I'm talking about... Total Annihilation. The 1997 RTS game that was awesome to behold, the game that I can actually say got me into PC gaming. The massive battles, the epic soundtrack, the long LAN matches that lasted for hours upon end whilst each team battered each other incessantly. Ahh... the good old days. If only I still had the skirmish CD intact... after it was sadly destroyed by a faulty CD-ROM drive... *sniff*

So... does any of you remember this old game?

It had balance issues, every RTS does, but it's controls/interface was the most intuitive and well made of any RTS, ever, to this day.

From the way your chained commands showed on-screen to the way you could chain completely any combo of commands, or cancel one command in a long chain of them to all the little shortcuts for unit types to...it was perfect.

That game, and it's controls, is one of the major reasons I never got into WC3 (and other games): the control scheme is vastly inferior and games turn into frantic APM battles - battles I refuse to join because 1) my twitch reactions I reserve for FPSs 2) it takes away from the "strategy" part and 3) I'm spoiled. Blizzard et al have no excuses for not making a comfortable interface. The excuse that it's good enough, and that it doesn't take that long to get used to a steady 120 APM is not a good one.

Well said Snorky. Lots of people rave about Rise of Nations, for example - and whilst I can see that it has a lot of great things in it, there's simply too much to do at any given moment, even with the game speed on minimum. In single player you can pause to give yourself a moment's thinking time, but this takes away from the whole point of an RTS, and is no use in multi-player anyway.

<Soapbox> If a game requires you to learn lots of keyboard shortcuts to be playable, then the designers haven't done the interface properly </soapbox>

Maybe I'm just too old and should stick to turn-based strategy. Galactic Civilizations II, anybody?

Peh... want the ultimate turn-based game? Go play Civilisation! The true oldie! heheh.

Besides, because of my experience with TA, I found games like C&C and its many sequels, and a whole host of other RTS games to be lacking in the quality TA had. I admit, TA had its flaws, such as a weak storyline, slightly cruddy AI, and balancing issues, but for its time, it was the best RTS ever to grace the PC. Its interface was so well-done I can't see why this wasn't reiterated with some more recent RTS games, plus TA featured proper newtonian physics, leading to accurate simulation of shell trajectories. Not only that, but with an epic soundtrack to compliment the immense battles was just an excellent touch. Knowing that, I can say I can't wait for Supreme Commander, since Chris Taylor is behind the development for that game. If he can bring all the good things that made TA the legendary game it was, Supreme Commander will be the next big RTS.

Hmm, my favourite Civ game was Civ 2. Only fault with it was that it became a chore to manage large empires near the end of the game.

For a space theme, nothing beat Master of Orion 2 for years - not even MOO3, although I think Gal Civ 2 may finally have grabbed it's crown. It's basically the same as MOO2 (so similar in some respects it's bordering on plagiarism), but with a couple of neat additions. The biggest disappointment is not being able to control the ships during battles.

Heh... the most recent RTS game that has taken my fancy is the Total War series. I have Shogun and Rome Total War, both being very awesome games to play. There hasn't been a recent futuristic RTS game that has managed to keep me interested as TA and Total War have done...