Flash rush!

Total Annihilation was released in the fall of 1997. It is the best Real-Time Strategy game ever made, and the most enjoyable game I have played.

Ok, hang on. Total Annihilation (TA) is not a revolutionary game. It appears to be, and in many ways is, another piggyback of Command & Conquer, of which a clone used to be released every week or so. And finally, perfectionists Blizzard released Starcraft and everyone pretty much quit, because it was the perfect game.

Wrong. Coming months prior to the ballyhooed Starcraft release, TA couldn't expect nearly the publicity accorded the celebrated producers of Diablo and Warcraft. Coming from start-up Cavedog Entertainment, TA's design team, while talented, had no reputation to build on. And what they produced is many, many times the game Starcraft is.

Please forgive the many comparisons to Blizzard's game, but I feel that many readers will have played the higher profile game, and a comparison, I feel, is the best way to show what a great game TA is. It is closer to Bungie's equally-overlooked Myth series than it is to Starcraft. While most games released at the time (including Starcraft) used the same formula for RTS games as Red Alert did, with sprites and flat terrain, TA employed pseudo-3d terrain, with gorgeous varied tilesets and polygonal 3d-generated units that moved naturally and in accordance with their environment. While the story content and production values (i.e. loads of Smacker movies) found in StarCraft are missing from TA, the design of the game itself more than makes up for it. There are literally hundreds of units, including planes, tanks, robots, boats, and hovercraft. After loyal patches, the AI is decent and bugs are invisible.

TA no longer looks amazing. One must remember that it had to run on 1997 computers. Considering it's a 256-color game, it looks pretty damn good, but the physics are what really catch your eye. This was one of the first games, along with Myth, in which terrain actually mattered. And though it's not as comparatively gorgeous as it was, it looks better than dark-and-gray Starcraft to me.

This isn't a new game; I don't need to go on and on to make it worth the $10 GT charges for it these days. It has a great orchestral soundtrack. A terrific expansion pack. Loads of fan websites, including those producing new maps and units, along with total conversions. See tauniverse.com and tamec.org for examples. To go with Gamespot's award of Best RTS of 1997, TA also picked up the site's award for Best Multiplayer and Best Music. PC Games magazine's readers picked this as "Greatest Game of All Time". While that's a little subjective, this is indeed a great game, and the best real-time strategy game I've played.