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 106 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

The best RTS game ever made. Get it.

The Good
Of all the Real Time Strategy games ever made, Total Annihilation is not just the best; it's miles better, better by exponential degrees. Games like "Starcraft" and "Red Alert" simply don't compare.

The game's campaigns are decent, offering a wide range of battles to practice various aspects of the game, but what makes TA better than any similar game is the amazing depth and balance of the combat system and what it offers to a multiplayer environment.

With expansion packs, (and it's now sold with them), TA offers the player more than 150 unique units and buildings, each of which has a particular role to play in the game. The key to the game, and the genius, is that no one unit can succeed in a major battle on its own. Players must master all units and use them in combined arms strategies for maximum effectiveness. Unlike many RTS games, there's no one juggernaut here; even the mammoth "Krogoth" superunit is helpless if left without supporting arms.

Also unlike most RTS games, the game's different units are actually different. Rather than being just a tradeoff between expensive vs. effective, TA units have wildly varying abilities, and so must work in teams. Some units can mow down ground troops but are helpless against air units; some can lob artillery shells but can't fight in close; all units need specialized radar and jamming support. Going with one type of unit is a sure road to catastrophe.

Multiplayer TA games between evenly matched players are multi-hour festivals of destruction. The game is perfectly balanced, allowing for combat and base development in just the right amounts to keep the pace up without being overwhelming. The construction system is simple but requires planning and attention to overall strategic goals.

The game is easily the most fun and rewarding RTS game available for a PC. The preceding comment might make it sound confusing, but it is not; it's remarkably easy to play, and so the player is given a chance to experiment with a huge variety of tactics and strategies to determine which works best in what situation. Get this game, get some friends who want to play it, and you'll be playing it for years.

The Bad
TA really has no significant weaknesses.

Unfortunately, its creator, Cavedog, seems to be falling apart; they've produced nothing for almost a year (as of Jan. 2001) and so the prospect of more units and maybe even a TA 2 seem thin.



The Bottom Line
The best RTS game on the market. Fun, addicative, challenging, with virtually endless replay value. As a multiplayer game it might be teh best game of ANY type.

Windows · by Rick Jones (96) · 2001

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

[ 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.