![[PC] Total Annihilation: Commander Pack Free for The Next 48 Hours [GOG.COM]](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/42/542842.jpg?h=9019f440)
What better way to start off the weekend than with a giveaway? 🤓
Grab Total Annihilation: Commander Pack for FREE within the next 48h ⏳
[PC] Total Annihilation: Commander Pack Free for The Next 48 Hours [GOG.COM]
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Or people can get it easily by:
1) Open this link: https://www.gog.com/giveaway/claim - They should see {}
2) Open again/refresh to see if it says "{"message":"Already claimed"}" - Means you've got it
Brilliant!
Makes it even more difficult when you need to reset your password and whoever designed a floating login/password reset design needs to be given a stern talking to. The caraousel banner or something else on that page keeps hiding it.
Dunno why they had to make it so hard to claim.
I reckon I played this even more than Starcraft and Age of Empires II back in the day, probably won't play it now, but has to go in the collection, thanks OP.
More than Starcraft?? Blasphemy!
Same. Totala was an amazing game and waiting for Krogoth to finish constructing is still the strongest memory from this game. Only game I played more was Stunts, Supaplex & AOE 1. Feeling pretty old now as everyone says they played AOE2.
I used to add lots of custom units and added a super battleship called the Yamato that literally took several hours to build even with multiple construction bots working on it.
http://units.tauniverse.com/?p=u&v=1089
It was like building God.
Definitely. I got this and Dark Reign at the same time. Loved both but I reckon TA nudged ahead as the battles were so much more fun as the storyline was non existent
You could put the cd in cd player and listen to the soundtrack. Used to listen to it in the car.
This game was a gem and was the ideal LAN party RTS
So sad to see RTS pretty much vanish and Starcraft 2 did not capture as much attention
It's not good that it relied too much internet to play can't play offline
Have to say I lived at the Golden age of RTS and booming of PC titles
Can never relive again
Command and Conquer remaster - maybe you can.
OMG I was just thinking about this game this game today. Cleaning up around the house I found my Dark Reign CD and remembered that both these games came out around the same time and I chose Dark Reign. IIRC at the time I kinda regretted it and should have bought Total Annihilation instead. Weird coincidence, now I can try it :D
Dark Reign was made in Australia so at least you were supporting a local studio.
Dark Reign was the sh*t.
That game was light years ahead of all other competitors save for TA at the time and it was right behind heavyweights like Total Annihilation and Age of Empires in the US in 1997 sales data, which is a mind-boggling achievement for a first-time developer from Australia back then. I only found out years after Dark Reign was released that Auran were an Australian developer.
Back in 1997, even triple-A titles like Warcraft II, C&C: Red Alert, Age of Empires or Civ barely had half of the features that Dark Reign introduced such as fog-of-war being affected by terrain height/shape, elevation and line of sight affecting ranged ballistics, differing terrain types affecting different vehicles, advanced way-pointing/automated patrol loops and customisable, unit-specific behaviour/AI settings like "Search & Destroy" mode.
I finished it, I finished all my games back then because I could afford so few in high school, but didn't love it. I gave it away to an interested acquaintance in the end
This brings back memories because you're right about all of it. I remember struggling to finish the last DR mission ( at least I think it was). To me that mission was like the battletoads speeder bike level… Impossible
I really enjoyed Dark Reign and the expansion. I was really into the story and hope they make something of it again.
Loved Dark Reign
Dark Reign on that brings back memories. I think it is high time to revisit my childhood and replay that!
Yeah they came out around the same time. Personally the TA battles were better but Dark reign kept me interested with the storyline. At least with Dark Reign you supported an Aussie game developer.
Dark Reign was my gateway game to multilayer gaming. Epic games.
Great game, so innovative at the time, probably responsible for some poor grades at uni back in the day! Thanks OP!
Wish they'd remaster this! (sorry C&C). This was one of my favourite games growing up.
wish they would just fix the memory issue in supcom or remaster it.
They pretty much re made it https://store.steampowered.com/app/386070/Planetary_Annihila… but added more at the same time, its pretty close just with the added fact you can land on the moons etc :) prob as close as you will get for now as its from some of the same devs
I have that, as well as both SupComs and I don't know why but I never got into these as much. I'm not really sure why.
