High: One of the best RTS games to date, excellent sound and graphics by the standards of the year the game was released, excellent gameplay, laid the basics of RTS gaming.
Low: Some path finding problems for units.

Total Annihilation is a piece of legend in the gaming world. Many old timers swear by this game. It is one of the oldest, most played, and most mod-able RTS game to date. Thousands of mods (short for modification) were created for this game and alot of major ones are still been updated today. The game was released in 1997 by Cavedog Entertainment, headed by Chris Taylor. (Chris Taylor is considered as one of the gaming gods who stand toe to toe with Sid Meier.) A huge fan based was developed immediately after the launch of the game. That fan base still stands today, 8 years later. Many forums and sites are still devoted to this game. As you can see, the influence created by this game is huge.

Cavedog tried to follow up to this great RTS legend by releasing Total Annihilation: Kingdoms. Sadly, the game had some major flaws and eventually brought the entire Cavedog company into extinction. A few weeks before this review was written, Chris Taylor with his new company, Gas Power Games, announced that he is developing a new follow-up to this gaming legend. The new follow-up is called Supreme Commander. The previews for Supreme Commanders extremely good and many fans have already considered it as the real follow-up for Total Annihilation they have all been waiting for. Therefore, the staffs at Eternal Gaming has decided to review Total Annihilation to prepare fans for the release of Supreme Commander. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

Total Annihilation is set in a future time era. Two factions are at war: The Core and The Arm, both of whom are made up of machines and bots. It all started as a minor conflict over the transfer of consciousness to machine. The conflict quickly expanded into a major war with the two factions battling over the entire galaxy for a period of 4000 years. Its time to completely eliminate one of the factions.You will take the control of the faction of your choice and lead your army into total victory with two campaigns, 25 missions in each one for a total of 50 missions. Skirmish mode and multiplayer support are also included for a wide range of gaming options.

You will be required to gather resources but it is not a hassle as some of the other RTS games. There are only two resources available, metal and energy. Both can gathered quite easily by building structure that can generate them. Also, items destroyed in the game world will either turn into a heap of metal or energy. Once you built the structures to provide you with sufficient resources, you will never have to worry about them again. (If you opponent don't de destroy them)

Like most other RTS games, there is a general routine in the game. You will have to collect some solid resources first before you can do anything. Once you have the structures up and running, you can start building structures needed to build your army. Once you have the structures required, you can begin to mass your troops and hopefully be able to eventually defeat your opponent.

The structures required to build your troops come in three flavors: land, sea and air. Land structures produce bots and vehicles. Sea structures produce ships and submarines. Air structures produce jets and helicopters. The most basic unit from each structure is a construction unit. The constructions units are required in order to build more structures. An advanced version of the construction unit is also available. It produces some advanced structures.

A widely of different bots are available. Some examples are anti-air bots, rocket & artillery bots, lighting bots, assault bots, and attack bots. They should make up most of your assault force. Vehicles are mostly modeled on the real world. Tanks and missile launchers made up most of the vehicle force. The same can be same of the Sea force. The water is littered with battleships, cruisers, carriers, submarines, submarine-hunters and destroyers. The air unit is a bit different. A few special air units exists that seem to be more sci-fi based. Stealth fighters with rockets flying at a dazzling speed, Heli-gunships with ultra fast firing speed and strategic bombers with lasers to defend against the random fighters are some of the more noticeable ones.

No RTS game can be complete without some defense structures to defend against your enemy's units. Light and heavy laser turrets to defend from land assault, missile launchers to defend against air units, and long range, slow firing plasma cannons to defend against sea attacks are some of the major ones. Theses defenses are cheap and fast to build for the most part. They are,however,quite fragile and can be destroyed quickly by enemy units. This balanced the game out since you can have dozens of cheap defenses to even it out with a few expensive units of your opponent's.

There is one aspect of this game many modern RTS games didn't focus on: artillery bombardment. This aspect has been the most fun and exciting experience for me so far. You can build a number of expensive but powerful artillery units in the game. They take huge amounts of resources, fires at a much slower rate, and cost quite alot of energy when fired. The destruction they caused is a sight to behold though. Most units in the game won't stand more than 1 direct hit. Very few can stands two hits. Some artillery units have such a huge range that you can build it in one side of the map and have it shelling at the opposite end. Using artillery bombardment in additional with radar technology provides a unique and deadly tactic. You can see the exact locations of enemy structures with radar and be able to to destroy them with a few clicks of your mouse. Even with anti-radar defense, your opponent can still shell you blindly and cause quite a havoc. Many online skirmishes often turned into a race of artillery power.

On top of all these is the Commander. Commander is your most powerful unit ever and it cannot be reproduced. You only get one and if you lose it, too bad. If you lose him on a single player mission, you are automatically lost. You get him for free on the start of any skirmish/mission. Commander can build structures 5x faster than other construction units. He has a special weapon called Disintegration Gun that can destroy all units with a single direct hit. The Disintegration gun is also area effect based. You can essentially destroy of a small army if they are grouped tightly. On top of this, the Commander can capture units and convert it to your own. This is very handy if you caught a rather expensive enemy unit idle in some place.

The air unit is useable is almost every map. You can assault your enemy with your air units alone or you can back it up with naval and land forces. Naval force is least used but it is critical you start out with a strong one in a water based map. Naval forces can do quite alot of damage when they start to shelling your bases. Land unit is also used on pretty much every map because most maps have least a small piece of land.

