Total Annihilation Kingdoms: The Iron Plague

Herald rating: ****

Cavedog

PC

Review: Peter Eley

Total Annihilation was an excellent real-time strategy game, possibly the best of its day. But the much anticipated sequel, Kingdoms, moved away from TA's story and design, disappointing the game's many fans.

It wasn't a fast-moving, futuristic real-time strategy game featuring bold, colourful maps and units like its predecessor, but more of a fantasy game with confusing backgrounds and small, hard-to-see units.

To their credit, Cavedog never abandoned Kingdoms, and have been updating the game and adding patches, which are available from their web site. The Iron Plague puts all these on disk, and adds a game engine upgrade which improves the graphics and makes them run more smoothly.

There's also a new civilisation, the Creons, which has scientific prowess as its unique characteristic. With this new civilisation comes a 25-mission campaign which by all accounts is tougher than the four campaigns in the original game.

E-mail: peter_eley@herald.co.nz