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A Truely Great Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: October 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is one of those oft-overlooked jewels. Total Annihilation (TA) is quite simply one of the best games of all time. It has true 3d, compared to the fakey 3d employed by Starcraft. Terrain affects everything -- what you can see, what you can shoot, where you can go.

Cavedog made a brilliant move when they released the specs for making new units. Anyone can build their own unit, and many people have -- giving the average user hundreds, if not thousands, of new ways to alter the game. Where Blizzard and Westwood released new maps, Cavedog released new units (and a few maps, but still). You can change the game into a low-tech battle between humans, or into a battle whose largest machines of destruction require unimanginable amounts of resources. The diversity is truely amazing.

As to resources, the TA series is the only one I know of that has limitless resources. That is, you build, say, a solar collecter, and every second you get 20 energy. This is somewhat different from the typical harvesting-style of resource management, and provides an interesting economical model for those who enjoy that aspect.

TA has a great balance of land, sea, and air. All too often games focus on only one or two of those three, but TA has got that down. Depending on the map, you can have battles entirely fought in any one of those three, or some combonation thereof, or all three. This can make games very interesting.

Finally, TA has the best queueing system of any RTS game, bar none. You can set the next fifty moves for a given unit, _including_buildings_ (for builder units), and then leave it alone until it finishes. Time and again I've wished for this ability in other games. Small things like the interface make a big difference.

All in all, a truely great game.

Forget StarCraft

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: January 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I know this game is a little old, but it still is one of the most played games in my collection. With 2 expansion packs, free online gaming and new troops for free it is a hard game to beat. If you're looking for the best RPG go no further.

Spectacular

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: April 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

_This is simply the BEST RTS I have ever seen, heard of, or played. It's incredibly fun, there are quite a few ingenious units, the play is exciting and you really do need strategic skills to win, and the replay value is 100% without a doubt. I simply cannot imagine a funner game...except...
_There are a few things bad about this game. Let's start with the original version. Big problem: The enemies always know exactly where you and your units are. The radar jammers and stealth units are meaningless. Another problem is the movement engine. Units move diagonally until they're aligned with the closest line of imaginary grid...then they proceed down that line until they're right next to their destination, where they move diagonally again to finally reach it. They don't actually move in a straight line to their objective. Next, the missile silos built by the AI units just sit there. They don't build missiles and they really don't fire them. Next, the enemy places it's resource collectors in random spots quite often, which is very annoying. Plus, some units it just refuses to build, in any version of the game.
_Now for the problems with the upgraded game versions. The incredibly useful game info bar (shows how many units you've build and the maximum, and what the game speed is), just fails to appear sometimes. Some important things that USED to be reported in the in-game text dialoge just stop showing up there. And the worst one of them all...savegame files get randomly currupted. You'll try to load it, and it'll shut down the game. Oh well, sorry, all that work for nothing. If it weren't for THAT problem (and the problem that the enemy always knows where you are...but there are cheats around that), this game would get a full 5 stars. I really wanted to give it full marks, but when I can't play most of my savegames...it has to be taken down a star.

The best RTS Game Ever!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: April 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game when it first came out in 1997 and it took me a few weeks to read up on it in the internet so I could decide what my next RTS game would be. I went to the old Fry's Electronics store in Santa Clara, CA. near my work and spent the hour looking at the Total Annihilation box trying to decide if this is the one. Finally I bought it and took it home.

I was so impressed with the gameplay and the graphics of TA. The 3D terrain, the animated units, the intense battles and it was this game where I became active in playing online in the internet. I remember MPlayer, I use to play TA Multiplayer there. The most memorable game I had was a six hour slugfest in the Greenhaven map with 3 other people. We made alliances. The enemy (the two other guys we were playing against) would do a coordinated attack. I couldn't help but feel tense when I saw in the radar 4 columns of blips getting nearer and nearer to our base. We survived dozens of these attacks. Then we would counter-attack. The middle of the map was so full of wreckage that it was hard to navigate our troops through it just to attack the enemy base. Then it becaume a nuclear war where we would lob nukes at each other and send hundreds of airplanes. Sometimes the nukes get through and sometimes it didn't. We all had to cut the game short after 6 straight hours of play since it was almost daybreak. The feeling was exhaustion but good exhaustion. I had fun playing online that night, be it six hours of it.

I can't forget about the background music of TA. It's one of the best. Instead of listening to midi like music in other games in its genre, you get cd audio music to go with your battles. The music changes depending on the situation of the game, be it when there's a lull between the battles, when you're attacking or being attacked, etc. The quality is very similar to the sound track in movies like Starwars, etc.

Even now, I have this game in my hard drive. It's the only game that has ever stayed so long in my PC after all these years. When I upgrade my PC, it'll be there.

GOTTA GET THIS!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 01, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I loved this game, and still do. It comes with so many units, and then you can still download more off the net. You can battle over the internet and everything. This came is the best. You HAVE to try it!

5 stars is not enough

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 04, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is *easily* my all time favorite multiplayer realtime strategy game; it's much much better than star craft and others like it. When you add the Core Contingency expansion pack, you have tons of units to use and can come up with an unlimited number of interesting stategies. Every time I play other humans on cavedog's Boneyards, I'm suprised by something new. I will never tire of this game.

(Oh yeah, works great on my windows 98 system; nevermind that post below. None of my friends have had trouble either. But you will want more than 32 MB of memory and a processor faster than a Pentium 233 MMX (but it's survivable if that's all you have).)

The best game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 12, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Total Annihilation is the best game I have ever played. My friend let me use it over the summer break and I thought it was awesome. I would give the graphics a 10 in rating the terrain a 10 also. The sound makes you feel like you're in the middle of battle and you never run out of places to play. So far the only game that's close to it is Mechwarior2. Battle Master ,Alex

P.S. I would definately give it a 5 star rating.

one of the best games...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 28, 2000
Author: Amazon User

My friend let me borrow this game.I thought at first it would be boring but after a little bit it got exciting.It is a twin to Warcraft,now theres a game thats fun.WORTH THE MONEY!!To cool for words.If you are a hard-core gamer,or you know one this is a must-have.

MUST HAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

ok first of all this game is really really awesome... bored of the same old starcraft graphics? where the marines and zerg die the same way EVERY SINGLE TIME?? TA (total annihilation) is awesome. got it a year after it came out. started playing it when my older brother was done with it (about a month) then i joined the communty, where i am currently part of chaos realm, our little corner builds AI's, maps and units (plus ulity's too) we are but a small fragment of what TA still is. www.planetannihilation.com lists most of the unit/AI/map clans that make them. over all the graphics, awesome exploisons, new units, cool new AI's (if u download them) i give a 9-10 to everything in TA. over all get it anyway. join the excitment!

Probably the most fun RTS I've ever played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: June 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Since I first bought this game, I've gone through three computers - a PII, a PIII, and a P4. Now I'm still playing this classic on my dual-core, and its just as fun as ever.

I don't care if the graphics don't wow me, or if the score is old and familiar like the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup", or if the sound effects were designed for a SoundBlaster in 1998, the game is FUN.

This is a rare RTS that can accomodate any general's strategy. You can focus on air power, artillery, tank rushes, infantry rushes, naval bombardment, airdrops... you name it, you can do it.

C&C Generals has a "strategy center" that allows you to "hold the line" or "bombard" or "search and destroy". But Total Annihilation does it better, and without spending 2,500 credits building a "Strategy Center".

Seriously, this game is great if you just want to kill half an hour, or if you need an all-night gaming session.

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