There is a limit to the numbers of units you can have. The limit is set at 200 I believe but you can change it to 5000 with a simple mod. You won't reach the 200 unit limit for the most part unless you are fighting a huge battle that rages for hours. I only reached the 200 unit limit once in one of the challenger missions.

Terrain is a quite special in Total Annihilation. It actually play quite a role here. Higher grounds means you can see more and be able to shoot enemies down more effectively. Therefore, defenses are best built on higher grounds. High hills are excellent are for this since most land units in the game can't climb. On a hilly map with lots of land units, you can set up a number of choke points between hills to block your opponent's expansion. Terrains can also work against you. Hills and walls can block out your artillery and make them quite useless. If your opponent is situated in a hilly area, you can take some heavy losses when trying to clean him/her out. Once you have a strong air force though , terrains shouldn't be a problem any longer.

Various shortcuts keys are available for quick access. I never used any because the interface alone is so simple and effective. All the commands are the basic ones like Attack, Patrol, Guard and Move. Those are all you need to play the game. You don't even need to use these commands most of the time. You can just select your units, assign them with a number and click on an enemy unit/structure to attack. Options for controlling the aggressive statement and movement are also included in a simple box above the menus. You can adjust those with a few simple clicks. You can quickly change the command menus to the game menu with a click of a button. From there you can save,load, view briefing and exit game. A mini radar map is included above all these menus to give you an overview of the big map. You can master the interface in as little as 2 minutes.

Total Annihilation is not too difficult to play. Some single player missions can be quite challenging but they are very few in existence. Once you have a base with moderate defenses, you should be able to beat the mission.The AI on single player missions with easy settings are quite stupid and predictable. Once you observed a bit, you could set up defenses and slaughter any enemy forces en route. Please keep in mind that I only completed the game in easy setting. Other settings might be different but most players will try easy setting for the first time to get a feel of the game. A really nice feature with the missions is that you can fail and still be able to continue with the campaign. Can't beat a missions? No problem, jump to the next one and try your luck. This concept is quite nice since it reduced alot of hassles and frustration. I wish more RTS games would be like that.

AI or artificial intelligence is perhaps the only problem I see in this game. It works fine in combat mode but it can be a pain in the butt when moving units to different terrains. This seems to apply to land and sea units only. Air units' path finding is working quite well. Large land and sea units seem to get stuck in tight corners quite often. The only way to get them out is by moving them manually but even that wouldn't work sometimes. You might need to destroy a few units/structures nearby in order to let them pass. Moving units to higher grounds, especially slopes, is more annoying that getting them stuck. You usually have to baby sit them all the way. Otherwise they might just sit around firing at walls while getting slaughtered by enemy units at the top. The default AI for all units allows them to roam alot when firing at enemies. This often results in a single unit or two pursing a retreating enemy non-stop. You have to make sure that you change this default AI status because enemies often retreat into their well-defended dens.

Multiplayer support is quite complete. You can play skirmishes online or join on one of the many online mods available. A number of connection methods are supported but most of them are too old for today's standards. The TA community is still there so I am pretty sure you can still find alot of online matches going on. Many options are available for multiplayer: you can change everything from type of units allowed, amount of resources for side and win conditions to map visibility and cheat options. I suspect most people today only play the mods online so the game might have changed a bit.

Graphics is a hard topic to talk about. The game is made in 1997 so the graphics are not too good by today's standards. (We are in the year 2005 if you are wondering...) The graphics are amazing by 1997's standards though. In fact, I bet many small games today still use a similar graphic engine. Everything is rendered perfect and all units and structures are detailed to the max. You can even see the small energy beams fired by some of the powerful energy weapons. The explosions are simply amazing. I had never seen so many beautiful explosions in a single game. Every unit/structure causes a explosion when destroyed. The bigger the unit, the more power the explosion. In case of the Commander, an entire block will be wiped out. The graphics are no eye candy. It is there to make sure you feel the heat of a battlefield.

I had no problems so far with the graphic engine. I am running a mid-level PC with a low-mid video card though. (By today's standards) I am not sure how it would play out on a Pentium I or II. You shouldn't be running one anyway. Its 2005 for pete's sake. No lag or slow down even with hundreds of units and structures gathered in one place. The game doesn't hog much system resource either so you should have no problem running it alongside with your other games/applications.

The sound is perfect. All units have their own sound effects. A few are repeated though. Explosions and weapons sounds fabulous. The sound effects alone will totally emerge you into the chaos occurring on your screen.

I don't know about you but I am pretty sure I can play this game for years and not get bored. 50 missions will take you some weeks to finish. After you done that, you can play skirmishes for a while. If that doesn't keep you interested. You can play the thousands of mods out there. Alot of mods adds new units, new maps, and new missions. Absolute Annihilation, for example, adds over 500 new units. You can get the mod at www.planetannihilation.com/aa .If you are still bored, try a couple of total conversions. Star Wars TA is a total conversion that transform the universe of Total Annihilation into the Star Wars. It has nearly all the Star Wars units that exists. If you are sick of the low graphics, you can try TASpring created by Swedish Yankspankers (Yes, funny name.). It transformed the old graphic engine into a high-polygon, fully 3d engine. TASpring even allows you to jump to FPS mode when you are bored with stratgic planning. TASpring is currently multiplayer only. Star Wars TA can be reached at www.planetannihilation.com/swta. TaSpring can be reached at taspring.clan-sy.com.

I hope you have enjoy this fine review produced by the staffs at Eternal Gaming. Total Annihilation is a must buy for anyone who considers himself a gamer or a RTS fan.

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Reviewed By:p3t3r Reviewed On: Sat, 06 August 2005 10:31:56 Read:

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