First off, I just felt like I had to tell someone this, but seeing as how no one around here cares for TA/SupCom or the PC crowd in general, I just let bore you guys to death. . Its just about how I came to love these types of games, and how I am extremely excited for this (I hope you Uber guys read this, its for you!) I can tell this game is the next step in my general gaming 'career', as every large scale RTS that is like TA has done. You see, I had problems in school; Staying awake, paying attention, yada yada yada. Well, it was kinda because I had gotten this random unknown game called Total Annihilation. Id stay up all night some school days and play it, nonstop on my ol' 94 Packard Bell. (The game didnt run top notch, but damn if I played it none the less.) This game enthralled me to no end. If I didnt stay up all night, plenty of times I would get up early and play it for an hour to an hour and a half before school. It was a major part of my childhood. (dont worry, I still did good in school, you guys didnt totally destroy my life ) For years after I switched to consoles. I knew nothing, and actually still know very little, about computers, So I just got consoles. I had a PS2, an xbox, and I believe a 360 by this time. I was content with my life. That is, till I got an issue of PC Gamer with a large robot on the front, and in the back of my mind, that little kid just went nuts. Could another TA come true? My eyes take in that cover inch for inch, and thats when I see it: "The creator of Total Annihilation returns to re-invent the genre once again...". My mind melts beyond anything before. Its at this time I decide, and eventually do, buy a computer. people buy Xboxes for Halo? pfft. Buy a PS3 for one of the uncharted games. HA! Ill buy a Computer for a TA inspired game. That was years ago, ive still remained a PC gamer since then, but damn if the industry is slowing dying. Ive clung to the old ways by the way of Legions: Overdrive (a Tribes style game) and Quake (albit FPSs). I never would have expected this. A random PCG article and Total Annihilation comes crashing back into my life. Tribes never really died, it was dormant untill TA(Tribes Ascend, TA also for Total Annihilation, COINCIDENCE!?) came out by the Hi-Rez guys. Well it looks like Total Annihilation is the same way. Every so often some says "We need to do something different... TA, thats it, lets do another TA inspired game!" and low and behold, Planetary Annihilation. This game tugs at the kid strings inside me. I love the concept. I love the units looks as they are now. I love the art style. I love the music. I even love that (seemingly) crazy guy, John Patrick Lowrie. I can see this game is 99% getting made (theres always a slim chance of it not), and I am behind you guys 100% (no Homo). Good luck, Uber, I cant wait to see what you do, and thanks for letting that little kid inside me go nuts once again!
Indeed. TA was a hugely influential part of my 'gaming career' too. My current LAN-gaming group crystalised around SC, with FA cementing the deal, but I always harked back to my memories of playing TA and bemoaned the fact I could never quite get them to jump-ship. But now PA comes along, just as our LAN sessions have started to die off (too much of a good thing), and I've managed to rope most of them in to pledging (all at $100+ so far). I have every confidence in Uber, because the alternative of this flopping is too damned scary...
As uninteresting as it may be, here's my history with TA and RTS's. I was only 4 when I first played TA. I'd kneel in a chair next to my father and watch him play through the campaign. When he'd go do some chores, I'd move into his seat and fiddle with the tab menu. Didn't trust myself to play just yet. I eventually started off small. Me and 2 AIs against another. It must seem a little strange. Someone not even in pre-school, but playing an RTS. Thing is, besides Reader Rabbit, it was the only game we had. I remember having one save game with over 210,000 kills on a single Silencer. The total kill count was something like 2.7 million. Only ever player ARM because I thought CORE was pure evil. Most games were on "Over Crude Water", a map I must have played at least 1000 times by now. Later, I also recall sending a few hundred crawling bombs across the map in "Seven Islands" (metal map, evenly spaced islands in a circle). Most anticlimactic thing I've done in TA, didn't turn out well Ultimately, it must have planted the seeds of strategy in me. I could never be interested for very long by mindless gaming. There needed to be some overall strategy, a bigger purpose behind everything I did. A few years later, we'd challenge each other to have the fastest time beating 8 AIs aligned against us. Typically ended with tons of strategic bomber use. We were never really good at anything besides turtling, but we knew it well. I saw the SupCom article in PC Gamer, but without the funds to get an appropriate computer at the time, it was only recently that I got the game with FA. I only discovered PA through an accident. Mis-clicked in a forum and opened the general gaming chat. Someone has posted a thread about this. It took all of 2 seconds for my jaw to drop and my quest to learn more to begin. Needless to say, I'm very happy now. Very, very happy to see something like TA being done again. Perhaps it was the computer limitations, but SupCom never really took hold for me. There was just something more fun about destroying things in TA than SupCom. I liked the improvements, but it just didn't feel the same. Taking the best of both games will undoubtedly produce the ultimate RTS. I'm glad to hear their embracing potential future scalability. With TA, I needed only to increase the units caps, and it instantly became dramatically better using modern devices. I really can't wait to see what happens with PA.
The first time I every played TA was on my dad's computer at work. It was a Red Triangle FFA against OTA easy AI. Ah, memories...
I started with TA at the same time I started with my first post Windows 3.11 PC, when I was about 13 or so. A family friend had specced and built the computer for us, and when he loaded up Windows 95, he included some popular game demos, like Dark Reign. But the TA demo (this was just pre-release of the game itself) had me hooked, even though you could only play the first couple of missions. I played them to death. When I got the full game, I talked some friends into it - not easy, because like a lot of people at the time, they were mainly console gamers. I first recall playing at a friend's house... we were doing a weekend-long sleepover, and we spent most of the weekend gathered around his PC playing TA and DungeonKeeper. We actually focused on the TA campaign - I remember trading off missions... and I remember getting my *** kicked in the fifth mission while I was fiddling around building weapons and units just to see what they did. After that, I joined Annihilated.com, and got completely hooked on early internet forum culture, trying to learn new strategies from the leading lights at the time, guys like Grey_Weasel, Teeman, the Gnugs, SY's. It was a good time, especially as new units got released and changed the whole dynamic every week or so. Then there were the guys and gals at the Cavedog War Stories Board - my first taste of fanfiction written by genuinely good authors. A lot of what kept me hooked on PC gaming for the past decade-plus was TA, and what it represented - a form of game that was simultaneously exciting, challenging, competitive, intelligent... and pretty much off-limits to consoles. And of course, PC gaming leads to upgrades, overclocking, experimentation with hardware and software... and eventually my current IT career. Thanks guys! :lol:
