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An Overview of Total Annihilation

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Total Annihilation is the best real time strategy game ever made. Using real-world physics to create over 150 units, TA surpasses newer games like Command and Conquer: Generals. There are 25 campaign missions for both sides (Arm and Core), with Total Annihilation: The Core Contengency, and Total Annihilation: Battle Tactics, the expansion packs, you get over 100 more missions. When you get tired of the 150+ units and the 200 unit limit (and believe me, you will!), you can download a patch that raises the unit limit to 500 from www.tafansite.com.

The company that made TA, Cavedog Entertainment, has gone out of business. Currently Infogrames holds the copyrights. You can also download new units from www.tafansite.com/unitshop/.php. www.cavedog.com/totala/, the official TA website, offers the TA 3.1x patch which gives you new units and fixes some bugs.

THE OUTCOME OF THE GALACTIC WAR IS YOURS TO DECIDE!

Doesn't Get Old

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When Total Annihilation was released, it set the bar for real-time strategy. The brainchild of Chris Taylor (Dungeon Siege), its fully-3D game world was- and arguably remains- unsurpassed in the strategy genre, and the ambitious scope of the game remains incredible. To date, there are many elements in Total Annihilation that have never been successfully re-implemented.

The game resources are pretty simple- you've got metal and energy. Metal can be scavenged, mined, or generated with metal makers that essentially turn energy into metal. Power plants generate energy. You start with a special unit- the Commander- that can build all basic buildings and produces a small amount of resources. This unit will remain your most powerful for some time, due to the almighty D-Gun he packs around. In this way, TA beat Blizzard's Warcraft III to the 'hero' RTS concept by some 3 years.

Once you have resources, you can start building your army. Here is where TA is a really one-of-a-kind game. Your options are simply jaw-dropping in scope. Choose from scores of unit types, each with unique handling and weaponry. Fight on land, sea, or in the air or, if you don't like making units, just build from the awesome array of defenses available. Long before titles such as Shogun: Total War promised hundreds of 3-D units on the battlefield, TA already had it! You can engage in truly epic battles alone or with friends. Before starting, however, it's recommended you take a bathroom break and keep food and drink at hand. Most other RTS games are a paper-rock-scissors setup with one specific unit owning another, and being owned by something else in turn. This means victory is often decided by what you chose to build. To some extent this is true in Total Annihilation as well, but you have so many capable units to pick from (and can deploy so many) that it's pretty hard to lose as a result of a poor or unlucky choice. This also means that battles tend to be long, fast-paced, and utterly vicious. If you want to risk your builders, there's going to be metal hulks to salvage out there. Count on it.

Since it takes so long to win and the Commander makes a rush suicidal, you generally gain the upper hand by deploying some sort of terrifying superweapon. These range from fixed long-range plasma cannons like the Big Bertha to nuke silos and immense mechs like the Krogoth. Once you have one or more of these, you can quickly gain the upper hand. That is, of course, if they don't have one as well. The longest multiplayer games I have ever played were Total Annihilation. The next longest- on large C&C Tiberian Sun maps- got so boring I nearly fell asleep. Despite this, I've never had that problem with TA.

Multiplayer is the best part of TA, but there is a long campaign for each of the two sides as well. These two factions, CORE and ARM, aren't just mirror images of each other. Their units all look very different and some have no equivalent on the other side. Overall, however, the armies are amazingly well balanced.

The computer is pretty good at base building and not so good at defending, but AI overall is quite decent. If you don't rush in and blow up all the AI's power plants, it can put up quite a good fight later in the game. There's a skirmish-type mode available, as well as multiplayer. A LAN or high speed connection is recommendable for this, since it tends to bog down later in the game.

The graphics are still good, even in comparison to many new releases like C&C Generals. Literally everything is 3-D, and effects are well done- extremely so for the time this game was released. Dead units will leave burned-out junk on the battlefield that persists until someone comes to reclaim it. Projectiles streak all over the battlefield whenever a firefight breaks out, and when you fire nukes it really looks and behaves like a nuke should. When TA came out, many computers couldn't take the load in the latter stages of a long game due to the massive amount of units, structures, and debris. This gives you some idea of how revolutionary the technical aspect of the game is.

