Total Annihilation - Kingdoms - 09/10/99
By: John Rowe

4 sides is good:

I truly hope no company ever makes a game with only 2 sides ever again. After Starcraft I hoped other companies would realise that 2 just isn’t enough. Westwood, relic and Pumpkin all seemed to forget this and made games with 2 sides anyway and while all of there games are good (Tiberium Sun, Homeworld and Warzone respectively) it still leads to a rather annoying same old tactics scenario. 

In Starcraft you would have this lovely strategic element where you would actually have to find out who your enemy was first and then build units that are effective against that side. In those games though you already know what your facing and just build on mindlessly. Well here we have 4 sides, and lots of units, which is just perfect, the first biggest problem is knowing what your up against. Let’s say you picked to be Aramon, you load up a skirmish, the first thing you have to do is find out who your up against, if it’s the Taros, then you can expect lots of Spell casters against you, if it’s the Veruna, you need to watch out for boats etc. All this leads to a rather intense game strategy wise with you having to change your tactics to suit each side, and it leads to a particularly exciting multiplay aspect. The campaign is well done and very original with its approach (the exact opposite of Tiberium Sun).  

Instead of picking which side you are going to be the game just starts, at first you are the Aramon, then after a certain amount of missions you change to one of the other 3 sides, then after 30 or so missions you have been each side at least twice. This keeps the campaign interesting, which is good when you consider how dull it was in Total. The only problems with this game are the slightly off A.I. and the lag you can experience in the later levels or in skirmish mode. Everything else is really well done and the special multiplayer only levels are a treat (although some are bad such as King of the Hill).

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