Music #34

This game was better than Starcraft.

Back in the mid nineties, I was a beta tester for Dark Reign. (For a brief time, I was also a “game journalist”. Yes, I know you are shocked, and I feel filthy myself for saying that. But I got disgusted and left.) This is the most underrated RTS I’ve ever seen:

While Dune 2 might have been a pioneer with Warcraft and Command and Conquer really beginning to call attention to this new genre called “RTS”, it was Warcraft 2 and and Red Alert that really showed it was a money cow. Other game companies began to jump in.

Blizzard showed off Starcraft which was using Warcraft 2’s engine. People were disappointed. So Starcraft went back to the drawing boards as Blizzard would slick it up. This was the time for games like Total Annihilation and, especially, Age of Empires. Activision hired an Australian development team called Auran who had developed a 2d game engine that did height. It was Auran that made Dark Reign.

Now, you might ask, “How can anyone say this RTS is better than Starcraft?” It is very true that Dark Reign’s content was not the best. The factions were not very imaginative. The graphics were certainly on the low side. The single player missions were annoying. But Dark Reign did things no RTS has ever done or apparently will do as the course of RTSes seem to be.

While the game was done in 2d, there was elevation making Line of Sight was extremely important. The artillery in Dark Reign were not the cheesy wimpy siege tanks of Starcraft. No, these artillery would fire across the map provided they have Line of Sight. Dark Reign was a very, very fast game (which can make it frustrating to newcomers). It was difficult to have Line of Sight in anywhere for any length of time. You could build camera towers on the top of mountains to help. You could make scouts to shape shift into trees.

This game was psychologically unnerving. When you saw trees moving around, you knew scouts were around. Worse was when artillery fire was raining at you from far away. You don’t know where the scout is so you start attacking a tree, any tree.

One of the ‘ultimate’ powers in the game was the shockwave. It was an expensive slow unit that blew itself up resulting in a giant wave on the ground, as if a wave on the water, like a giant line that rippled forward destroying everything in its path. It was terrifying to see shockwaves coming at you on the minimap (why aren’t more attacks demonstrated on the minimap these days?).

Another thing that Dark Reign did, that no RTS has ever done, that I know not even Starcraft 2 will do, is customized unit AI. How it worked was simple. You selected a unit, or many units, and clicked a tab. You had several options. You could tell the unit to automatically return itself to be repaired if it takes 75% damage, or 50% or even 25% or don’t return at all. You can tell your units to be kamikaze qualities, or to simply scout (roam the map but don’t engage) or even harass (fire, retreat, return somewhere else, fire). All this customized AI brought new strategies to RTS. You could program your units to attack a certain way while you, the beautiful player, were busy doing something else.

My favorite tactic was to build a small number of skybikes, say five, and set the custom AI to low tolerance (meaning they return to get repaired immediately) and set them on harass. It was beautiful to watch. The sky bikes would fly all over the map, take a shot at the enemy, and return for ammo. Then they would return and do it again. From the enemy player’s perspective, he kept getting “Unit under attack!” or “Base under attack!” messages non-stop due to my little sky bikes harassing. This would drive the player psychologically mad. So he would understandingly make anti-air and place it everywhere. While his money was going into anti-air, I would be making tanks. So while my sky bikes may eventually be blown up, the tank army comes in for the kill. Dark Reign was crazy like that.

Dark Reign also had unlimited resources. Water was the resource and the wells would ‘refill’. Games were still battles over water wells, but the game wasn’t over if a player was pinned in. A good Dark Reign game could go on for four hours.

A sequel was made. You know the story. Dark Reign 2 was 3d and, like many games that went 3d, it didn’t work and lost what made the original so good.

The full game is available online (as it has been abandoned), and multiplayer online still goes on today due to Dark Reign fans making their own servers.

But the best thing about Dark Reign is the music. The CD was redbook audio which meant you could put the game in your car CD player and be filled with the drums of the Dark Reign tunes.

Below is the entire soundtrack. Enjoy!