The Total Annihilation soundtrack merits some extra note. Created by well-known game composer Jeremy Soule, it is some of his best work and remains some of the best music I've heard anywhere- not just in games but in movies and assorted classical compositions. The music really sets the mood, and changes dynamically depending on whether your army is in action. Even if you despise strategy games of all sorts, I'd recommend you fork over the $10 for Total Annihilation just to get the soundtrack. It really is that good!

Simply put, Total Annihilation was and remains a revolutionary real-time strategy game. If you appreciate the genre, you should own a copy. Period.

7 years later and I just realized why I still play it...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: December 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Sad, when you think about it, that it took me that long. Anyways, there are a few things that make this game really unique. The first one is the number of units on the two sides. a bit over 60 for each side. the second one is that it is easy enough to program that there are a lot of mods on the internet for it. when i say mods, i don't mean those weak excuses that starcraft and warcraft have for mods, i mean real mods. the whole game is replaced, sparing only the engine in some. third, smaller than the other two but still important, is the diversity and usefulness of aircraft. in most other games, they exist with the sole purpose of taking out defenses so that your ground forces can destroy their base with little resistance. in Total Annihilation the aircraft can be used, unsupported, to destroy bases. Oh, i almost forgot. the base defenses are effective, unlike in command and conquer and the blizzard RTS's.
Very old, but at 5-6 bucks, a good bargain.

The Ultimate RTS Game Ever!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 28, 2001
Author: Amazon User

TA is likely the best tactical game ever, and that is not just my opinion. I first played it at a friends house, my friend got upset when I refused to stop playing TA. I own C&C, but the main problem with it is that it has a lack of depth. Admittedly, TA has a few flaws, #1 the units from each side are mainly the same (with several notable exceptions), #2 the enemy is often found easily, and #3 the AI occasionally acts stupid (building dozens of aircraft carriers and no planes). TA requires completely new tactics. For example, the Commander is an extremely powerful unit, but you must not let it die (or you lose). In early levels, you need build no units, only walk your Commander through the level and use it's Disintegration Gun. There are many other examples of it's unparalled uniqueness. A brief overview of the game: You build structures and units with metal and energy. Units with heavy firepower often require energy to fire their weapons. Energy (the more abundant resource) can be converted over to metal at a conversion rate of 1 metal = 60 energy. Units are built using a technology called "nanolathing". Construction units are used to build higher-level structures and help repair/build new units. There are three structure levels. There exist five types of production plants: Vehicle, Aircraft, Ship, Hovercraft, and K-Bot (really small mechs). I highly recommend Total Annihilation to fans of games such as Command and Conquer and Starcraft. It is highly unique, and well worth it's low price. Units and maps are available for free downloading, as is a map editor. I have the Core Contigency, and highly recommend buying the Core Contigency and Battle Tactics too. This game is awesome!

Blows me anaway, every time I play it!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Although it is obvious that this game was developed to cash in on the Command & Conquer-hype, this is one of the best titels the RTS-genre has ever produced!

The single-player missions are not all to interresting, but multiplayer and skirmisch are even more awesome than on C&C I and Red Alert. With an enorumous arsenal of units and a great selection of multiplayer and skirmisch maps this is one of the most re-playable games in history. And even more units ans maps can be downloaded for free on the Cavedog site.

I only found it a bit of a pity that both sides basically have the same units, only with other names and appearances. The game would have been even better than it already is if it would have had a more subtile balance between the two opposing sides' units.

For the rest: A great game, one of the best RTS games around, it even blows away Starcraft, and manages to give Red alert and Command & Conquer some serious competition.

Great Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 07, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I first purchased this game about 2 years ago and I still play it occasionally. The game has great graphics and has way more units than any other RTS game I've ever played. This game is better than command & conquer, Red Alert, and Starcraft. The naval and air units in C&C and Red Alert pale in comparison to the ones in TA.

I first played this on a Pentium/150 running Win95 and it played fine. Since then I have moved on to a PII/350 with Win98 and it still plays fine.

