Total Annihilation - Most impressive AI ever!

Total Annihilation to date has been one of the most memorable games i've ever played, and still to date play. The AI for this game is STILL one of the most curious. It was simply one of the most challenging games ever back in it's day, and still the AI stands a damn good chance against so many of the newer ones.

The units in TA were all something new and unique. Between the Core and Arms there's no 2 units that are the same. Understandably many of them serve a similar purpose *I mean a builder is a builder is a builder right?*, but even in that regards, they all look different. The special abilities of the many units available opens the doors of strategy more and more then most games you'd see even today.

One of the most impressive things I found were the air to air combat. You could have these really swift and deadly bombers, or the hovering gunner to sway side to side and tear away at your enemies. The magnitude of defensive towers available to you actually made a difference. The rocket tower for example, could not hit the bomber planes, while the gatling laser cannon though overall an excellent tower, had limited range.

EVERYTHING had it's strengths and weaknesses, and like most games that offer you so much, there was pros and cons to this. One of the things about this game that I didn't quite like was the balance issues. Towards the later missions you could build this massive cannon tower which could, no word of a lie, shoot from one end of the map to another. True the thing was slow to fire, but DAMN it rained fire when it went off. Capable of destroying the smaller buildings in one hit, it's seemingly unlimited range *didn't even have to have visual contact to tell it to fire somewhere*, made it a tower of unimaginable terror.

But even this Goliath of a tower had a few irks. It turned mad slow, it fired mad slow, and it could be quite easily destroyed once the enemy found it.

Another great thing about this game that blew my mind was the fact you didn't have to win EVERY mission. True to the motto "You've won this battle, but not this war!" players were allowed to realistically lose ground here and there, suck up their losses and keep going.