Dark Reign: The Future of War

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.

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.

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.