Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
- November 24, 2000 14:47 PM PST
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Total Annihilation: Kingdoms recalls Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace: a brilliant trailer followed by a passionless, mediocre main feature.
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The game's trailer works wonders. With montages of beautiful images accompanied by dramatic voice-overs, cut-scenes draw you into the story of each side in this fantasy follow-up to the original TA. That proud parent was the first real-time strategy game to use 3D units, and the authenticity this added to combat was unparalleled. In TA:Kingdoms, we travel to Darien--where, as the story unfolds, you will switch time and again between the four kingdoms of Veruna, Zhon, Taros, and Aramon.
It's just a shame that these imaginative cut-scenes lead into such a sterile 3D world.
Although the game's 70-plus units are detailed and their animations smooth and well rendered, their behavior betrays a robotic heritage. A group of my patrolling warriors walked right by the enemy, ignoring it completely. A line of archers stood stock-still while a single enemy killed them one by one. And when hundreds of men marched to their doom, just one or two of them would cry out as death claimed them.
Though orders include "patrol" and "guard" as well as other specific commands, the process of issuing them is confusing and sometimes they didn't work at all. The most glaring flaw is an inability to "attack-move"--an order from the original TA under which your units move to a location and attack enemies encountered en route.
Without it you are forced to "patrol" to a location--which isn't a problem until your units turn around and head back to the patrol's starting point, leaving the goal they just captured behind. This lack of tactical control makes winning the frequent large battles exceedingly difficult and frustrating. I wish I could say the same for the enemy units, which unerringly found my troops and annihilated them.
If you went to the Douglas MacArthur School of War, you'll love this game. Without useful tactical controls, one is frequently left with one remaining option hinted at by the title: massive troop movements in an all-or-nothing attack. Send them in, watch the action unfold, and hope that you win.
It's a dull tactic, and the missions that aren't flat-out boring are sometimes laughably easy or teeth-grindingly difficult. In one particularly easy mission, you need to move a unique unit across the map. I merely selected my initial units and clicked on where they were supposed to go. The unique unit walked across the entire map and arrived unscathed on the other side.
Later on, I was supposed to rescue a group of prisoners in the middle of an enemy camp. When I arrived at the prisoners' location, they were all executed in a blink of the eye. Even though I knew how to save them, I was forced to restart more than twenty times before I was able to force my army to do exactly what was required to win.
Using Cavedog's Internet-play service, Boneyards, multiplayer games can be joined with ease. During play there was some jitteriness and slowdown, even using my cable modem, but overall it was a hassle-free experience. The sides seemed adequately balanced and different enough that it matters which one you pick.
Kingdoms manages to present a lot of pretty scenery, rousing sound effects, and dynamite music, but it omits a foundation in adequate controls and unit AI. And without that, all the good looks in the world fall flat.
