Total Annihilation

aka: TA, Total Annihilation: Use Your Senses
Moby ID: 904
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/29 6:41 AM )

Description official descriptions

It is 4000 years in the future, and the epic battle between the Arm and the Core has devastated the galaxy. Both sides fight on with super-advanced technology, from plasma guns to giant robots to sonar jammers. The only acceptable outcome is total victory.

You, as the Commander of either Arm or Core, must build up your base to destroy the other side, in a game developing the ideas of Command & Conquer. Unlike earlier titles in the genre, it uses a 3D world in which elevation changes have an effect.

Mission objectives range from taking out specific targets to rescuing hostages to capturing the enemy base and using it in the next mission. Usually you must construct a base, although in some missions you lead an attacking force.

Unlike other strategy games, however, you start out with the Commander, the game's most powerful unit, and must defend him at all costs. Resource collection is very quick and easy, since a single unit can extract metal indefinitely from a mine without ever having to return to your base, while options for producing energy include solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power, geothermal power, and fusion power.

Spellings

  • 横扫千军 - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

96 People (88 developers, 8 thanks) · View all

Project Leader
Design
Art Lead
Assistant Producer
Game Programming
Programming
Additional Design
Musical Composition
Sound Design
A.I. Programming
Producer
Lead Mission Design
3D Units & Buildings
Movie Supervisior
Movie Team
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 90% (based on 27 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 107 ratings with 10 reviews)

Stood the test of time?

The Good
The game offers a wide variety of naval and plane units. Ground units are represented by vehicles and Kbots, Kbots represent infantry. The unfortunately legendary tank rush of red alert is not repeated in this game, one unit can't survive on a attack of its own. Mobile artillery can't shoot a close range but is essential for support. The heaviest tanks such as the penetrator, bulldog and goliath need support of they get taken out by the long range cannons (big bertha/intimidator), planes are needed to take these out, early units have to be reused to draw fire off of the bigger tanks. The units are well balanced and the music while in combat gives a adrenaline rush.

The Bad
When the game is nearly at its end and two stealth planes are flying around and they have to be killed to attain victory it can be very annoying.



The Bottom Line
Yes it has stood the test of time and I still play it today with the downloadable units and good expansion packs. Also programs which allow you to make your own maps and units and profile your own AI are present on the taus.tadesigners.com site.

GET IT.

Windows · by Peter Clark (9) · 2003

3 years old and still up to the challenge.

The Good
It's the only real-time strategy game that allows you to control 500 units individually at the same time, and it still manages to be easier to use than games like Command&Conquer.

This game has twice the number of units as all the races in Starcraft, combined. It's great to play a completely new tech tree: you can build 10 different kinds of aircraft, and the number of units only goes up from there. You also gather resources in several different ways (mining, metal-energy conversion, wind power, tidal power, even fusion power), so controlling the metal patches isn't an automatic win. Defense systems are more varied than in any other strategy game, with several different kinds of laser, missile, plasma, scout, etc. turrets. Superweapons really are super-powerful (nukes take out the whole screen, for example), but come with a super-price as well so multiplayer is only enhanced.

This is the first 3D real-time strategy game, and it still boasts a very nice physics engine, which not only allows spectacular explosions but gives another level of realism. Forest fires (which you can start) spread according to wind speed and direction, damage units in their path, and leave burnt trees behind.

TA's most hyped innovation is the Commander, an entirely new way to start playing a strategy game. You start with your Commander, the most powerful unit and fastest builder in the game, but when he dies, he takes everybody else on the screen with him. This totally eliminates the super-early rush (a Commander can take out 10 light tanks easily).

The dramatic orchestral score by Jeremy Soule adds a great touch to the game; I enjoy listening to it on my own as well.

The interface is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, even 3 years later. Just holding the Shift key down allows you to queue up an unlimited amount of orders to any unit(s) you wish. Want your units to come on a patrol route straight from the factory? No problem!

Cavedog's unparalleled customer support means they released a new unit or map, for free, every week. Want to test out some units from the expansion pack, or completely new stuff like a resurrection bot? Get them from the Web!

The Bad
The sound effects are a bit cheesy, but don't appear that often so they can easily be ignored.

