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The sad thing is...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: January 21, 2001
Author: Amazon User

The sad thing about Ground Control is that it could have been great. The game in and of itself, though, isn't. Regardless of how beautifully the sprites are rendered, or how great the specular lighting is, the game at its core has to be what counts. Well, folks, there ain't much at the core of this game.

This is not to say the game is _all_ bad. The graphics, for example, are top notch. Take an artillery piece and force fire at the ground during a night mission. You will truly experience what graphics cards are for. The camera control is one of the easiest I've ever seen to negotiate. The sounds are good, too. The unit designs are just plain cool; works of art that someone put a lot of thought into. They look...just right: like the ships in Homeworld, they just look real. They impart a certain something into the game. These things I won't deny.

However, the game's "pro" list ends right there-if you take the outer panels of a BMW and strap them onto a Renault Dauphine, you may have an externally beautiful thing; nonetheless, the capacity to get past the driveway without stalling is somewhat more important.

Thankfully, I never had any of the stability problems others have reported with Ground Control. I never got the CTD or the lockups or any of that. Given that my computer runs only about half of the games out there, that isn't at all bad. If you have concerns about getting the game to run, discard them. It's what happens after the opening cutscene has cleared and the single player campaign has started that you realize what _exactly_ you've gotten yourself into.

The missions are one long, repetitive chain. Some of them are near impossible to beat, yes. I won't claim that this game is too easy, just that it isn't good. But, they're all the same. Kill all of the evil religious fanatics (which have been...er, tastefully portrayed as rather cruel and vicious looking, which is of potential concern to those who don't believe that religious folks are paranoid wackos) and either the mission ends at that or! You get to capture an alien artifact by: destroying it. 30 missions is really far to long for a game that could have compressed all of its actual substance into 4.

Some of the elements really aren't _so_ bad. For example, the musings of your character are fit to make you fall off your chair laughing. Listening to her as she whines at the end of EVERY SINGLE MISSION gets kinda annoying. The characters by themselves, of course, are so unlikable that I've destroyed my characters vehicle for fun. By which I mean, telling my heavy Main Battle Tanks to put holes in it. There also isn't a skirmish mode, which I personally don't like, and which _is_ a failing of the game, but not so much as to render it unplayable. The AI is stupid when it isn't impossible to beat; there isn't a middle ground. The manual talks a lot about using strategy and terrain, and high ground, and all of that. That's funny, in a way, since in Ground Control it doesn't work. If you try to use the terrain, you're setting yourself up for trouble, since the enemy doesn't and they make you realize why. Rommel or Napoleon couldn't use terrain to their advantage in this game, though they both were military geniuses. For example, in one mission I tried to shoot down at enemy troops in a valley/canyon style depression. Most of my shots missed; _they_ shot back up at me and took out two tanks before I pulled back. Oddly enough, I lost yet more tanks when I _joined_ them in the valley and we just fired at each other from a straight perspective. (Nuclear weapons are also 'fun'. The "very powerful" things that you have to be given special permission to use. Hah! A pathetic spritelike wisp floats up from the ground...And Suprise! that's it. I've wasted 6 bombs without destroying anything before. But I digress...)

The simple, un-escapable fact is that Ground Control just isn't fun. The missions are repetitive to the point of tedium and the fact that there's no in-game save feature means you have to play the whole [repetitively tedious] mission again if you fail it. Earth 2150 is a much better choice. The graphics and sound, for example, are roughly on par and the gameplay is captivating. You actually want to _finish_ the game. The missions are varied and refreshing, and you feel like you actually have control.

The fact that this game does not let you build your own units on the spot is a mixed blessing. Personally, I like being able to build units, but as my friend pointed out, its not really very realistic and tends to degenerate the game into tank rushes (Ground Control, by comparison, _doesn't_ allow unit construction and degenerates into tank rushes). The dropships you use give it a kind of neat "Starship Troopers" kind of feel. At the same time, though, I'm not entirely sure that 10-unit skirmishes really captures the FEEL of a major war where the objective truly is "Ground Control." There must be other commanders out there, waging war against the evils of...religion, but we don't see that. In fact, the entire operation seems to be based out of one ship, and to the best of my recollection the only other commander we see is Major Thomas, your Fun and Friendly crackpot who shoots at hospitals for fun and sounds like a bad John Wayne impression.

