Moe
31st Jan 05, 1:16 PM
Year of release: 1997
Development House: Auran
Publisher: Activision
Website: http://www.auran.com/games/darkreign/default.htm
Game score: 85
Graphics: 2
Sound: 4
Gameplay: 4
Concept: 4
Execution: 4
Controls: 2
Enjoyment: 4
Replay ability: 4
Difficulty: 3
Learning Curve: 3
Patch version: 1.4 final
Bugs: 4
Modability / Community support: ??
Review
Dark Reign - The Future of War was released at the height of the Command and Conquer RTS craze. It featured a few innovations that made the game highly enjoyable, yet not too different from your basic RTS.
The first nice thing to mention is the SP story. The player finds a probe in space, which turns out to be a time machine. It was created by a now-extinct race, and it can teleport a single person back in time to the critical battle, so that he or she may turn the tide and redeem the mistakes made by the original commander.
However, the probe can teleport only once - so to make sure the general is suited for the job, it simulates great battles of the past. If you emerge victorious from all of them, you have proven yourself worthy of travelling back in time.
The universe is rather dark and gloomy. It is populated by two "races", the evil high-tech imperium and the rebels who can turn even a tin can into a weapon.
Both races have a different feel to them, albeit this is mostly graphics - both have similar units. While the rebels use large amounts of troops, the imperium relies on fewer but tougher units.
The number of different units is staggering. There are dozens of them on each side, some with unique purposes. As an example one could name the scouts, which can camouflage themselves as trees or rocks (if you ever wanted to see trees assault your base, here's your chance). The imperium has a vehicle that can "eat" an enemy soldier and transform him into a suicide zombie.
In the Dark Reign universe, the main resource is water, it is "harvested" by a transport vehicle and brought back to an orbital uplink, which will sell it. There is also a strange green element that can be used to increase the efficiency of your power generators.
The concept is vanilla RTS - build base, collect resources, build units, kill enemy base. There are a few odd convoi and infiltration missions during the campaign which keep it interesting.
This game was the first one for me to feature real artillery - several screens range, area-effect, slow and vulnerable, useless without spotters. There were numerous other unit designs I enjoyed, from the mighty flying fortresses of the imperium which could take out a few tanks with a single shot to the rebel air defense mech which would use scrap metal from the battlefield as shrapnel for its guns.
Superweapons include some sort of Vortex generator, and a mobile earthquake generator, both with devastating damage and nice visual effects.
The game was designed to make tank rushing hard - and it is. Most tanks do splash damage, when you crowd them they will kill each other. The base-defense turrets are also quite powerful and can stand up to multiple tanks at once.
Heavy tanks can easily be picked off by air units, snipers kill your infantry, artillery can mess up your whole assault force from a safe distance - a well-balanced force is the key.
While you can still win by massing tanks, it is much harder than in Command&Conquer for example.
Having played the German version only I can't comment on the English voice acting - but the localized version was superb, which rarely happens. The rest of the sound effects were nice, the heavy weapons had the necessary audio punch to them, and the triple-barrelled heavy hover tank cannon sounded just like one would expect such a weapon to sound.
I only played the game once via LAN, which worked flawlessly, apart from that I can't say too much about the multiplayer aspect. However, you could fill slots with bots and have them play in teams with or against you, basically everything you would expect from the multiplayer mode of an RTS.
The last singleplayer mission is still the best last mission in any RTS I have ever played. During the final battle you can build units from both races. You are fighting both races at the same time, but they are also fighting each other. To aid you in this task, you are provided with massive amounts of credits. The ensuing battles are epic in their quality, wave after wave of enemy units assault your base and can only be kept at bay with twin rows of heavy turrets and massive directed artillery fire.
The AI is pretty decent, and you can set your units to pre-defined behavior patterns such as "harass" or "search and destroy" (useful for when you have to kill that last stupid builder hiding somewhere).
What annoyed me was the fact that the user interface was not very intuitive. Too many sub-menus made it difficult at times to get the units to do what you wanted from them in time.
Apart from a few minor issues, I really enjoyed this RTS. The last mission alone is reason enough to buy it, as it is surely available now for a bargain bin price. Even though the graphics are obviously not up to date anymore, playing the game is still great fun.
Good stuff: Adequate graphics, good sound, fresh unit mix, lots of small innovations.
Bad stuff: Game is outdated by now, no modern multiplayer support, user interface a little complicated.
