Total Annihilation

aka: TA, Total Annihilation: Use Your Senses
Moby ID: 904
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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

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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)

Possibly the best real time strategy game ever.

The Good
The game has an incredible diverstiy of units, enabling a wide array of different strategies. You can fight full ground, air and sea battles in the course of one game. There is no "running out of resources" here, though the dynamics of your resource gathering will change as you progress up the tech tree or use up scrap metal/organic material.

Strategic elements include real-time physics, line of sight, elevation, as well as many units which have unique capabilities that contribute to the overall strategy mix.

The soundtrack is one of the best ever, a world-class symphonic score worth listening to without the game. The ability to customize the music adds even more playability - put in anything and you can assign tracks to 'battle' or 'build' music. The game also has a vast support community on the web - download more units, more maps, and other features. The latest patch will add some hotkey controls, improve the AI and increase overall playability.

At three years old, TA is still one of the best games around.

The Bad
It could use some menus to see what units you have, where they are and their status. This information is attainable, it's just hard to get it all when you need it. The AI could still be better, but there are plenty of 3rd party AIs that will prove more than a challenge. The AI doesn't matter in multiplayer. Finally, the setting is great, and a '4000 year war that has destroyed a million worlds' is quite dramatic - however the story isn't as dynamic or as involving as Starcraft. Still...that matters little when you're fighting a massive battle with dozens of units, explosions and cannon fire eminating over the blistering score. It just doesn't get much better.

The Bottom Line
Quite possibly the single best real time strategy game ever developed.

Windows · by Travis Fickett (2) · 2000

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

It could have been so good... but no

The Good
Total Annihilation... when I first saw it, I thought it was just another C&C clone. But when I played more, I discovered that it was... well... more. The game feels good to play and there is great atmosphere of war. War with really big W. This War is played in future, and guns are now big. Really big. Graphics and sound are also very good. Units are polygon based and they look awesome. And the sound of distant explosions feels awesome. This could be the best rts-game ever.

The Bad
Unfortunately, there are millions of problems in the game. The worst is that both sides have almost identical units. There are a few differences, but changing the name and graphic doesn't make a new unit. Another problem is the resource system - the resources are virtually infinite, and if you can get enough resource input, you can, for example, put a factory creating about 100 tanks and drive them to the enemy base. Then the game balance - first it seems good. Nukes can be stopped by anti-nuke missiles, so they won't define the outcome. But then we have these cannons that can shoot from one corner of the map to another. Balanced? And the airplanes... at least they are now useful, unlike in other games, but why they must be better than land units? In a generic mission land units are for defense only - air force handles the attacking. And let's speak about defense a little more. The units can't attack what they don't see. That should be great. But radar display can be used to target and attack units unseen. So if you haven't got a few airplanes to scout out the enemy units, you'll be toast in no time. Then the difficulty level. There are missions that are way too hard. And they are not the last missions - Arm mission 8, and Core mission 6 are particularly annoying, but Arm mission 9 is then one of the easiest missions in the game. Also, most of the missions are your ordinary "destroy all opposition" missions, except a few "destroy everything but this or you'll die" missions. And "destroy all" missions tend to last long. You see, airplanes may temporarily fly out of the map - and stealth planes don't show on the radar. I, for example played a mission through in 1,5 hours. The last 30 minutes were only seeking that damn plane.

The Bottom Line
Total Annihilation had everything it needs to create awesome game, better than anything before... but it failed. It isn't a bad game, but I prefer Tiberian Sun.

Windows · by Aapo Koivuniemi (41) · 2001

[ 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

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  • MobyGames ID: 904
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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.