This is a true classic. Even today, TEN YEARS after it was originally released, the graphics look great on new PCs. I still have the original discs and the Core Contingency expansion pack. This game pioneered RTS games. All the modern RTS games still draw from TA...there have been few major features introduced since (in a decade of refinement!) other than realistic graphics. I still get a kick out of building up massive bases in TA, and the unit diversity as well as fantastic overall interface and incredible custom soundtrack just make this game a timeless masterpiece that can be played for years to come. I wonder if any game studio would be willing to take on the daunting task of (official) Total Annihilation 2? Revise the graphics, add new storylines, etc..but keep the heart of the game intact!… Expand

I have been playing this game for years and it still keeps me entertained. This is truly the best game ever made. I'm sure I'll still be playing it in 10 years. Just goes to show the you don't need top graphics to enjoy a game, this one is all about gameplay and replayability. The graphics are fantastic, for 1997, so you'll have to look past that and see the beauty inside. Total Annihilation is sent from the heavens by angels who like to destroy things with robots.… Expand

Excellent RTS, and still without equal in so many ways. Its true, flaws in the unit balance emerged as player tactics developed, but overall, this is still far ahead of anything else in the genre. The range of innovations, from the high level strategical nuke/antinuke and air wars, to the tight control of unit behaviour during minor skirmishes, to the overall epic scale of the game, place it still without equal. One of the most engaging, deep and lasting games produced to date.… Expand

Simply put, Total Annihilation (+ Core Contingency expansion pack) is the best rts ever. Large scale land, sea and air warfare while building a giant base from which to launch your nuke strike or blast away with long-range artillery. Make armies of hundreds of units and sent them to a certain death against layers and layers of defence. Or play on a small map and micro every single unit for maximum efficiency. An economy model that's very easy to learn but incredibly hard to master. Real 3d units on a real 3d map with real physics. Hundreds of very different maps and many more created by the community. Concerning gbarules2999 saying this game is about fast clicking with no strategy involved: this is a REAL TIME strategy game, so yes its about doing stuff fast (which is a good thing). But its also a real time STRATEGY game, meaning its impossible to beat your opponent if you dont have a better strategy. Furthermore when executing your strategy, you'll need tactics to make it work: yes its easy to move many units at once, but to make the most out of them its necessary to manage them individually. But whatever, sounds to me like you only played the campaign. And altough the campaign or a skirmish against the ai can be quite entertaining, i must say it's a pretty bad basis for judging this game. Its the multiplayer where Total Annihilation shines.… Expand

Amazing, there are no other words to describe this game and its expansions. If you are an rts gamer through and through and have not played this game then you then you are missing out big time. I have played all the old rts games and a lot of the new ones and none of them compare to this. This is how i rate the game Music/Sound 10/10 unit diversity 10/10 graphics for the time 10/10 originality 10/10 game play 10/10. This game has next to no flaws and i rate it the best rts ever.… Collapse

THE best RTS of all time. Total Annihilation is a classic, the pinnacle of Real Time Strategy, and for its time, one of the best games ever. Although not as popular and over shadowed by starcraft, Total Annihilation has maintaned an active community over the years by allowing extreme modability and 3rd party support. If you haven't played it yet, and love strategy games, this is a must buy and at least try, if you can find it.… Expand

My favorite PC game.

Great! * years old and still the best, until supreme commander of course.

The best RTS out there to date...Amazingly advanced for its time, never gets old.

Best RTS I played, my favorite strategy game. Tactical and realism still unsurpassed.

Best RTS ever, Core contingency best expansion ever. Wish that kingdoms lived up to the first. My favorite all time game. It had an innovative multiplayer system (boneyards) that i have yet to see matched. Perfect 10/10.

Best RTS ever. Introduced the genre.

Total Annihilation... What to say? It's not only the best RTS game ever, but the best game ever as well.

The game that got me into gaming the best RTS game ever.

Excellent RTS, ambitious and innovative for its time, if a bit dated today.

The game plays great and has a nice presenation (coupled with an amazing soundtrack). Too bad the rest of the game is linear and boring as heck. Being a war of attrition, tyhe game never reatches the status that makes StarCraft look up and think. TA is fun, but it's not a strategy game. It's an action game. Very little thought goes into selecting all your units and pressing attack, and no matter how nice it looks and plays, that very fact makes the game aged and whithered on the vine. That's why the AI sucks so bad, a well: the gameplay is not designed for thought process. It's for clicking really fast, and here is where you can see the beginning of the end for a lot opf modern franchises (like C+C). Unless you have the nostalgia, stay away.… Expand

Anyone who gives this game less than a 9 is out of their mind. Out of the many new RTS games comig out today, Total Annihilation beats them several times over, and to think it was made in 1997! If you ask me, Total Annihilation is one of those games that shattered the standards for almost all games of its type to come, sort of like Diablo.