Still the best RTS game after 10 years

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination. Both sides now crippled beyond repair. The remnants of their armies continue to battle on ravaged planets. Their hatred fueled by over four thousand years of total war. This is a fight to the death. For each side, the only acceptable outcome is the complete and total annihilation of the other...

Total Annihilation, Cavedog Entertainment's groundbreaking 3-D real-time strategy game, was simultaneously launched in three languages and 14 countries on 09/27/1997, blasting more than 250,000 games into retail stores during its first month of release.

It is recognized as one of the best PC games of all time (as well as the best RTS of all time). It defined the third-generation class of real-time strategy games when it was released (NOTE: Read the history behind Total Annihilation). "Real-time" means that both the human and computer players do not take turns in sequence, but simultaneously. In effect, each player takes a turn whenever they want, without waiting for a turn. Total Annihilation is often compared to another very popular RTS game from Blizzard called Starcraft, of second-generation design. Though Starcraft has three races and an involving storyline, Total Annihilation has a more realistic physical environment in which battles are fought. But how good is its gameplay?

Well, part of what makes Total Annihilation fun to play is how its game engine handles terrain. For starters, the terrain is 3D. This means that hills and mountains can block combat units that don't have climbing abilities, so they'll have to move around or shoot over them to attack their enemy. Bryce was one of the first 3D terrain programs used in the 1990's for creating many of the game's maps. Newer programs like Carrara have been added to the growing list of programs being used now.

The units in the game are rendered (in real-time) in 3D. Vehicles tilt up and down, left and right, when travelling on a slope. Weapon turrets rotate 360 degrees to get their best aim on enemy targets.

The terrain is also deformable, meaning trees and rocks can be blown up so that units can traverse forests and rocky canyons. Forest fires can cause damage to units and buildings that are nearby. There's also the gravity and wind elements in the game engine that can cause units to travel slower and cause their weapons to miss their targets. Seas are also 3D. Submarines can be used to build secret underwater bases on the ocean floor, as long as the enemy isn't using sonar to discover it and sends in Attack Subs, Depth Charges, and Torpedo Bombers to ruin things.

Another nice thing about the game is its graphical user interface. It is very intuitive as well as informative. Commands are given to units either by mouse or by keyboard. The interface allows players to plan and strategize more instead of micromanaging everything. Factories can build units unattended by queuing up the number of each unit to be built. Factories can order the units how they'll behave against enemies and where to relocate to after they're built. The game map's overhead camera angle is fixed, pointing down at a 63.44° angle. This allows players to get a good view of a battle and give orders to their units. All units on the map (not just on the screen) can easily be selected and given orders. Holding down the SHIFT key allows players to queue up move/patrol/attack/capture/guard/repair/recycle orders given to units. There is no limit to queuing orders. However, there is a limit to the number of units players can have for their army which is 500.

Playing against human players in Total Annihilation is one of the best features in the game.

If you are at all interested in playing an RTS, just get Total Annihilation.

You won't regret getting it

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Most people will want me to start at the negative parts of the game, but that's simply impossible, I mean Starcraft doesn't even come close! My friend first introduced total annihilation to me and I didn't think much of it but I soon realized how wrong I was. The graphics aren't the best but they're still above average. The unit selection is great and the multiplayer is brilliant.

GREATEST RTS GAME OF ALL TIME!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 21, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I bought TA about...4 or 5 years ago, and yet, i still have not gotten bored of it. This game covers all of the points that an RTS game should. This game never gets boring, with 2 expansion packs and unlimited units and maps to download off the internet, you won't go wrong. To sum up, it is worth the [money], and the few extra if you like it for the expansion packs. All-in-all the best RTS game i've seen!!!

Best RTS Game Period.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is one of the best PC games I've ever played. I was a strict console gamer with no intentions of switching to PC, but when i played this game, i quickly changed my mind. I now play it regularly, and even on-line. The sound is amazing with a musical score to rival the masters, and when you select a unit, they hum to life. Graphic wise, this game is good. When it was made in 1997 this was exceeding the norm overhead 2D. Overall I give this game a 10/10. With a re-play factor that will make you keep coming back for more.

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