I personally would recommend against buying Ground Control. There are better ways to use that money. For example, putting it in a pile and burning it. It's certainly more fun and is liable to last longer than it takes to install, play, and then (inevitably) uninstall this game from your hard drive.

Actually that isn't quite fair. If you want a game that's pretty but has nothing to back it up, go for Ground Control. Make videos through a `TV out' port and send them to your friends. A lot of reviewers here give it a 5/5 or something close to that based on those graphics. Personally, the requisite for those stars is "how fun is it." Not graphics. So, a word of advice: don't expect to get more out of this game than good screenshots. And in all seriousness, Earth 2150 or even C&C: Red Alert is a much better buy.

Buggy game...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: February 28, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is fun if you can get it running. That's a pretty big if though. On 2 computers, I couldn't get this game to run on windows 98. On another computer, the briefings had problems. Then, there are the performance problems on some cards that run other games just like it fine. I downloaded all the patches, but no go. ... ... ... Everyone has real mode CD-ROM drivers! Download the demo, or borrow a copy before you buy this game.

Disappointed with Ground Control.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: September 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

THis game is not as good as I anticipated from the reviews. The motion is choppy, control response is poor and my computer locks up during game play. I opened it and now I have to keep it. Keep away from this one.

Unreasonable Fustration !!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 06, 2000
Author: Amazon User

After downloading the most recent video and audio drivers from my computer manufacture, updating my Bios...and downloading the 1008 patch from Sierra it still won't start. I'm not a computer geek. I don't want to reinvent an operating system or sit around for 3 hours downloading this and upgrading that just to make a da-n game, that I paid more for than a family trip to the movies, run like it should have out of the box. If Sierra fixes this game so it works, mabe I can actually review it. But for now, RETURN.

Beautiful, but horrid. Lots of thorns on this rose.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: September 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Ground Control has beautiful graphics if you can get it to run. Here's my list of complaints: *1* When I first installed it, the graphics were extremely slow... like 2 frames a second. Updating drivers fixed this but it still lags a bit on complex scenes (and this is with a GeForce 256, Dual Pentium II 400MHz, and 256 MB). *2* The 32-bit rendering video option makes gameplay MUCH better looking, but then the in-game cinematics are HORRID and choppy (unwatchable). Unfortunately, there's no way to switch render modes once you are in the game. (again... this is only a problem with some video cards apparently). Choose one: better color during gameplay, or movies at the end of some missions. Too bad you can't have both on some of the most popular video cards. *3* You cannot replay a mission of the game once you've made it through... you can only go forward to the next mission. *4* You cannot save a mission in progress to pick it up again later. You HAVE TO play each mission completely at one sitting. If you die at the very end after an hour of careful play, YOU HAVE TO PLAY THE WHOLE THING AGAIN. This is extremely frustrating and tedious, especially later in the game where missions have 3 or 4 separate parts. Even though you figured out how to win parts 1, 2, and 3, you have to do them all again just to try something different at the end. Eventually you just don't care anymore. It's absolute insanity and I think it's the final blow that makes this game a failure in spite of strong visual merits. As these reviews indicate, Ground Control flops back and forth between 5 stars and 1 star. You have to love the core gameplay, but when it's bad, IT'S REALLY REALLY BAD. I think this game could be unanimously amazing with a few patches and changes in single-player idealogy. It's trapped in the 1980's with no in-game save ability whatsoever.

Utter Pants!!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: August 04, 2000
Author: Amazon User

What can i say about this game that will bring it from the ashes. Frankly nothing, its terrible. It took me around three days just to get it working and then it still constantly crashed. When i finaly did get to play, i found the levels were boring, repetative and dull. I'm a big fan of strategy games, and out of the recent titles i have bought this has got to be the worst. If you have already ordered this then cancel and treat yourself to a good strategy game like "Shogun" or my preference "Dogs of War".