Reviewer System Specs:
(This game runs a little fast on modern PCs, so I use my old one for it)
CPU: AMD Athlon 500 Mhz
RAM: 0.5 GB
Video Card: Matrox Millenium 400 SH 32 MB
Sound Card and Speakers: SB Live! 5.1 with 2.1 sound system
Development House: Auran
Publisher: Activision
Website: http://www.auran.com/games/darkreign/default.htm
Game score: 85
Graphics: 2
Sound: 4
Gameplay: 4
Concept: 4
Execution: 4
Controls: 2
Enjoyment: 4
Replay ability: 4
Difficulty: 3
Learning Curve: 3
Patch version: 1.4 final
Bugs: 4
Modability / Community support: ??
Review
Dark Reign - The Future of War was released at the height of the Command and Conquer RTS craze. It featured a few innovations that made the game highly enjoyable, yet not too different from your basic RTS.
The first nice thing to mention is the SP story. The player finds a probe in space, which turns out to be a time machine. It was created by a now-extinct race, and it can teleport a single person back in time to the critical battle, so that he or she may turn the tide and redeem the mistakes made by the original commander.
However, the probe can teleport only once - so to make sure the general is suited for the job, it simulates great battles of the past. If you emerge victorious from all of them, you have proven yourself worthy of travelling back in time.
The universe is rather dark and gloomy. It is populated by two "races", the evil high-tech imperium and the rebels who can turn even a tin can into a weapon.
Both races have a different feel to them, albeit this is mostly graphics - both have similar units. While the rebels use large amounts of troops, the imperium relies on fewer but tougher units.
The number of different units is staggering. There are dozens of them on each side, some with unique purposes. As an example one could name the scouts, which can camouflage themselves as trees or rocks (if you ever wanted to see trees assault your base, here's your chance). The imperium has a vehicle that can "eat" an enemy soldier and transform him into a suicide zombie.
In the Dark Reign universe, the main resource is water, it is "harvested" by a transport vehicle and brought back to an orbital uplink, which will sell it. There is also a strange green element that can be used to increase the efficiency of your power generators.
The concept is vanilla RTS - build base, collect resources, build units, kill enemy base. There are a few odd convoi and infiltration missions during the campaign which keep it interesting.
This game was the first one for me to feature real artillery - several screens range, area-effect, slow and vulnerable, useless without spotters. There were numerous other unit designs I enjoyed, from the mighty flying fortresses of the imperium which could take out a few tanks with a single shot to the rebel air defense mech which would use scrap metal from the battlefield as shrapnel for its guns.
Superweapons include some sort of Vortex generator, and a mobile earthquake generator, both with devastating damage and nice visual effects.
The game was designed to make tank rushing hard - and it is. Most tanks do splash damage, when you crowd them they will kill each other. The base-defense turrets are also quite powerful and can stand up to multiple tanks at once.
Heavy tanks can easily be picked off by air units, snipers kill your infantry, artillery can mess up your whole assault force from a safe distance - a well-balanced force is the key.
While you can still win by massing tanks, it is much harder than in Command&Conquer for example.
Having played the German version only I can't comment on the English voice acting - but the localized version was superb, which rarely happens. The rest of the sound effects were nice, the heavy weapons had the necessary audio punch to them, and the triple-barrelled heavy hover tank cannon sounded just like one would expect such a weapon to sound.
I only played the game once via LAN, which worked flawlessly, apart from that I can't say too much about the multiplayer aspect. However, you could fill slots with bots and have them play in teams with or against you, basically everything you would expect from the multiplayer mode of an RTS.
The last singleplayer mission is still the best last mission in any RTS I have ever played. During the final battle you can build units from both races. You are fighting both races at the same time, but they are also fighting each other. To aid you in this task, you are provided with massive amounts of credits. The ensuing battles are epic in their quality, wave after wave of enemy units assault your base and can only be kept at bay with twin rows of heavy turrets and massive directed artillery fire.
The AI is pretty decent, and you can set your units to pre-defined behavior patterns such as "harass" or "search and destroy" (useful for when you have to kill that last stupid builder hiding somewhere).
What annoyed me was the fact that the user interface was not very intuitive. Too many sub-menus made it difficult at times to get the units to do what you wanted from them in time.
Apart from a few minor issues, I really enjoyed this RTS. The last mission alone is reason enough to buy it, as it is surely available now for a bargain bin price. Even though the graphics are obviously not up to date anymore, playing the game is still great fun.
Good stuff: Adequate graphics, good sound, fresh unit mix, lots of small innovations.
Bad stuff: Game is outdated by now, no modern multiplayer support, user interface a little complicated.
Reviewer System Specs:
(This game runs a little fast on modern PCs, so I use my old one for it)
CPU: AMD Athlon 500 Mhz
RAM: 0.5 GB
Video Card: Matrox Millenium 400 SH 32 MB
Sound Card and Speakers: SB Live! 5.1 with 2.1 sound system