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 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

Good game engine, terrible game.

The Good
You can see why even non-RTS fans like myself were interested in Dark Reign (DR) before its release, as it had plenty of good things going for it. There is a creative mixture of units for the two sides, and yet the player certainly isn't overwhelmed either. This means DR avoids the Total Annihilation (TA) syndrome, in which you have a zillion unit types to keep up with, even though many of them are of dubious value. Graphics are clean and colorful, and the soundtrack (music and FX) is well done. The Instant Action mode is pretty darn good, and there is an extremely flexible map/scenario editor thrown in as well.

As far as innovations go, DR introduced some good new ideas to the RTS genre. An advanced waypoint system, build queues, and different AI settings for your units added much-needed strategic depth and user-friendliness. And even though DR isn't true 3D like TA, it still attempted to add realism to tactical battles by implementing a system of terrain elevation.


The Bad
And yet, even with all of this technical prowess, DR managed to be a terrible GAME. It's almost as if Auran created the game engine and then Activision had no clue what to do with it, so they just threw something together real quick and shipped DR out the door with fingers crossed. Granted, that seemed to work for them at the time. Perhaps because they hadn't gotten a hold of TA or Age of Empires yet, reviewers generally gave this game glowing reviews that completely ignored DR's many significant shortcomings.

There are only two sides. Ok there is a third at the end, but it is nothing more than the other two combined. How's that for lame? Speaking of lame, this game has an allegedly "high-concept" time-travel sci-fi plot that is worse than the worst paperback novel or Star Trek: Voyager episode you ever had the misfortune to come across. Maybe I would have bought into it a tiny bit if they had bothered to put the story into the game with something beyond little pre-scenario text briefings. That's right--there are no C&C-style campaign videos, only a few sentences for your reading displeasure. Although there IS an extremely annoying voiceover guy doing his best bad "Full Metal Jacket" impression for the tutorial. No wait, it gets better: If you don't respond to the drill sergeant's commands immediately, he yells at you and the tutorial ends, forcing you to start over. Hilarious!

The campaigns themselves are every bit as uninspired as the plot. Yes there is an editor, but I shouldn't have to make my own game! There are basically no bodies of water in the maps, so there is no naval or amphibious warfare. Resource harvesters need constant babysitting, as they get hung up on buildings and each other with remarkable ease. Worst of all, DR is TOO DAMN FAST. The game speed defaults to a very fast pace, and the firing rate for weapons is so rapid that even cranking down the game speed won't fix the pacing problem. DR is the ultimate tank rush game, and so all of those cool tactical innovations mentioned above will go unused because it's just as fruitful to simply run around as fast as possible, blowing stuff up.

The pacing sinks multiplayer, too, since the lamebrains you meet online will use the default speed setting without fail. Not that you could enjoy multiplayer even if it did work. The online community is as unpolished as it is unintelligent; DR players were, in my experience, the most vulgar and rude people I ever met. To top it off, the few people I came across who weren't complete sociopaths seemed to speak English only as a second language (not that the native speakers spoke English very well themselves).


The Bottom Line
As a bargain bin pickup, you might find DR moderately amusing for its single-player Instant Action mode, or if you like to tinker with powerful game editors. Just don't expect much.

Windows · by PCGamer77 (3158) · 2002

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

[ 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

Analytics

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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.