I think its largely because these were more balanced and had less impactful environments and destruction.
Remember when big berthas or nuclear missiles or even EMP missiles could create enough debris to literally throw it into your base and damage your own defences.
TA and TA Core Contingency were masterpeices…
TA Kingdoms was also epic but the smaller construction trees hurt it imho.
They pretty much re made it
Planetary Annihilation is a pale shadow of TA and is so dumbed-down and limited in scale, scope and strategy compared to its spiritual predecessor that it feels more like a military-themed version of Spore or some half-baked tower defense game.
There has been no true successor to TA, not even SupCom can truly match the unlimited scale of TA and it's expanded community of mods, tweaks, hundreds of additional units and improvements and/or total conversions.
Games like TA always took a back seat to glorified build queue simulators like C&C, StarCraft or Age of Empires, which while fun in their own right, have very, very little to do with actual strategy or military tactics and are invariably just a game of rock-paper-scissors with some elaborate dressing on top where victory is inevitably decided by whoever has the highest APM.
TA was always a tougher sell given it was a much slower, much more difficult game to get into and master with a far steeper learning curve to overcome before you could even hope to complete a few campaign missions on normal difficulty. The diversity of strategies you could use to win and the huge number of units available (especially with the expansions) along with effectively infinite resources in the late-game meant that games dragged on forever and 8-way multiplayer games would take hours and hours to resolve, as opposed to the clichéd "Zerg rush" plays you would see in StarCraft or C&C games of the era where one player spammed cheap, mobile units and simply steam-rolled their opponents in minutes.
I really loved how epic the scope of this game was in terms of number of units, or some of the crazily op units like the Krogoth. It just made for some absolutely epic battles. I remember some great matches with friends where we'd start on a metal core world, and agree not to engage anyone for an hour, focusing purely on building up the biggest bases / armies imaginable, then letting all hell break loose. Or being that jerk who would rapidly try and build an aircraft transport, then fly to your mates base and kidnap their commander before they knew what was going on. Such a jerk move, but good times! 😄
@Major Clod: I was always a huge fan of the long-range artillery like Big Bertha/Intimidator/Vulcan/Buzzsaw. It was a true novelty back in the late 1990s to experience an RTS where artillery actually functioned like real-life artillery and could not only hit targets off-screen but at ranges stretching from one corner of the map to the other.
One of my favoured strategies when playing TA as a kid was to invest most of my resources into teching up as fast as possible, building fields of static artillery and fusion energy generators to power them and then proceeding to hammer enemy bases from the opposite side of the map, after which I'd build up a large air fleet to finish them off with a massed bombing run.
There really were unlimited possibilities and so many unconventional strategies that worked in TA and no other RTS games (even contemporary titles).
Just the fact that the realistic physics model meant that virtually any unit could hit any unit and there were none of those arbitrary "hard counters" like in StarCraft or C&C where certain ground units couldn't fire at air units and vice versa purely due to fragile faction balancing issues and not any sensible in-universe explanation (i.e. infantry that forgot they could aim up). In TA you couldn't hover your aircraft over a ground army and expect not to be hit by any projectile weapons just because the enemy forces didn't have that one hard counter that was a dedicated anti-air unit. It was completely possible to counter almost any unit in TA with a large enough number of any other one.
Going back to run-of-the-mil, so-called RTSs like C&C, StarCraft or AoE after playing like TA was like regressing back into the stone age of that genre and having to wage war with sticks and rocks as opposed to the futuristic, Sci-Fi voodoo available to you in TA and the balls-to-the-wall, several hundred unit-sized battles that were possible.
The community was great. The mods and extra units kept the game rolling along. I'd loved a remake
I disagree. Played both extensively and was a TA fan before a Starcraft fan. If you haven't played much competitive Starcraft it is easy to understand why you would think that it doesn't involve much strategy. IMO Starcraft is much more balanced and with way more diverse strategy options despite having less units. Almost every unit in Starcraft is impactful and serves a purpose. There are no units that are simply bigger badder versions of earlier units. No overlappig purposes for each unit. As a competitive RTS, no question Starcraft is superior. Have you actually played or watched much Starcraft? "Zerg rush" forms a very small proportion of games at the higher levels.
