Dark Reign: The Future of War

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.

The Good
RTS stands for 'Real Time Strategy'. When RTSes evolved from Red Alert and Warcraft 2, they tried to 'improve' the genre by adding more 'strategy', meaning more units, upgrades, buildings, etc. Real time strategy games eventually became lopsided, with all these strategy chunks but the real time element became slow. The fast paced action of Red Alert and Warcraft 2 would get bogged down in ridiculous (and meaningless) strategy layers such as Tiberian Sun and even Warcraft 3. When PCGAMER came to review this game, they gave it 94% due to the sheer addictive multiplayer capacity it has (which, at the time, laughably infuriated Total Annihilation fans with their 86% rating).

-Fast Paced Action-

Dark Reign is a very fast paced game which throws a lot of people off. Those who hated 'tank rushes' or 'grunt rushes' hated this game because IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO TURTLE. And unlike games like Age of Empires or Starcraft, having the upper units didn't mean squat as they could easily die as well. No game could ever be solidly won by just making high level units (which is how most Starcraft and Warcraft 3 multiplayer games act). Every multiplayer game was like an adrenaline rush because combat went very very fast. Little 13 year olds despised this title because they couldn't simply make a bunch of units, move them back and forth around the enemy, without major casualties. To illustrate how fast this game was, imagine Starcraft that is ten times faster on the highest speed.

-Line of Sight Tactics-

Strategy revolved around line-of-sight, which was a stupendous improvement over Warcraft 2's fog-of-war and hasn't been equaled in RTS yet. There are many weapons in this game, such as the Rift Creator (the Imperium's expensive and top leveled weapon that creates seemingly blackholes) or artillery (whose range is practically half the map), which are long range but require line of sight to fire. You would have other units whose only purpose would be to provide line of sight (Imperium had a recon drone that was inexpensive, would fly around. Freedom Guard had a scout infantry which would morph into surrounding terrain, so if the enemy found himself being artilleried, he would often find an enemy tree running around!). Camera towers were inexpensive low-hitpoints structures which would provide Line of Sight (if built on higher elevation, they would provide even more). This is why the game has more tactics than Warcraft 3 or Age of Empires 2 combined.

-Terrain-

Dark Reign was the first RTS to effectively combine terrain with strategy. Hovering units could go over water but could not go over steap rocks (so hovertanks often would surprise the enemy-base-on-a-hill by slipping through rivers). Infantry and other 'foot' units could only reach the upper elevation.

-Cashflow, not Income-

The resource of water for Dark Reign was great. Water would be 'shipped' away. Each water spot was inexaustible. However, they could be 'overmined' and would have to fill up again. Unlike all other RTS games where most players 'starve' their opponents, the game focused on gathering cashflow of multiple water resources. This kept the action very fast and furious.

-Unit AI-

The unit ai in Dark Reign remains unsurpassed. For your units, you can assign them properties. My favorite thing to do was my a lot of Freedom Guard Sky bikes which are cheap and very light damaging units. I would assign their ai to be tolerate low amount of damage before they would break off to repair. I gave them a very low aggressive rating (meaning they won't pursue units). Then I gave them the command 'Harass'. OMG. Imagine twenty little flying ships, each taking a seperate path, which find enemy somewhere, attack it, reload or find enemy, if it gets hit once, repair and repeat. What would occur is that the enemy was driven psychologically nuts with all these little ships 'pecking' at him here and there. This tactic bought me much time as it always put my enemies on the defensive and made them invest heavily in anti-air buildings (while I invested in ground based units). Also, I could set up extensive waypoint systems with other units which would consantly guard a region or go in loops hitting the enemy base, return to repair, hit enemy base, repeat. Only in Dark Reign could I pull off fun stunts like that. The unit ai has not been matched yet in RTS and with the sad state of 3d pathfinding in games now, it probably never will.

-Music-

The music is very good. It has redbook audio so you can put it in your cd player and play.

-Editor-

Featured a very nice, very easy to use editor. I played many many games with a professor from the University of Texas on a HUGE map that was geographically identical to North America. With additonal players, the game was a riot. Tank action was always heavy in Kansas and the midwest. Florida was vulnerable to hovertanks slipping on the water. The mountainous region bases had heaviest infantry and turret action. Nothing like being able to say to your ally, "You attack his Texas base while I draw attention with his armies in the Dakotas."

The Bad
-Graphics-

Sid Meir was asked why he didn't put in 'future technology' in his civilization game. He said, "Because the player cannot associate with it." Games such as Command and Conquer had people associating with tanks and missile launchers. Warcraft had celtic fantasyland. Starcraft was full of sci-fi cliches (Zerg from Aliens or from the aliens in Starship Troopers, Protoss being like the 'Jedi' in Star Wars). Age of Empires associates with history. But poor Dark Reign never succeeded as a game universe because no one can associate with a tank that looks like a beetle that shoots purple plasma.

-Single Player-

The single player in this game really isn't too much fun. What is interesting is how the single player campaign was designed, chiefly you being tested with 'historical battles' and you choose either the Freedom Guard side or the Imperium side, so if you are stuck you could choose the other side. But this 'vagueness' meant little story.

-Annoying Scouts-

If you combined morphed scouts (which would be looking like trees) with the phase transport, you could have LOS anywhere and not have the enemy stop you. Once the artillery shells started to fall, the player would search manically for enemy trees which was very frustrating. An option to be have a unit 'snif out' scouts or to be able destroy trees would have solved this.

The Bottom Line
This is the most under-rated RTS classic. If you play this, be sure you aren't expecting 'big graphics' because they aren't here. Also, play multiplayer with a friend. Multiplayer is what makes this game shin and what gave it such high gaming press reviews.This game still is fun and I still play it to this day. It has achieved a type of cult status for RTS players who love fast paced gameplay.

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.