Dark Reign: The Future of War (1997) - MobyGames (2024)

The Good
I liked nothing about this game.

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!

The Good
You can see why even non-RTS fans like myself were interested in Dark Reign (DR) before its release, as it had plenty of good things going for it. There is a creative mixture of units for the two sides, and yet the player certainly isn't overwhelmed either. This means DR avoids the Total Annihilation (TA) syndrome, in which you have a zillion unit types to keep up with, even though many of them are of dubious value. Graphics are clean and colorful, and the soundtrack (music and FX) is well done. The Instant Action mode is pretty darn good, and there is an extremely flexible map/scenario editor thrown in as well.

There are only two sides. Ok there is a third at the end, but it is nothing more than the other two combined. How's that for lame? Speaking of lame, this game has an allegedly "high-concept" time-travel sci-fi plot that is worse than the worst paperback novel or Star Trek: Voyager episode you ever had the misfortune to come across. Maybe I would have bought into it a tiny bit if they had bothered to put the story into the game with something beyond little pre-scenario text briefings. That's right--there are no C&C-style campaign videos, only a few sentences for your reading displeasure. Although there IS an extremely annoying voiceover guy doing his best bad "Full Metal Jacket" impression for the tutorial. No wait, it gets better: If you don't respond to the drill sergeant's commands immediately, he yells at you and the tutorial ends, forcing you to start over. Hilarious!

The campaigns themselves are every bit as uninspired as the plot. Yes there is an editor, but I shouldn't have to make my own game! There are basically no bodies of water in the maps, so there is no naval or amphibious warfare. Resource harvesters need constant babysitting, as they get hung up on buildings and each other with remarkable ease. Worst of all, DR is TOO DAMN FAST. The game speed defaults to a very fast pace, and the firing rate for weapons is so rapid that even cranking down the game speed won't fix the pacing problem. DR is the ultimate tank rush game, and so all of those cool tactical innovations mentioned above will go unused because it's just as fruitful to simply run around as fast as possible, blowing stuff up.