Total Annihilation
"Total Annihilation" was one of the first RTS games to feature radar that showed enemy units within its radius on the minimap. This added an additional element of electronic warfare to the game: players could construct radar jammers that prevented units in a small radius around them from appearing on radar. Mobile radar jammers could be used to create surprise attacks, necessitating the deployment of scout units on a regular basis to reveal said units visually. In addition, radar jammers could disguise the presence of visually cloaked units, such as the commander or land mines. Radar fields rendered cloaked units detectable; a radar jammer could make said units undetectable until the radar jammer was destroyed. "Total Annihilation" was also one of the first RTS games to point the way towards battlefields with hundreds and thousands of units. Previous games could field a hundred units or so. However, Total Annihilation initially permitted 250 units per side which was later patched to 500. A third party patch allowed up to 5,000 units per side.
Spartan: Total Warrior
More information about the game was released just prior to the E3 event in May. Two non-playable demo levels were shown, demonstrating the game engine's ability to create battles involving up to 170 soldiers, with advanced AI resulting in enemies and allies fighting one another irrespective of the player's actions. A new playable demo was made available at E3 itself, with Sega emphasizing that at any one time in battle, the player may have three or four simultaneous objectives. A near complete build of the game was sent out to gaming websites in August. IGN's Juan Castro wrote "while unfinished, "Spartan: Total Warrior" looks good and plays well [...] combat feels intense and moves at a fluid pace, running at a solid framerate throughout." GameSpot's Justin Calvert was equally impressed, especially with the absence of in-game loading; "there are absolutely no load times once the action gets under way--which is no small achievement, given the sheer scale of some of the environments."
"Spartan: Total Warrior" received "mixed or average reviews" across all systems; the GameCube version holds an aggregate score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on twenty-four reviews; the PlayStation 2 version 74 out of 100, based on thirty-three reviews; and the Xbox version 73 out of 100 based on thirty-six reviews.
GameSpot's Greg Mueller scored the game 7.1 out of 10, calling it "a basic action game with a heavy dose of button mashing and a little bit of task management." Finding the combat repetitive, he argued, "even with the rage moves the combat can get pretty dull after a while." He was also critical of the graphics, writing "detail is sometimes sacrificed to achieve that nice frame rate. The character models are blocky, and they don't animate particularly well. Additionally, all the textures are fuzzy and bland." He concluded, ""Spartan: Total Warrior" is a pretty fun, though derivative, action game that should keep you entertained for at least the six or seven hours it takes you to get through the story. With just a bit more effort, "Spartan" could have been great."
IGN's Juan Castro scored the game 7.9 out of 10, arguing that "as exhilarating and action-packed as the game gets, it also gets mind-devastatingly annoying." He was particularly critical of the targeting camera when using the bow. On the other hand, he called it "a technically great game. The engine pushes hundreds of units at once while offering a good deal of visual panache. There's little to no slowdown throughout the entire experience, even with explosions rocking the screen and body parts flying every which way." He concluded "it does so many things right that it genuinely pains us to see the experience get bogged down by a handful of major annoyances. Creative Assembly crafted a marvelous game engine, too, one that affords spectacular encounters filled with more action, blood and "Holy crap did you see that!?" moments than we'd care to mention. It's therefore unfortunate that the unrefined targeting system, cheap boss battles and generally unhelpful friendly AI make the experience a mixed bag of exhilarating and exasperating moments."
Eurogamer's Kieron Gillen scored the PlayStation 2 version 8 out of 10, writing "initially playing it is a shock, immediately having a scope which few PS2 games - hell, few games full stop - manage to match. Opening scenes with you as a soldier among dozens in the defence of Sparta are reminiscent of "Call of Duty"s Russian scenes. Epic is the word." He also praised the combat and the controls, feeling the game just about avoided being a button masher. However, he found it too difficult in places, and felt that often, the time between save points was too long. However, he concluded by referring to the game as "a whole lot of slick, entertaining violence."
GamesRadar's Brent Goodsmith scored the game 4 out of 5. He felt it was a button masher, arguing that attacking "is executed via the trusted medium of button bashing. The developers will hate us for saying this, because they've pointed out to us on multiple occasions the non-bashy, all-skillsy nature of "Spartan: Total Warrior"s combat." However, he didn't see this as an inherent problem; "regardless of how it is achieved, the result is much the same: oodles of rapid-fire killing and the satisfaction of hacking up enemies more numerous than in any console action game that has gone before." He concluded ""Spartan" does things right out of the box that the première hack-and-slash series "Dynasty Warriors", about to release its "tenth" PS2 entry, has yet to achieve."