The story leaves a lot to be desired (you could write the plot on a matchbox), but as the first-person genre has proved, you don't really need a story anyway.

The computer is stupid and slow, even on the highest difficulty; since the third-party AIs are very good, it would have been nice to see some effort here.

The Bottom Line
This is the best real-time strategy game ever, bar none.

The sheer number of options (over 120 units without the expansions) means that whatever cool feature came out in the latest RTS, it's likely Total Annihilation had already implemented this, and has epic battles too!

Even Starcraft fans accustomed to an intricate story and simplistic tech tree will enjoy this, especially in multiplayer when the winner is not the one who can click "light tank" the fastest, but the one who can fight with gunships, heavy tanks, and scout mechs at the same time.

Windows · by Robyrt (46) · 2001

Really cool strategy classic

The Good
In 1997, when the two big guys in real-time strategy gaming were Blizzard and Westwood, A newcomer called Cavedog forged onto the scene with their soon-to-be classic game Total Annihilation. While it isn't as good as, say, Warcraft and Age of Empires II, it is solid as hell. Any fan of the genre who doesn't own this game is seriously missing out.

While other strategy games at the time (notably Blizzard's Starcraft) were trying to "RPG-ize" themselves with detailed plots and well-developed characters, Total Annihilation went in the other direction and contains almost no story at all. In the distant future two sides (the Arm and the Core) are fighting a war over thousands of planets using robots and bio-enhanced human soldiers. The story doesn't matter, the theme does. An epic war spanning a whole galaxy gave the developers a platform to put practically anything they want into the game, and you better believe they took advantage of the opportunity.

Total Annihilation initially looks like a Command & Conquer-inspired strategy game, and in its basic design it is one. You start out with a "Commander" unit that can construct buildings, and using him you must build a base, collect resources, and construct an army. And like Command and Conquer, Total Annihilation is combat-oriented. Collecting resources is a simple matter of building mines over mineral clumps, and from there you're free to start planning a campaign. Warfare, be it with robots, aeroplanes, vehicles, ships or submarines, is where the game's real meat is.

What makes Total Annihilation so great? It is perhaps the most strategy-filled and open-ended RTS ever made. Historically this has always been a genre weak spot. Warcraft 2 was all about build orders and grunt rushes. Command and Conquer was a tank spamming fest. Age of Empires was all about who could click the mouse the fastest. But now there is Total Annihilation.

You can try to rush your enemy by spamming lots of cheap units, but your enemy can shut you down with Buzzsaws and Anti-Rush towers just as easily. You have a powerful "Commander" unit that can destroy any unit in the game with one hit, but he also constructs buildings very quickly so it may be best to keep him home rather than send him out to the front lines. Every unit in the game has a counter; the strong, powerful units usually have some fatal Achilles Heel that can be exploited. You can use hit and run tactics or dig yourself with missile towers and walls. You can invest heavily in expensive mineral-gathering techniques or try and grab every resource mine on the map. You can build a tight, small base if that is easy to protect, or a huge sprawling one so that surprise missile strikes will do less damage. You can attack by land or sea or air, or even from under the ground. And that's not even allowing for the different gameplay settings and maps possible, for instance playing on a water map is like playing an entirely different game. Your war campaign is also determined by things like gravity and wind-speed (for example, on a windy planet you won't need to worry so much about energy as you can build wind turbines).

This is where the genius of Total Annihilation shows itself, there are no good or bad tactics, the player is free to develop his own style and use them to defeat the enemy. It's not a game about formulas and build-orders. It's a game about real strategy. There are almost endless possibilities and because of this the game has more replay value than Warcraft 2 and Command & Conquer combined.

Lots of new innovations help make the game. Your soldiers gain experience in battle, and upon attaining "Veteran" status become far more powerful and accurate. Old hat these days, a novel concept back then. Dead warriors can be "sucked up" by Commanders and turned into raw energy and minerals, meaning if you desperately need a few more minerals to build a Krogoth you can sacrifice one of your own soldiers.

