Total Annihilation (Jewel Case)

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular
Review: _This is simply the BEST RTS I have ever seen, heard of, or played. It's incredibly fun, there are quite a few ingenious units, the play is exciting and you really do need strategic skills to win, and the replay value is 100% without a doubt. I simply cannot imagine a funner game...except...
_There are a few things bad about this game. Let's start with the original version. Big problem: The enemies always know exactly where you and your units are. The radar jammers and stealth units are meaningless. Another problem is the movement engine. Units move diagonally until they're aligned with the closest line of imaginary grid...then they proceed down that line until they're right next to their destination, where they move diagonally again to finally reach it. They don't actually move in a straight line to their objective. Next, the missile silos built by the AI units just sit there. They don't build missiles and they really don't fire them. Next, the enemy places it's resource collectors in random spots quite often, which is very annoying. Plus, some units it just refuses to build, in any version of the game.
_Now for the problems with the upgraded game versions. The incredibly useful game info bar (shows how many units you've build and the maximum, and what the game speed is), just fails to appear sometimes. Some important things that USED to be reported in the in-game text dialoge just stop showing up there. And the worst one of them all...savegame files get randomly currupted. You'll try to load it, and it'll shut down the game. Oh well, sorry, all that work for nothing. If it weren't for THAT problem (and the problem that the enemy always knows where you are...but there are cheats around that), this game would get a full 5 stars. I really wanted to give it full marks, but when I can't play most of my savegames...it has to be taken down a star.