Total Annihilation by Michael Eilers Total Annihilation is yet another entry into the Real-Time Strategy genre, positioned squarely between Starcraft and Command and Conquer; the rivalry and bickering between the fans of the two games on the PC side is legendary. Mac users are getting this game a bit late; in fact, almost a year and a half after the debut on the PC side. Accordingly, this game looks and feels a bit antiquated, especially the rendered cutscenes and ponderous mission briefings. Thankfully, however, classic, authentic gameplay never goes out of style Oh No, Not More Resource Farming! If you are a fan of Myth II, as I am, you probably also loathe the dreaded farm/build/upgrade process that precedes every game of StarCraft or Warcraft II; why not just get right to the action? Total Annihilation provides a nice compromise between the start-from-scratch gameplay of RTS such as Warcraft II and the jump-right-in of Myth II, by making the resources easily available and almost infinite, and unit production very fast. Only one of the resources you need to build your mechanical armies - metal - is based on a geographic location. The other resource, power, can be generated anywhere and quite cheaply, allowing you to hide your solar panels or wind generators far from the battlefield. Unlike StarCraft, who's ponderous build/upgrade/build cycle and finite resources eventually drove me away from the game, TA allows you to field a huge army in just a few minutes, if you do things in the correct order. The Commander, Nanotech, and Plot Unfortunately, Cavedog chose to burden their game with a plot; fortunately, it is short and sweet. I've got no problems with well-plotted games, but for certain genres it just isn't necessary, especially when the object is lots of explosive combat. Anyway, you play as either the Core or the Arm, two opposing powers in a battle for domination of the Galaxy and Universe. In this far-flung future, actual biological bodies have long since been discarded in favor of organic consciousness trapped in metal host bodies which require constant power and much metal resources to build; as a result, most of the planets of the galaxy have been stripped completely of resources and left totally barren. Both in the single and Multiplayer game you assume the role of a Commander, a large humanoid robot which can extract energy and metal from almost any substance (rocks, trees, wreckage of former robots) and turn it into more robots by building factories, seaports and airfields. You can choose to play as either the Core or the Arm in both single player or multiplayer; the differences between the two are largely cosmetic, as the two forces are well-balanced and many units have counterparts in the opposing forces. For instance, both sides have Scout models, and in both cases Scouts are fast, weak, and cheap to build. All building takes place through a process of "nanolathing" - billions of little nanotech factories, scarcely larger than the atoms they are built of, swarm out from the Commander and coalesce into the object being built. The effect is rather cool, as a swarm of glowing green particles fills in the empty space in an object much as Flynn was rebuilt by the laser at the end of the movie Tron - in fact, even the sound effect is similar. Gameplay After you have your resources secured and your units built, it is time to send them into battle. once again, Myth II has spoiled us; you can group your units, but there are no formations - irritating when orchestrating large-scale combats and annoying when your units just seem to wander around a large area instead of coming precisely to a halt. Because of the huge number of units available - more than ten dozen! - you have a lot of choices to make early on. Your warriors come in four types: KBots, Vehicles, Aircraft and Seacraft. Obviously, the last two are only available on some maps (those with air and water, of course) and each type has its own tradeoffs. Vehicles are fast and cheap to produce, heavily armed but slower the bigger they are. KBots are more expensive in energy and metal, but go fast on more terrains and fire more rapidly. Aircraft are extremely powerful, but fragile and expensive. And seacraft are the only way to dominate the waters - or even cross them if you don't have air power - but have their own complications and limitations. So, go fast and lightly armed and just flood your enemy with attackers? Or go with the heavy artillery and just wait for them to fall into your trap? There are so many choices it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Thankfully the system of building is flexible enough that you can switch strategies in the middle without too much of a penalty; you can just 'reabsorb' anything your Commander has created and reuse the resources to make something else, with a nice law-of-physics-defying 100% efficiency. Kaboom! Combat is both chaotic and messy; you can field dozens of units at the same time, and produce them as fast as you lose them, so the carnage is intense. Because they are mechanical units, and basically infinite, I had much less of a problem with losing units in battle than with other games such as StarCraft or Myth II; you just don't get attached to them, and they aren't given individual personalities unlike the warriors of WarCraft II or StarCraft. The true 3D terrain, which has smooth elevation transitions unlike the 'tier' approach of StarCraft, plays a large role im combat; like in Myth II, if you can get your long-range units on the high ground, they are much more effective and safer from melee combat. Taking a hill is a serious gain for your side, and using hills and cliffs as cover for your units is a critical skill. As with other RTS games, there is a certain critical juncture which decides the fate of your enemies, and it is almost always when your resources get too big for the opponent (or opponents) to destroy faster than you can build. Once you have sufficient metal and energy, and you have destroyed or possessed most of your enemies' resource generators, their defeat becomes inevitable. Tactics are important, but with a game such as this brute force almost always carries the day. Technical Details One of the critical differences between Total Annihilation and other games of the RTS genre is that fact that all of the units and structures are made up of 3D texture-mapped polygons, rather than 2D bitmaps. The result is units that are lower in detail but with fluid, elaborate animation and much variability in size and appearance. Unlike a unit in WaCraft II, which can only face eight directions, the 3D units of TA rotate through a true 360 degrees, and can even have turrets and guns that turn independently of the treads or feet. The result is much more complex combat when viewed on a small scale; melees are often decided by whose units are in a better position to fire, and who has a clearer path to cover if things get hairy. The use of 3D polygons also just looks cool, frankly; although the edges of the units can be rough at low resolutions, and no 3D hardware acceleration is supported, watching a tank swivel its turret smoothly and increase the elevation of the barrel as it sights a target is awesome. Unit deaths are also spectacular, as huge explosions hurl tumbling 3-D shrapnel across the battlefield. The terrain is pre-rendered rather than rendered on the fly, but its 3D-ness is equally cool and critical to gameplay. TA will be a great, though late, addition to the Mac RTS genre; I can foresee the StarCraft vs TA flame wars on Usenet clearly. Our only concern, from the Mac perspective, will be multiplayer support; on the PC side, TA is played through Mplayer, a PC-only game service with no plans to support Mac gamers. Hopefully Westlake Interactive will find a creative solution that won't leave us in the lurch; it is already painfully clear that TA will be Mac vs Mac only, because of the game's reliance on Mplayer and DirectPlay on the PC side.