However I will say that the part that puts me off about Starcraft is that it is way more about control than strategy. Too many units are designed to be lovingly babysat and manually controlled as well as fast moving. Too much emphasis on micro. As you alluded to, higher APM usually wins because of this (except at the highest levels).
TA has a slower pace and micromanagement on a whole is much less impactful, so you strategic choices become more impactful by default.
Have you actually played or watched much Starcraft?
I'm still an avid fan of Falcon Paladin's channel and I enjoy some Jaedong, Bisu or Flash games as much as the next person who appreciates the inhumane abilities of South Korean eSports pros. It's great entertainment, in a way that much deeper and more "serious" RTS titles really can't be as no one wants to watch SupCom games that take 4 hours to resolve and have literally so many units on-screen that you can't tell who's winning.
That doesn't change the fact that at the higher levels of StarCraft competition, he who wins does so because he builds the right things, in the right order, at the right time; in other words, a build queue simulator. Map familiarity and reading your opponent's play correctly with timely scouting comes into play somewhat, but really, if one player has macroed correctly by the 20 minute mark and the other hasn't, it's a mathematical certainty one side will simply be outproducing their opponent and the resources deficit of the losing player is far too large for them to ever catch up.
Come-from-behind victories, weird out-of-left-field plays/strategies and using non-mainstream units just doesn't happen in serious StarCraft eSports games.
Almost every unit in Starcraft is impactful and serves a purpose.
Lol, apart from Carriers, Dark Archons, Scouts, Battlecruisers, Wraiths, Devourers, Queens, Guardians, Infested Terrans and all of the other units that are completely absent from the modern-day StarCraft meta.
"Zerg rush" forms a very small proportion of games at the higher levels.
I've watched enough professional StarCraft games to know that the average match time is under 25 minutes and if it's a top-tier player like Jaedong beating up on some nobody, it's usually under 20 minutes.
That absolutely qualifies as "rush" gameplay when TA matches of that length, even in 2 player games, are just unheard of.
with way more diverse strategy options despite having less units.
You can predict with great certainty exactly how a match will play out just depending on the player races involved; the cliched tank lines and all-mech plays in TvT games, the Defiler/Dark Swarm/Hydra/Ling/Ultra play you see in almost every in ZvT along with the predictable Terran response of early bio-to-late game mech transitions and the early Corsair harassment/Storm Drops/Reaver Drops that is typical of most Protoss plays against Zerg.
When an RTS is that repetitive, it's a testament to the lack of viable and consistent strategies you can employ.
TA has a slower pace and micromanagement on a whole is much less impactful, so you strategic choices become more impactful by default.
Yes, thank you for repeating my original point.
One game is actually about strategy and choice, the other is about spamming keys and maintaining certain metrics/stats above the output of your opponent/s. That doesn't mean StarCraft players aren't skilled and that it doesn't take years of practice to master the gameplay, but it has absolutely jack all to do with thinking strategically and revolves entirely around rote memorisation of keys, timing and micromanagement processes along with sheer twitch reflexes.
@Miami Mall Alien: "That doesn't change the fact that at the higher levels of StarCraft competition, he who wins does so because he builds the right things, in the right order, at the right time; in other words, a build queue simulator. Map familiarity and reading your opponent's play correctly with timely scouting comes into play somewhat, but really, if one player has macroed correctly by the 20 minute mark and the other hasn't, it's a mathematical certainty one side will simply be outproducing their opponent and the resources deficit of the losing player is far too large for them to ever catch up."
This is a gross oversimplification. Build queue simulator only applies in the first minute of the game. From the moment your scout reaches the opponent's base, you have to adapt and can't follow a strict BO. Adapting what you build based on what your opponent is doing is strategy. Macro plays a huge part in it, no doubt. However, at the high levels, everyone has high APM and their strategy then does become a factor. By the 20 minute mark there would have been various exchanges of information and skirmishes between players and strategies changed/adopted. It is not as simple as two players macroing for 20 minutes and seeing who macroed better. During that 20 minutes there are many decisions being made. Do I expand or do I need more units to defend? Or do I go all out on units and try to win outright because my opponent expanded? Do I go for upgrades and a timing attack? Do I try to tech up instead? These are all strategic decisions that there are not always clear solutions to. The player has to decide which would give them the highest chance of winning.. IMO this is strategy.
