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My Kingdom for a Horse! Or a Duck! Or Ten Bucks!

Before the Mage Emperor Garacaius disappeared from the world, he divided the Empire of Darien into four kingdoms: Aramon, Veruna, Taros, and Zhon. In each kingdom, he installed one of his four children as ruler, and bestowed upon each a gem of powerful 'mogrite' to cement their power and give them everlasting life.

For centuries these kingdoms co-existed peacefully, although they developed in very different ways depending on the temperament of the child of Garacaius who ruled the land.

Now, the balance is undone, and the peace is falling apart. The wild, sentient beasts of Zhon have been uncontrollable since the disappearance of their ruler. Aramon and Veruna fight for territory. And deep in mysterious Taros, the powerful mage-king Lokken has discovered a way to raise the dead and is amassing an unholy army for reasons only known to him. War is imminent.

I have been looking forward to Total Annihilation: Kingdoms ever since I first heard about it years ago. I love the fantasy setting (Warcraft II is still my favorite strategy game) and was a big fan of Total Annihilation. I loved the graphically detailed maps, the sharp little 3D robots, the not-so-dim-as-Starcraft AI, and the wonderful, wonderful chaos and carnage of the battles.

So, it was a great disappointment that Kingdoms fell short of my expectations. It's not that Kingdoms is bad; it does have some good stuff, but it also has lots of little problems that all add up to a pretty average real time strategy (RTS) game. Nothing like the greatness I had envisioned.

To begin with, the graphics are strangely mixed. The maps are highly detailed, even better than the ones in the original TA. However, some of the map objects look awkward and out of place, most noticeably the trees. I have also become rather spoiled by Myth II, and, while I know that the game engine here is very different, I found myself overcome with the almost constant desire to be able to rotate the map and zoom in or out.

The units themselves are also mixed. Some of the larger fighters, like the Veruna ships, look fantastic. However, many of the smaller ones, like the zombies of Taros, are much too small to see clearly and just don't look very much like zombies. It seems that the TA 3D engine is much better at more linear, artificial shapes (like the original TA robots) than the more organic fantasy characters of Kingdoms.

The music is also a notch or two down from the inspirational orchestrations of TA. While not bad, you'll find yourself exchanging the Kingdoms theme for your favorite CD much sooner.

Cavedog did do a very good job at creating four distinct sides (Take that, Starcraft!). Each one has distinct units and structures, and unique advantages. The Veruna are the masters of the sea, for example, with more powerful oceanic units than the others. Aramon has forgone the powers of magic in favor of more technology and the blasting power of gunpowder. The beasts of Zhon use units to create other units rather than stationary structures, so there is no need to have a centralized base.

The best feature of TA is thankfully found in Kingdoms: downloadable units. Over time, Cavedog will be releasing more units and maps, keeping the game fresh. In fact, they have already made one new unit available online, the Pegasus.

The single player campaign is also well done. Although there is only one story to follow, you'll be forced to play all four sides as it unfolds. For example, in one mission you have to establish a defensible Veruna beachhead on the Zhon coast. In the very next mission, you play as the Zhon, and must drive the Verunans from your coast, destroying the beachhead that you just built.

However, there is one really big problem with TA Kingdoms: the monstrous computing power necessary to run it. See those minimum system requirements up at the top of this review? Forget 'em. I ran Kingdoms on two different computers that were well over the minimum system requirements and the game was still really choppy. The units staggered around brokenly and the window scrolling might have been under a strobe-light. If you have a 'god-box', then Kingdoms will run smoothly and well, but otherwise, forget it.

In the end, Kingdoms doesn't do much that we haven't already seen in the original TA. The strategy, the engine, and everything else is pretty much the same as it was a couple of years ago. While it's not bad on a really fast machine, it's still a standard real-time strategy game that just didn't make me want to spend $1000 upgrading my computer to make it run smoothly. For my money, I'd rather play Myth II.