F- for Amazon service

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: February 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I waited 8 weeks for amazon to ship this title, the whole time the web site said 2-3 days - it was never in stock at all. Multiple phone calls multiple email and they still have not updated the web page. amazon gets lowest marks possible.

But good game...

Not quite ready for prime time.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 23 / 25
Date: June 08, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Like many of the other previous reviewers, I bought the game because the demo was outstanding. I'm finding in practice that the game really doesn't measure up, however.

To Ground Control's credit, this is probably the best 3D land-based RTS game to come out yet. However, it still doesn't manage to escape from a lot of the shortcomings of its fellow 3D RTS's.

The nature of 3D RTS, at least so far, seems to be that units are more 'realistically' proportional to the terrain. While that may be nice on paper, in gameplay what it translates to is that you spend hours moving your units from one place on the map to the other, because they're so small in proportion to the terrain. In fighting battles, you're obligated to zoom out to such an extent that each unit is only a blip of a few pixels on your screen--not much fun to watch or look at while directing the troops.

I don't find the elimination of resource management to be a plus for Ground Control. What that ends up meaning is that there is no reinforcement available for you to build or buy; you can't simply play and have fun if you want to try different things in a mission. You have to carefully and tediously position your units so as to incur as few losses as possible. Add to this the fact that there is NO in-game saving in Ground Control, and you find yourself playing very carefully and tediously indeed.

Topping this off, there just isn't a good story happening here to keep you interested. It's mostly told through the thoughts of the two side commanders rather than through good character and dialog. The cutscenes are hands-down the worst I've ever seen--they are videos of the game engine, it looks like, and they're so badly compressed that they look like they're being streamed over the web--blocky, blurry, and awful to watch.

On the positive side, the game does look great, especially when you zoom in close to the units fighting. It plays better on lower-end systems than other games of its type, but you'll still need a blistering machine if you want to see it in its full glory.

Be warned also that it's not entirely stable. A patch was released the day after it hit retail, but not all of the bugs are out of it. One of the worst is that it will crash on completion of a mission, and you don't get credited with the mission. I've spent more hours replaying because of this than I'd care to admit.

As a former Army officer, I think there are some cool tactical things happening in Ground Control that haven't been modeled well in other games--friendly fire, fire support, formations--but in the end, when all is said and done, I have to say that the game just isn't that much fun to play.

You're getting 90% of the experience in the demo. If it really floats your boat after seeing it, then maybe you should try it. Other than that, buyer beware.

What happend?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: July 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Ground Control could have been awesome, but it falls flat onit's face. The version I purchased ... was a complete wash out. It was full of bugs and problems that any gamer does not want to hassle with. There were consist errors in the game itself and don't even try to do multiplayer, you will end up using a few choice words at the computer. Take my advice, buy The Sims, it is far better and full of no bugs. Maxis knows how to put a game together, Sierra does not! Don't let the graphics fool you, Ground Control has too many issues and does not allow for a clean game playing experience. Oh yeah and if you are really looking to buy it be warned, you can only control one side. There is no option to be the "bad guys." Most RTS's allow this. So there it is. Two thumbs down and all that jazz. Don't bother wasting the money or time. ...

Grounded?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: October 05, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Maybe. But the graphics are excellent. Best RTS ever? No way! While it has its moments, it also has its problems. Again, graphics are terrific. Some of the units are cool, but some of the air units they have can't attack anything, so why have them! The missions are a joke for the most part. I played this game for 3 days totaling about 8 hours and beat 14 missions. A little too easy if you ask me. The screen movement is alot like Myth, it ... . Its tough to find a good line of sight and you can't get a good look at the battles going on because if move in too close, then you miss getting attacked somewhere else. Plus they have a bunch of icons all over the screen that block your view. The music is also good. The cinematics were good as was the story. I expected a little more from a Sierra product especially after Half-life. Overall, I did enjoy the game. I would have liked it more if it was a little harder. Kinda of stinks to spend that kind of money for such an easy game.

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