I have a confession to make: I still play Total Annihilation. Yes, I know, the 1997 graphics are primitive and the missions, even with both expansion packs and the Banzai AI boost, are pretty repetitive and in many cases unchallenging. However, it has something that most new real-time strategy games lack. That something is what makes all the difference in the world for a gaming graybeard like myself, namely: a speed slider that actually works.
By that I mean the ability to slow the action down to a molasses-in-Alaska kind of slow to truly gain full control over every last unit, or crank up the speed when waiting for some huge building slowly comes together. What passes for speed slider in more recent games is a joke.
Slowing down or speeding up things 10% doesn’t make one iota of difference when trying to coordinate 8 fighters, 3 musketeers, 2 knights and 2 dwarf mortar teams to fight optimally in Warcraft III. By the time the fighters are whooping Grunts and the knights are positioned to overrun the Shaman, the mortar teams — who were supposed to take out those damn watchtowers — have already been slain by 3 axe-throwers that popped out of nowhere.
I know, go ahead and poke fun. “Stick with turn-based games, then!” you say. “If you’re too slow to manage your troops, perhaps the game is not for you.” Fair enough. I’m not the Fatal1ty of strategy gaming, and I’ll be the first to admit as much.
But there are a couple things I’d like to point out. First of all, there should be some middle ground between the stodgy turn taking, hex-based strategy games and the twitch-action strategy games that permeate the market today.
Poring over a primitive map with terrible graphics for hours with each unit taking 20 mins to do anything at all isn’t very exciting. On the other hand, it just isn’t that much fun to crank out as big batch of fighters as possible, send them off to the enemy base while trying to follow up with the next batch, and the next, and so on until you win.
I mean, let’s be honest here; wouldn’t it be more fun to actually have time to position your various units so that each can use their unique strengths in the most effective way?
Imagine getting full use of the special/magic/hero powers of the special units, where you can put some thought into what spell to use and which target is most suitable. Think Rise of Nations — sure, it’s nice to have the Generals, Spies and Commandos doing their cool stuff, but that is usually at the expense of losing control of your moronic tanks and machine gunners, who got slain by a helicopter without having the common sense to move while you were sending your commandos to blow up strategic buildings.
Or how about simply being able to zoom in? Most games boast impressive 3D engines with beautiful graphics — but who has time to zoom in and enjoy the carnage of Dawn of War? By the time you’re done watching, your entire unit has been wiped out and the enemy has probably captured at least one of your resource points.
There’s precious little of that sort of thing going on in TA. But still, there’s something special about running the 10 AI players/5,000 unit patch, create a clean 640×640 skirmish map and start from scratch on the hardest setting with all AI players allied against you — and still emerge victorious, simply because you were able to get the absolutely most out of each single ‘bot you have at your disposal.
Every move is carefully planned and executed. Every unit doing exactly what it should, when it should, even retreating for healing right before it blows up. I wish, I wish I could get that kind of control over Dawn of War, Battle for Middle Earth II and all the other great games of today.
Unfortunately, the strategic element is out the window the second the units make contact. It quickly degenerates into a disorganized mess, and the question is: why? It doesn’t cost a dime for the developer to make the speed slider useful. I mean, it’s just assigning more values to a slider that’s already in place! Instead of “Fast-Normal-Slow”, why not make it a 20-step scale? Those who don’t want it can just not use it. But for us slowpokes who enjoy the strategic challenge, it makes a huge difference. So please, could someone give me a worthy replacement for TA? Cuz the pathfinding bugs that occur once you have 1,000+ units on screen is driving me friggin’ nuts.