Total Annihilation is also remembered as the first 3D RTS game. Although not fully 3D, Total Annihilation takes the extra dimension a lot further than any strategy game before it, and not only as a graphical gimmick but as a way to dramatically change gameplay. Total Annihilation contains detailed, dynamic terrain and unit models and Newtonian physics that would have been impossible before. All objects in the game interact with the game's world as though it were fully three dimensional; hills obstruct artillery fire, height enhances units' visual and firing ranges, and buildings can be constructed on steep terrain to shield them from artillery fire. If terrain is steep and jagged, units tilt and turn to meet the face of the ground. Artillery shells are affected by gravity, which is variable on different planets in the Total Annihilation universe. Some artillery units can hit targets 15 screens away and nuclear missiles can be dropped anywhere on the map.

The game also looks great. Unit models are generated dynamically (basically, polygons are combined on the fly to create segments and joints) and as a result all units in the game look and move very realistically, and can also do other things like get blown to pieces. Watching Spiderbots crawl over the landscape with their skinny, jointed legs is decidedly creepy. Explosion effects are bright and colorful (despite only 256 colors) and resolutions of up to 1280x1024 are supported. The game's creators even embraced the nascent modding community, providing free graphics, downloadable units, and modding tools to create new weapons, units etc.

The Bad
While it broke a lot of new ground, some aspects of Total Annihilation are disappointingly derivative. The user-interface is ripped off from Command and Conquer's, and the resource gathering system is also very similar. It’s as if halfway through making a revolutionary game they got lazy and started ripping stuff off.

While multiplayer is a blast, single-player is merely decent. You can have a max of three computer players per game, which is a shame as some of Total Annihilation's best moments are epic ten-player explode fests. The AI can be described as "below average", it has no variation in strategy (it builds seemingly random units and throws them at the enemy) and will occasionally do retarded stuff like build 20 battleships in a tiny isolated puddle of water, and build missile silos but no missiles. In fairness many games of the time had crappy AI but it's nevertheless a pity.

The Bottom Line
A strategy-rich, well-designed game and a spiritual sequel to Command & Conquer, Total Annihilation is simply a great game and a strategy classic. If you have any kind of interest in the genre, get this game. Master Kane commands it!

Windows · by Maw (832) · 2007

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Total Annihilation appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Development

Total Annihilation was based on an idea for a game project leader Chris Taylor first thought of at the age of 14.

Mods

Total Annihilation has a massive base of users who customize and modify the game. Among these is a group called Swedish Yankspankers. This group developed an open source engine that plays multiplayer Total Annihilation in full 3D. They can be reached at http://springrts.com/.

Sales

Total Annihilation was a success for Cavedog:

Seattle, WA, October 30, 1997 -- Total Annihilation, Cavedog Entertainment's groundbreaking 3-D real-time strategy game, was simultaneously launched in three languages and 14 countries on September 27, blasting more than 250,000 games into retail stores during its first month of release.

Title

While in development, before the name Total Annihilation was chosen, the game was referred to as Really Cool War Game. This name was reused for an April Fool's Day joke in 1999, when Cavedog Entertainment supposedly had to rename all their trademarks, including the game's name, due to "a legal snafu with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office".

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #50 Top Game of All Time
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #80 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • PC Gamer
    • 1997 or 1998 - Greatest Game Of All Time
    • April 2000 - #17 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games Poll"
    • April 2005 - #34 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/1998 - Most Stunning Music in 1997

Information also contributed by casimps1; Jeanne; MachTen, Maw, PCGamer77, Rick Jones and Vitarcus

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
Released 1999 on Windows
Total Annihilation: Commander Pack
Released 1998 on Windows, 2013 on Macintosh
Total Annihilation: Battle Tactics
Released 1998 on Windows
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms + Expansion
Released 2011 on Windows, 2013 on Macintosh
Rubik's Cube Challenge
Released 2007 on Windows
Shogun: Total War
Released 2000 on Windows
Million Dungeon
Released 2020 on Windows, iPhone, Android
Total Mayhem
Released 1996 on Windows, Windows 3.x

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 904
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Plix.

Additional contributors: Eric Barbara, PCGamer77, Adam Baratz, Robyrt, Maw, formercontrib, CaesarZX, dome_quest, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added February 25, 2000. Last modified March 6, 2024.