Total Annihilation

K. Fields
2018-01-04T13:16:44-05:00
Video Games

I devoted most of my gaming time in December to Total Annihilation (TA). It was definitely one of my favorite computer games played in 2017. Frequently mentioned as one of the greatest real time strategy games of all time, I finally got around to playing it twenty years after its release. The story line of the main campaign revolves around a galactic war. The incumbent power is a governing body known as CORE. The population of CORE embraced “patterning,” which is the transfer of human consciousness into machines. This did not sit well with everyone, however. Some citizens rebelled and formed an organization known as ARM. Thus began the war between ARM and CORE. ARM’s soldiers adopted high-powered combat suits while CORE transferred the minds of its finest soldiers into combat machines. TA begins after four thousand years of warfare has left both sides at a stalemate. The game offers an ARM campaign and a CORE campaign of 25 missions each.

I opted to play the ARM campaign. It took a little while to learn all of the buildings and units for ARM and CORE. There is a wide variety of ground, water, and air units. Thankfully, the number of units available started small and grew as the missions progressed. It started with land battles and added mixed ground/water, ground/air, and other combos as the story progressed. Eventually, things led to a final confrontation on CORE Prime in the last mission. Victory was achieved when my commander stood atop the Core Command Dome.

Although I had a lot of fun playing the ARM campaign, I am not quite ready to invest the time required to complete another 25 missions for the CORE campaign. There is plenty of gameplay left as I own The Core Contingency and Battle Tactics expansion packs. Counting the add ons, there are well over 100 missions left to play.