and order queuing. Streaming resources. A Commander avatar on the battlefield. And the final one-two punch: a stunning Audio CD soundtrack by (then up-and-coming) Jeremy Soule, the John Williams of gaming, that put his name on the map and is still one of the best he ever did. And finally, extensive mod support, with a huge community and a massive library of units, maps, patches and conversions.
Chris Taylor, the designer, would go on to elaborate on these concepts in the definitive modern maximalist RTS, Supreme Commander - arguably a more mature expression of TA's original vision. But the stunning originality of TA is unlikely to be surpassed.
Perhaps one of the most ambitious RTS games of days gone by, TA brings a ton of units, strategies and content. Finishing ALL missions takes a LOT of time. It took me almost 115 hours! Vanilla game is good, if somewhat easy, and "Core Contingency" expansion is excellent, providing challenging content. Perhaps the weakest point of this series is "Battle Tactics" which features around 100 missions, most of which are either way too easy, or just poorly designed in general. There's maybe around 5 or 10 memorable ones in "Battle Tactics", rest feels like unimaginative copy-paste. Watch out for the one where you start with only a dozen Reaper tanks and are expected to destroy two Moho Mines. That one is actually pretty darn difficult and feels rewarding to complete.
TA didn't age that well, compared to Starcraft in particular: unit pathfinding is mostly abysmal, managing large armies is a chore, and managing big groups of warships is extremely frustrating due to their terrible turn rate and weird pathing that makes units just always turn around rather than simply move forward if possible. On the other hand, you can construct cannons that fire across whole map, which is a blast. TA introduces a lot of "cool factor" taking stuff like wind or gravity into consideration when calculating projectile paths, and the animations of units exploding and turning into (salvage-able) wreckege are pretty darn satisfying to look at, even in 2020. Finally, it comes with a timeless score made by Jeremy Soule - the game is probably worth playing just to listen to the soundtrack.
Thumbs up, worth every penny. If only there was a mod that fixes the awful pathfinding...
