In many a mind, Total Annihilation is the only game that ever truly stood up to Starcraft. While it never achieved the incredible success and cult-stature of Blizzard's soon-to-be-sequeled title, Total Annihilation, the godfather of Supreme Commander, was the best damn game ever made. It really was. Argue all you want, just know that all your arguments are void.
And now, TA is on Impulse for $9.99. Meaning if, for some reason you never experienced the greatness of sending a giant mech commander off to duke it out with the D-gun against hundreds of foes because that's how badass you can be, now's your chance. Do it!
VGChartz's Taneli Palola: "I recently completed an article series about the history of real-time strategy, and going through so many different games that have shaped the face of the genre over the last 30 years got me thinking. Which real-time strategy titles are the ones that have had the greatest influence on the genre's development throughout its history? What you're reading now is my answer to that particular question."
Total Annihilation is a classic RTS game released in 1997 on the PC. Retroheadz plays it again to see if it's still a great game to play today.
VGChartz's Taneli Palola: "Ever since it became possible to add actual music to video games, composers have been trying to emulate the sound of orchestral music as closely as the technology they had to work with would allow. From Koichi Sugiyama's early Dragon Quest scores to the many wonderful SNES soundtracks that pushed the console's sound chip to its limits, aiming for true orchestral sounds has been the goal of many a video game composer over the years, long before such a thing was in any way feasible.
It wouldn't be until the mid-90s that the technological limitations would begin to lift, and with the advent of CD-based video game consoles the door was suddenly opened towards much higher fidelity music. From then on countless composers have employed full symphonic orchestras in their scores, and today we take a look at some of the best examples of those from the last 25 years."
