For some it works fine, for others, the game mysteriously encounters various problems from flickering, inverse colours and cascade failing your entire OS forcing a shut down.
I love this game, I always did, but it seems despite all of gog's hard work the game is just now too old, too tired and too riddled with random quirks and bugs to ever be reliably stable. Shame.
Visually the game is pretty good for its time, though that obviously was long ago. The biggest problem here is that all the units pretty much look the same. Even the Commander looks just like any other infantry bot.
The sound is great. There's an amazing soundtrack here that's worth listening to on its own if you like orchestral stuff. As far as sound effects, they're clear and appropriate. No complaints here.
There's a lot of good gameplay ideas here. The resource gathering is interesting. I wasn't a fan of the super-low cap on stored resources, but otherwise I liked the system. The Commander is also a good idea. Like a Command Center, worker, and big tank all in one. Having units that shoot while moving is also a nice touch. Not every RTS needs to do these things, but there's a lot to learn here.
Lastly, the UI. This is the one big reason why, despite everything, I just couldn't like TA. The most basic of basics works fine - click on stuff. Beyond that is a mess. I'd go into more detail, but this review is too long. Suffice it to say, the UI is hard to work with and tells you almost nothing.
Overall Total Annihilation is a game with some great ideas heavily marred by one of the worst UI's I've ever seen.
An error occurred while starting the X11 server: "Failed to activate core devices."
This error always comes up so me and everyone else on the internet have to deal with the fact that we just wasted $6 for nothing.
As it's just the "original" there are many expansions and total conversion mods of this Personally, Excess 131 is the best. Zero (which is a dumbed down version) has better AI path-finding but lacks everything else even with the unofficial 3902 patch.
I'm a long-time veteran of this, I know what is good.