"Come-from-behind victories, weird out-of-left-field plays/strategies and using non-mainstream units just doesn't happen in serious StarCraft eSports games."
This has actually been addressed in Starcraft II. Lots of come from behind wins and left field strategies but IMO this has made the game much worse for players. I believe it is much fairer that a person that has been earning advantages all game win the actual game. An opponent being able to come from behind and steal a victory because one player failed to look at the battlefield for 1 second isn't my idea of a fun game. It is highly stressful, even for pros.
"Lol, apart from Carriers, Dark Archons, Scouts, Battlecruisers, Wraiths, Devourers, Queens, Guardians, Infested Terrans and all of the other units that are completely absent from the modern-day StarCraft meta."
I didn't mean that every unit gets used in the current meta but every unit is distince from the others. There's no siege tank and then bigger siege tank. There are many things like that in TA so the number of varied options is actually not as great is it first appears in TA. Also a lot of those units you listed were used at one point in the meta (not infested terrans). There will always be a meta at any point in time so certain units are favoured. There will never be a situation where all units are equally used during a particular meta. TA didn't really have a professional scene or I'm sure metas would have formed there too and many units would never be used. In fact since there are hundreds of units, I bet a larger percentage would not be used in comparison to Starcraft.
"That absolutely qualifies as "rush" gameplay when TA matches of that length, even in 2 player games, are just unheard of."
That is subjective. To me "rush" means you build up a specific force designed to kill the enemy at a specific timing. You launch the attack and win. If a game involves multiple battles back and forth IMO that no longer is a "rush" game. The length of time is not the only factor. Most Starcraft games don't involve just one person finishing off the other with an early attack, although that should also be an option if one player is playing greedy. That is strategy, to decide whether to build up economy or army or upgrades etc.
"Yes, thank you for repeating my original point."
I was fully intending to agree with you there. Starcraft has a large focus on mechanics. However there is also a lot of strategic thinking going on. More than just unit composition (eg expand or units, or tech etc which I already went through before). I agree that strategy is a heavier focus with TA because there is no micro and macro is much easier. I just disagree that Starcraft has no strategy.
If you haven't checked out SC2, the meta is a lot more fluid there. More options for every matchup. Come from behind victories. Battlecruisers and Carriers being used etc. Good spectator RTS. IMo though less fun to play. Very stressful as there are too many ways to lose in an instant. But for that same reason it is exciting to watch.
Boy have I got some good news for you!
https://www.beyondallreason.info/
It's a little bit tricky to set up, but its basically an open source remake of Total Annihilation with newer graphics, and features from SupCom
Thanks for sharing!!! Looks pretty exciting.
No worries mate, TA was my first ever RTS, so happy to see there's still fans out there of it
Noice
Is this a prequel or a sequel to Supreme Commander 2? Because it's on sale for $4.59 https://www.gog.com/game/supreme_commander_2
I think Life is Strange Complete Season looks like a good deal for $5.79 https://www.gog.com/game/life_is_strange_complete_season
this is the OG, Supreme Commander was the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation and Sup Comm 2 the sequel to that.
Imo Supcom FA (expansion) > TA >>>>> Supcom 2.
Supcom FA is a masterpiece of a game with a crazy learning curve. Still played consistently in a lobby called forged alliance forever.
Another one of those RTS games which i grew up with, still good for a round or two every here and there :D
I have the collection pack of this game. 4 discs and a big book explaining all the units.
d gun to kill other's commander and it exploded killing mine…
my childhood memory, few knows how inventive it was at that time…
tks op!
I did get into this about 15 years ago and found it to be the best real time strategy game.
Why isn’t there anymore RTS anymore?
like command and conquer remaster thats coming out today?
Takes brains. So you can't maximize the sales.
Yes, no brains = another COD modern warfare 7
Haha. They don't even bother changing the names of the games. Every 5 years we see a game named "call of duty modern warfare"
My theory is that people don't actually want to play RTS.