This may be the best pc game of all time. The graphics, and gameplay still hold up well today.

This is the best RTS of all times hands down and my favorite game ever. Contrarily to StarCraft, which is unplayable on modern PCs (especially after getting used so Warcraft 3), this one gets even better on powerful PCs. Try it if you've never played it, it's an instant classic. Most videogames age, sometimes badly. But this one is the game that will never quit my PC.

Many of Total Annihilation's innovations have yet to be matched (eight years later and counting). Take notes game developers... this is what good RTS looks like.

i'll be honest, i bought this game at dollar tree. now i know i would have gladly payed full price for it when it came out, because it's one of the most complex, innovative and enjoyable rts games ever made. it's just plain fun, a true game with the feeling of a total war (not the franchise 'Total War' lol).

This game opened my eyes to the fun of creating sandbox style RTS with tons of units. This is responsible for many days of sleep deprivation, others mad that the phone line is tied up (dial-up), and excessive amount of money for fast PC to run it smoother.

After some patches and new unit releases and ultimately when the Core Contingency expansion was released, all those issues in the past just became even more severe. That and hygiene and diet suffered--the house was being neglected and junk food became the primary choice of sustenance. No other game has done this to me. EverQuest comes close though.

This led me to follow Chris Taylor to his other games, though SupCom FA is the only thing that has come close to recreating the experience of Total Annihilation. Got to love the old MPlayer crowd. TEN was cool for rankings, though I didn't do as well as I thought I should've (1900s). Heat was nice for casual games, but ELITE clan battles were pretty intense. Only remember Lazeroo and (can only think of a bear for some reason). I was always coming up with crafty stuff like Rapier rush comm snipes and was accused of cheating on more than one occasion. The truly good players focused on tactical micro such as early bombing runs on low resource maps like Coast to Coast. I always did well with macro, spamming the heck out of Hawks, Vamps, nukes, artillery, etc on a such a large scale...

Ahh, memories.… Expand

I'm surprised so little is said about this game, the amount of mods that were available and the amount of fun I had playing this game is crazy. Even 13 years after its release, and I haven't had as much fun with any other RTS, not even SC2! TA is great by itself, but when mods are added, the gameplay changes so much, so many more units are made it's insane. Even the graphics are good, explosions are awesome, they feel so much more intense then in all other strategy games. This is easily one of the best games of all time.… Expand

Sweet mother of god, this game is marvelous. Yes, it is a bit aged in the graphic department, but it makes it up a hundred times by the gameplay. I only picked it up recently, but I didn't have so much fun since the classic rts games from westwood of old. Add to that really nice pathfinding and unit behavior, bullets and missiles being actual physical obiects with calculated trajectories, great music, atmosphere and two buckets of awesome, and you get this game.… Expand

time and time again I compare more recent RTS games to this, and it is still far more enjoyable than almost all. the graphics are dated, the storyline is borderline non-existent, and the AI players are fairly terrible. but it (still) has some of the best unit AI (queue up orders and customise stances), true 3 dimensional GAMEPLAY (no shooting through hills, artillery and ballistic trajectories matter-something that is SEVERELY LACKING in even current RTS) and what was a very active mod community. hundreds of units to a side (as opposed to maybe 10 or 15 in star/war-craft, many, many different units, unit types, weapons even in the un-modded game, and it is a wonderful LAN game, especially with (now) older computers.… Expand

I had to pop over here and give this old title it's well deserved 10. I can't even believe how good this game still is when it's almost 15 years old. If there's an RTS you want to play with great units, balance and economy then this is it. There's even been a new engine (spring RTS) built with this game in mind, and you can download it for free! I don't know what else I can say other than I'm a fan of a lot of RTS games but this is the king of them all.… Expand

This game is a multiplayer action game. D-gun enemies into flying shards of burning metal, and construct that vehicle factory while surfacing from water to deploy fast Flash light tanks to immediately attack your enemy while bombers and fighters are battling for supremacy on the sky. This game is truly epic and deep. Playability 10. AI not so good but campaigns are well built. You can build your own AI though. Over the internet 10 players can play simultaneously with a total of 10000 units on the field. Massive long range artillery will shell the battlefield while nukes blast away at wreckage over which high energy lasers are targeting enemy mechas and battle-vehicles.… Expand