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

Although repeated plays reveal some flaws, Dark Reign is indeed a classic RTS

The Good
Dark Reign: The Future of War is, well, simply put, a Command & Conquer clone. If you're familiar with those games then you should already know what to expect here. There are two warring factions, the Freedom Force and the Imperium (apparently there is a third one, and it seems to be a fusion between the two which is a stupid idea) and the storyline revolves around a civilization that has been destroyed and is now traveling back in time to alter the course of a war in their favor or something like that.

The most notable aspect of the game is the height difference system. To specify, Dark Reign was among the first RTS games to try to incorporate realistic terrain. Units' fields of view will be different depending on their location, for example standing on a high hill allows for a larger field of view than elsewhere, and units will move slower or faster depending on the terrain, among other things.

Most of the gameplay mechanics are similar to Command & Conquer or Starcraft, but there are some differences. In fact, I'd say the game feels like a mixture between the two. You get a sidebar which lists all units and buildings that can be bought, but unlike the Construction Yard system of C&C, you get workers to build stuff for you. These workers also disappear once they constructed the building (I assume they operate it!) but you may use them again if you sell said building. There are two types of resources, clean water (which apparently in this post-apocalyptic world has become a luxury) and some sort of green thing that is used to increase and stabilize the energy of power plants, otherwise you'd go in Low Power just like in C&C. Like in Starcraft, certain buildings can be upgraded to be able to produce different types of constructions and units.

The combat itself is fairly close to Command & Conquer, and it appears to at least partly inherit the "weakness" system, which is a good thing. To summarize, certain types of units are more effective against other types, for example rifle soldiers are not very strong against vehicles and buildings but are good against infantry, and rocket soldiers are effective against buildings and vehicles but weak against infantry. Main battle tanks are excellent against light vehicles but mediocre against infantry and decent against buildings. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Each faction has different units but the difference in strategies isn't huge. Generally, the Freedom Force have faster/cheaper units and the Imperium have expensive/slower but tougher units (rings a bell?). Some air units can travel on water, and there's flying units as well.

The campaign is a little bit different from other RTS campaigns. Instead of just having a different campaign for each faction, there is only one campaign, but each mission can be played as either side. In theory this is a good idea because it's fun to see how you can be both the attackers or the defenders in one particular mission, but in practice if you choose to play all missions using each side, you are effectively replaying the same mission. Thankfully the missions are varied enough, from the destroy-everything-that-moves-and-that-doesn't type from hostage rescue or city defense missions, as well as some pseudo-stealth missions. It's nothing we've never seen before in a game like this, but it's still well done.

In general the gameplay is very fast paced and exciting, structures and units do not really take a long time to build (especially if you've got various factories) and resource collection is very easy to do, so you'll be engaging in battle with the enemy in about two minutes since a match's start. As for the AI, to be honest, I found it to be superior to other RTS games' AI. The campaign was sometimes a real challenge and if not for the overpowered heavy turrets I'm not sure I could've won some of the missions. This does add tons of replay value as you master each mission, and I've definitely had a lot of fun with the campaign. AI in Skirmish is equally challenging (sometimes too much so) and is varied enough with its attacks. Dark Reign isn't an easy game, and I'm sure RTS veterans will approve of this.

The graphics in Dark Reign are pretty good, being colorful and varied enough, and they just have that oldschool charm to it that you just don't see anymore these days. All units are well animated, and I like how infantry units aren't as big as a tank. The sound is equally good, although a few of the sounds are a bit loud and repetitive (they could perhaps have used more than one sound for certain weapons). The music is typical atmospheric sci-fi music, not awesome but still catchy.

The game has a map editor (which I haven't tried) and a huge amount of skirmish maps and you can get even more from the internet. Naturally the game also supports online play, so you're bound to play this for quite some time.

The Bad
Dark Reign has a lot going for it but there are some problems, and I'm not sure if I should blame the developers or the technology for them.

The first problem is simple: the game tries to implement a height system for the terrain but since the game is entirely 2D it is generally hard to determine which terrain type is higher, or what actually are cliffs. Maybe I could figure it out if payed a little more attention but due to how fast paced the game is I really don't have the time to understand the terrain of each level. For this reason the height gimmick ends up being a confusing mess that mostly just gets in the way of scouting.

Certain types of terrain can only be crossed by certain units. For example, water can be traversed by hover units but not by normal infantry and tanks - that makes sense. But for example infantry is the only type of unit that can "climb" (if you can call it that) cliffs. In one campaign mission there are various enemy structures and units located in higher areas and it is very annoying to take them out using just infantry (I'm still not sure how I did it to be honest).

The other problem has to do with some of the unit design decisions. I'll say right off the bat that the heavy turrets are entirely too strong, being able to wipe out a battalion of tanks in a matter of seconds. The other problem is the way artillery was implemented: instead of a powerful-yet-slow long-range unit, the artillery is extremely weak but has twice the range of any artillery unit in other RTS games. The only way to bring down a heavy turret for example is to construct about 10 artilleries and then you might hope to bring it down. The thing is that you can shoot at them from your base even if the turret is located very far away (provided the area is being scouted), which is just dumb in my opinion. Even worse, when artilleries show up in the campaign you'll just end up being bombarded from everywhere and it's very hard to determine where the projectiles are coming from.

The Bottom Line
Overall, despite its flaws, I've had a lot of fun with Dark Reign and I can see why it's generally considered to be a classic RTS. If you can look past the annoyances you will find a fast, exciting strategy game that will remind you why you fell in love with the genre in the first place (well if you're a RTS fan that is). It might not have aged as well as other games in the genre, but you can't take the fun out of a good game. Highly recommended for RTS fans.

Windows · by CKeen The Great (160) · 2012

A game that seems cool when you first get it, but becomes boring after a while.

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.

Windows · by James Kirk (150) · 2003

[ 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.