Dark Reign: The Future of War

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.

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!

The Good
Nothing in particular. The graphics are bland and the story is decent at best.

The Bad
Quite a bit. First, the game moves to fast. It suffers from a serious speed issue. A lot of the units are stupid. Take the Water Contaminator.... PLEASE! (heh heh) It moves really slow,(for this game anyway) and is real expensive. It's able to make the water of any pool(that's what the places where you get you're water look like) unusable. Sounds great, huh?? WRONG!!!!!!! Since it's so slow, you can't just waltz it in and contaminate your enemies water supply, you have to be able to have enough protection to eliminate any enemy units and turrets that get in your way. So, if you have enough power to destroy all enemy forces and turrets, why not just get the water for yourself??? A.I. is nearly braindead. You get a big force of strong slow units and fast weak ones and tell them all to go to your enemies base and the fast ones will get there first and get blown up. The resource gathering trucks (RGT's for short) will crowd each other, get lost and generally get in the way. The shredder is another failed unit. It shreds infantry and does it well, but it is totally useless. Why?? Because the sniper, along with the majority of other tanks wipe out infantry nearly as easily. Infantry are the most pitiful units in the game. They're just fodder for nearly every other unit. Stealth is another useless part of the game. Units like the sniper and sabatouer can transform into trees and bushes(??) so as to blend in with their surroundings. Not only does it never work with the computer, but how many times would you be fooled by a moving bush or tree?? It's insanely tough. The first couple of levels are ok, but after level 3 or 4 it becomes ridiculously hard. You'll spend days on a single mission then give up in disgust. Finally, the sound "effects" could be recorded better by you making laser noises in a microphone and the music is just plain bad. In the end, this is just another poor rts game released in the pre age of empires period.

The Bottom Line
Go play Age of Empires instead.