Dark Reign: The Future of War

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.

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
Everything, including the game play, the missions, the instant action feature, the units, the buildings, the realism and the graphics. The storyline is good as well. I love stories about conflicts between different forces.

The Bad
I hate the construction kit because I can't write my own mission briefings or set the end conditions, and not being able to access the communications menu in a single player mission really pee's me off.

The Bottom Line
A definite must have. It's the best game you can get!