I feel like the RTS genre catered to people interested in managing combat and also managing economic/logistical development. But it actually turned out people wanted to focus on one or the other. So we have 4X games that target the logistical management side, and now we have MOBA games that are focused just on combat. In effect I think RTS games sit in a valley that doesn't have enough dedicated support.
It's because Blizzard ruined the genre same with C&C
The latest titles remake and SC2 did not attract enough interest.
They aren't great games and the remastered War3 was so bad it's shameful
How can you hold one company accountable for the whole genre? Surely some blame has to lie with other companies that also released RTS games?
On the whole I think generally just less people want to play RTS.
Damn this bring back some memories. Played it 20 years ago. Was a great game for its time
damn im old
My favourite game of all time. I think my son might like this now.
Just PSA for anyone who might care:
Skirmish Cheat Code
This code will let you use up to ten players in a skirmish game
When in the skirmish room, type asterisk (shift+8), after that type the roman numeral number of the amount of players you want.
For example, if you want 10 players in skirmish mode, you'd type "x", and for five players you'd type "v".
1 = i ; 2 = ii ; 3 = iii ; 4 = iv ; 5 = v ; 6 = vi ; 7 = vii ; 8 = viii ; 9 = ix ; 10 = x.You can also edit the game and increase the unit-cap limit. Just a warning though, if you're doing 9vs1 with a high limit cap, the games can go for a long time.
So good to see other TA fans here! Loved this game to bits. Haven't seen anyone mention the EPIC soundtrack of this game
I remember when my friend could play this game properly because he had a new Pentium II with 64MB ram. MB.
Thanks OP, goes straight into collection. Have played all the TA series. Try Planetary Annihilation, if you like TA, it's really underrated.
I bought it back in the day. So amazing and the soundtrack just completed the experience. However, the GOG release does stuff up how the soundtrack is played with the tracks not playing in correct order which does significantly detract from the experience from playing it on CD back in the day. They never got around to fixing it.
Spent many hours on this back in the day. CDs long gone now so great freebie!
They misspelled the URL, haha. Annihilation is a frustrating word.
EDIT: It still works, it's just spelled wrong.That's why it's TA!
Very excited they released Blade Runner, such an awesome game from 1997. if you haven't played it before please do! First time it's been made available since launch
Yeah same. I remember reading a write up on this last century and wanting it so bad. Still haven't played it and I'm a big fan of the movies. So glad they were able to find the source code or something similar to get this re-released.
I loved the Blade Runner game as a kid. I remember our house got robbed just as I got to the 3rd disc (of 4)… Had to buy it again for I think $80 in 1998 money, which seemed insane. Once the internet evolved I realised I had only seen a few of the many possible endings!
of the same genre, command and conquer remastered had just been released! it's not a bargain, but it is remastered, will run up to 4k res and they've apparently modernised the menu system and multiplayer.
I still play this
Works on Mac? GOG gives Mac downloaded, but cannot get it working after install. Just appears to crash shortly after pressing the purple Play button with nothing visually occurring until the crash.
I suggest to people interested in playing TA to head over to www.tauniverse.com and download the latest community patch 3902. I fixes some underlying bugs and adds extra quality of life functionality to the game.
If you are looking for mods, several of us are still making content and posting regularly on the TAuniverse discord https://discord.gg/hFUYEQ
Online games are currently being played via the Gameranger client.
If you have any questions or need any help don't hesitate to ask.
Cheers.
How nostalgic! But does anyone know if It can be played online multiplayer?
jez22333, to quote from someone else's post way up in the page:
"Online games are currently being played via the Gameranger client."
Already had this, as bought it several years ago when it was on sale for $5.99 (and it was EASILY worth it at that price!) but seeing this OzBargain post alerted me to the fact that Supreme Commander (which many consider a spiritual sequel to Total Annihilation) and Supreme Commander 2 are also on offer at the moment:
https://www.gog.com/game/supreme_commander_gold_edition
https://www.gog.com/game/supreme_commander_2
https://www.gog.com/game/supreme_commander_2_infinite_war_ba…I bought them all to try them out (didn't even cost me $13)
For people trying to claim, once you click on the https://www.gog.com/game/total_anihilation_commander_pack link
It will redirect to https://www.gog.com/#giveaway
Scroll mid page and you will find the total anihilation banner to claim the game.