The real-time strategy genre - if this 1001 list has taught us anything - is dominated by Command & Conquer and Warcraft. You'll sway one way or the other, but those are your top dogs if you're a fan of managing more units than you knew you had built.
Even back when Total Annihilation was released, it was overlooked by more well-known series', yet it offers a surprising amount to the genre, including more units on screen than you ever thought possible, and those units being wee little 3D models, rather than sprites, and that's just the tip of this monumental iceberg.
Fun Times
War has been raging across entire galaxies for four thousand years, and there are no signs that it is about to stop. It's being fought by two factions, CORE and ARM, whose ideologies differ to the point where thousands of years of warfare makes sense to them.
The story says that at some point, humans were required to upload their brains into machines, which, naturally, lead to some humans saying 'well, no, hang on a minute'. This escalated beyond philosophical debate and into all-out war, with brains turning into machines with a military purpose, one side (CORE, if I'm not mistaken) copy-pasting the best brains across the best machines, and the other cloning their best fighters to keep up.
For thousands of years, this arms race continued, and now skirmishes and conflicts occur because you're the enemy and that's all the reason I need. The only way this will end is with the complete - one might say total - annihilation of one of the combatants.
And so we're dropped into this world to embark on a campaign for the side of our choice, at the difficulty of our choice, with the control set up of our choice. Total Annihilation is fairly customizable and welcoming, is what I'm saying, and my first objective was to learn how to move.
As you would imagine, your mouse drives everything, with your choice of left- or right-button modes. Select units, assign them to a group if you want, move them around the place... it's as you expect.
Units come in the traditional flavours too, with nippy fast attack units alongside bulkier heavy attackers. The sheer amount of firepower you have at hand is demonstrated early on in this mission, as your default stance, if you will, is to shoot on sight, each of your units following your orders but remaining vigilant against enemy threats.
Making my way across the map and wiping the enemy off the face of it was enough for a victory condition, but there's a lot more to Total Annihilation than this.
Total Annihilation has a Commander unit, a massive mech that drives your resource gathering and base building. Through it, you construct buildings to harvest both energy and metal resources in order to funnel them into the construction of further buildings and many, many, potentially very many more units of all kinds, including dumber versions of the Commander himself.
Each unit can be given a bunch of tasks to perform in a row. You can set your Commander to work on constructing a couple of solar power generators while you arrange your defensive lines, or send your scouts out to a few places to uncover the map.
Hopefully, you have enough energy and metal to complete the build, otherwise it'll pause or outright stop, depending on the diversion - having my Commander building things too close to the action was my main weakness, as he stopped building to start fighting.
The Commander isn't defenceless, with a whopping great big energy weapon and plenty of health to spare, but losing the Commander will end your game in defeat, should that option be turned on (and I am assuming that it is indeed, for the most part, turned on). Instead of having him charge ahead, it's better to expand at a steady pace, and build some help, as well as some muscle.
Frustrations
I learned this the hard way, I suppose, but it was mostly learnt the stupid way. The third mission in, I expanded out quite far with my Commander, and was overwhelmed by the enemy. Concerned that I was not doing something right, I studied the screen a little better on the second attempt and found that there was a whole second page of buildings that I could construct, and this second page contained the exact buildings I needed to make more bloody robots to protect the Commander.
Further Fun Times
This lesson learned, I produced the firepower I needed and expanded when necessary in order to mount a strong enough force to get the job done. Four Spider-bots needed safe passage through enemy territory, and that's exactly what I'd provide.
Slowly inching across the map, recycling all the scrap metal from blown up combatants that I could manage - my own units and those of the enemy - I produced bigger and better units to unleash havoc upon my foes - and there's a lot of havoc at times.
The terrain is actually important, rather than a mere image. Hills and rivers will affect movement, and the physics engine takes all of that into account for your units' attacks too, making the masses of rockets and lasers flying about the place all the more impressive.
I even read that there's an option for a realistic line of sight, too, which I assume is obscured by those hills and maybe trees and so on. Sounds great, though how well I'd adapt to it I don't know - I'd probably be shouting 'why can't you blow it up? It's right there...'
Final Word
There are 25 missions in this one part of the campaign alone, if I remember correctly, with another faction to play as in another lengthy campaign, and then a load of extra content on top of that in the Commander Pack version that I've been playing on. Long story short, there's plenty to do here before you think about just firing up a skirmish or getting multiplayer gaming going.
Having said that, I'm not the biggest fan of RTS games, and when I do like them, I like them to have a bit of a better plot than 'two strange armies are locked in an endless war'. To be fair to Total Annihilation, I don't know where its campaign will take me, but I found it so easy to play that I do want to get further in to develop more technology and fancier units.
In terms of RTS games, I'm largely doing the same things with a different a lick of paint, but in terms of video game history, Total Annihilation brings so much to the genre that Command & Conquer et al ought to take notice, and outright copy some of it.
I suspect they did, and we'll probably get to that, but until that point, Total Annihilation stands as a worthy opponent, if a little strange in its premise. To me, it's another hidden gem, where I knew nothing about it and now that I do, I want to play more.
Upload your brain, or strap yourself in if you're that way inclined, and get micromanaging.
Fun Facts
Often I forget to mention this or that, and this time, it's the soundtrack. Orchestral and awesome, the Total Annihilation soundtrack will change depending on what's happening on screen and is good enough to be listened to by simply sticking the CD into a CD player. Apparently. I have the downloadable version so I wouldn't know, and I can't remember too much of it above the sounds of explosions and lasers, but it is highly regarded, so keep an ear out for it.
Total Annihilation, developed by Cavedog Entertainment, first released in 1997.
Version played: PC, 1997.