Dark Reign: The Future of War

Moby ID: 1535
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Description official descriptions

Dark Reign narrowly beat Total Annihilation as the first RTS to incorporate 3D movement and positioning. This increases the strategic advantage of hills and mountains.

Each mission puts you in the role of the commander of either the Imperial army or the Freedom fighters in a campaign to undermine and eventually destroy the opposing force.

This game has many unusual features for the RTS genre. AI patterns allow you to simply give a unit the order "Search and Destroy" and it will drive off towards the enemy's last known location, in search for something to kill. There is also an "explore" mode which lets your units do all the map exploration for you. A mission/campaign editor is also provided.

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Credits (Windows version)

503 People (437 developers, 66 thanks) · View all

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 85% (based on 23 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 32 ratings with 7 reviews)

A great game technically, but lacking in gameplay.

The Good
There's much to like about Dark Reign. In first site it seems like a terrific RTS game, and while I'm not particularly fond of the genre, I can still appreciate a good game (Dune 2 and Starcraft are my favorites).

Dark Reign brought a lot of exciting features to RTS, and unprecedented control over what's happening in the game. Along with this, Dark Reign has an awefully cool name and box :-) The graphics in the game are not spectacular, but decent none-the-less and deserve some merit. The music is fairly good and so is the sound. The interface is terrific, comfortable and allows control over every aspect of the game. Something that I think should be in every game is the "move formation" option, which is completely unique to Dark Reign. There's also a lot of options for every unit regarding behaviour, and just about every other aspect of Dark Reign's interface is either perfect or almost so.

The Bad
Unfortunately, Dark Reign fails where it's most important - gameplay. Gameplay-wise the game just isn't very satisfying. The built-in missions lack interest and innovasion and are mostly just variations on standard RTS missions (the ones commonly found in the Command & Conquer series of games), which is unfortunate. The game itself, even when running scenarios and such, is plain and uninteresting, and I would go as far as to say that the whole production is unimaginitive.

A shame considering the immense potential the game engine has.

The Bottom Line
The best RTS to date technically, completely lacking in gameplay and ultimately plain boring.

Windows · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2000

The best, most difficult game I own.

The Good
Everything, including the game play, the missions, the instant action feature, the units, the buildings, the realism and the graphics. The storyline is good as well. I love stories about conflicts between different forces.

The Bad
I hate the construction kit because I can't write my own mission briefings or set the end conditions, and not being able to access the communications menu in a single player mission really pee's me off.

The Bottom Line
A definite must have. It's the best game you can get!

Windows · by Nick Johnston (3) · 2002

A terrible, terrible game

The Good
I liked nothing about this game.

No really, I mean that.

The Bad
Just about everything.

To start with the whole game is simply a me-too rip-off of all the other RTS games flooding the market back then. With a the exception of a few basic changes, this game was utterly devoid of any sort of novelty or originality. Sure, it had a few more "modes" for its various units to let them explore (or what have you), but that's it, that's all they could add to the RTS scene. Their vaunted "re-darkening" map (whatever they called it, "the shroud" or something) was already a feature of everything other than Red Alert.

The graphics stank, there's no other way to put it. The scale was off so you had all of these tiny little vehicles running around and they were so small they tended to be difficult to grab. The color palette was something a kid might enjoy, all primaries and bright contrasts, it was enough to make you ill. Even the pictures themselves were childish, little orange dune-buggies were the main weapon of the "good guys", while the bad guys had bug-like blobs for tanks that shot purple circles - nothing at all like Red Alert or the others of the era where they might have hired a (gasp) graphic artist.

The UI was even worse. Getting the game set up and selecting missions was a series of selections from bizarre "menus" that were largely indecipherable. I don't know what they were thinking - I suppose it was supposed to be like some alien control panel, but why would I want to use that?

And once you're into the game? Well, one look at the way that your craft can't navigate from point a to b was enough for me. Once I watched one of my stupid dune buggies drive around and around a single tree while attempting to figure out how to shoot at a soldier. Eventually after circling it maybe 10 times, the soldier actually managed to plink it to death. Uggg.

Combat consisted of vehicles sitting there shinning lights on each other while making "phew phew" sounds that I could do better with my mouth. Battles were just plain boring.

Oh, but they were fast. They sold this as a feature, but what it really meant is that you had no chance of actually managing your resources in any reasonable fashion. The buggies would go FLYING across the map, then smack into a tank and be killed with flying pink-circles before you could grab the tiny bright orange icon. Urrrg.

The resource collection consisted of shipping WATER off-planet for money. That's right, WATER. Let me tell you, if water is so expensive that you can sell a tank of it for a tank (heh), there's no way anyone in the universe can afford a war. It's just stupid. Water?! Duh!

They couldn't even take the time to write a story. I watched the intro twice, and still had no real idea what the heck it was saying. The grammar was terrible, and I couldn't find a thread of a plot in there. Something about a scientist, rebels, scientist again, then you start shooting. Thanks!

The Bottom Line
Uggg. Companies have gone bankrupt for less.

Windows · by Maury Markowitz (266) · 2002

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Trivia

German version

In the German versions the death animation was removed.

Awards

  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/1998 - Best Real-Time Strategy Game in 1997

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Zhentarim7.

Additional contributors: Jony Shahar, Zeikman, Patrick Bregger.

Game added May 31, 2000. Last modified March 6, 2024.