We've been having the whole Total Annihilation vs. For the most part, it's one of the best new RTS titles on the market, but it's also one of the most frustrating at times.

Well, it's been four months since we first got a look at Dark Reign, and now we've had a chance to thoroughly put it through its paces. And high on our list of expected titles was Activision's Dark Reign, the alpha of which was extremely promising. Fans of Warcraft II who were sucked in by the game's comical motifs should find something engaging about Dark Colony's droll characters, hi-res art, and futuristic themes, but nothing really new is offered under the surface.All summer we have been looking forward to the release of this fall's crop of real-time strategy games - it's been a year since Red Alert hit the shelves, so we naturally have been anticipating a solid round of improvements in the RTS genre, especially with the influx of big names and big money. This limited method of play is similar to first-generation real-time strategy games. Unfortunately, Dark Colony tends to suffer this fate more often than not. After strategically planning troop placement and development, you would hope your battle formation would resemble something more than a pee-wee soccer team with troops hacking it out in one big tempestuous cluster. Any premeditated plan of action in the game soon gives way to those familiar desultory build-and-charge tactics. Dark Colony ends up rehashing bothersome real-time strategy cliches. Add a few dozen units spraying bullets at one another and the ensuing gore fest begins to look more like a Mortal Kombat in space than Command & Conquer.Д«ut if you look beyond the inventiveness of its theme, past its blood-drenched battlefield, the game begins to falter. When a human unit gets hit, arcs of blood might spew forth from his uniform or his head might erupt into a gory geyser. Character-rendering is sharp, napalm explosions are luminescent, and character deaths are violent as ever. Who, graphics are Dark Colony's strong point. During a game, both sides can uncover Martian ancient artifacts that award the finder with destructive abilities.Д«esides a strangely compelling soundtrack that echoes of sci-fi classics like Star Wars and Dr. On the human side, these buildings yield anything from space-suited troopers to scampering mini-mechs to a cyborg Special Forces unit simply dubbed 'S.A.R.G.E.' The grays prefer to breed their weapons in the form of artillery-packing creatures, such as the Atril, which hurl a fleshy sac of explosive mucus at the humans with intent to kill. The game's futuristic theme is inventive and well executed, but in the end it is only this sci-fi aesthetic and the over-the-top gore that distinguishes Dark Colony from most real-time strategy games.ДЇollowing the precedent set by Command & Conquer and Warcraft II, Dark Colony allows you to build a base and proceed to construct technology buildings around it radially. The aliens or 'grays' - bug-eyed villains who fit the classic Roswell description - just want the humans to take their guns and air-purifiers and buzz off. alien conflict: The humans have terraformed Mars and are mining it for Petra-7, a newly discovered resource.

The story revolves around a classic human vs. Dark Colony represents SSI's latest diversion from wargames since the success of its real-time strategy title War Wind.

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