Rating: 
Summary: Amazing graphics but your system has to handle it
Review: Ground Control always makes me start humming 'Major Tom' - the game itself is quite down to earth, though. The premise is quite interesting. You're a 34 year old senior female military person, working for the Crayven Corporation. The Order is your enemy, and you fight them.That's about all you know as you begin the game. You fight them because you're told to by the cold manager, Enrica Hayes who has no brains and couldn't care why you do what you do. When you get your mission briefings from Enrica, you then get to configure your units with whatever options are available, fill your drop ships, and land to attack. The game works with individuals grouped together into set units. While a set of 4 tanks move together, a particular tank can get wounded and die. You can't tell a particular tank to go somewhere on its own, though. The unit moves together. This makes it easier to manage many missions, simply grabbing units and pointing them in directions. The graphics are great! Ground Control has the move-anywhere view that Dark Reign 2 uses. Very intuitive and easy to use. Follow along with a unit, or get a birds-eye view of the great graphical combats. While my Athlon-750 often choked on some of the larger scale combats (boding poor results for slower machines), in general it whisked along at a good clip. The landscape is fully three dimensional and fully rendered. Hide in the shadow of a cliff to get an ambush jump on your enemy. Sneak along under trees or overhangings to avoid being seen. Troops have options for weaponry and healing that can be customized. Troops can be carried in APCs to zip from location to location, and peel out quickly into whichever formation you specify. The downsides on the game are the stuttering I mentioned before on heavy-graphic situations, and also the general situation you, Major Sarah Parker, find yourself in. While it's great that the lead player and her boss are both women, it's very, very annoying playing a game in which you watch your 'friends' shoot up hospitals, where you're berated by your commander and where no matter how quickly you get to someone, the program insists it's "too late" and you must watch the person die to further the plot. I have enough frustration in real life without playing a game in which the lead character is drinking after each mission, wondering why she even keeps fighting. Does that provide any incentive for the player to want to keep playing? Also, most games of this style allow the player to choose amongst factions and decide which side to play. In this game it's very linear. Each mission is forced on you, and what you do in the mission is pre-set. While replaying the same mission 10 times might have them decide to attack from the NE or the SE randomly, they always attack, and then the same exact messages always appear, which you cannot click through. If you enjoy strategy combat without building units or structures, and have a fast enough machine to handle this, Ground Control might be the perfect game for you!
Rating: 
Summary: Grounded?
Review: Maybe. But the graphics are excellent. Best RTS ever? No way! While it has its moments, it also has its problems. Again, graphics are terrific. Some of the units are cool, but some of the air units they have can't attack anything, so why have them! The missions are a joke for the most part. I played this game for 3 days totaling about 8 hours and beat 14 missions. A little too easy if you ask me. The screen movement is alot like Myth, it ... . Its tough to find a good line of sight and you can't get a good look at the battles going on because if move in too close, then you miss getting attacked somewhere else. Plus they have a bunch of icons all over the screen that block your view. The music is also good. The cinematics were good as was the story. I expected a little more from a Sierra product especially after Half-life. Overall, I did enjoy the game. I would have liked it more if it was a little harder. Kinda of stinks to spend that kind of money for such an easy game.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful, but horrid. Lots of thorns on this rose.
Review: Ground Control has beautiful graphics if you can get it to run. Here's my list of complaints: *1* When I first installed it, the graphics were extremely slow... like 2 frames a second. Updating drivers fixed this but it still lags a bit on complex scenes (and this is with a GeForce 256, Dual Pentium II 400MHz, and 256 MB). *2* The 32-bit rendering video option makes gameplay MUCH better looking, but then the in-game cinematics are HORRID and choppy (unwatchable). Unfortunately, there's no way to switch render modes once you are in the game. (again... this is only a problem with some video cards apparently). Choose one: better color during gameplay, or movies at the end of some missions. Too bad you can't have both on some of the most popular video cards. *3* You cannot replay a mission of the game once you've made it through... you can only go forward to the next mission. *4* You cannot save a mission in progress to pick it up again later. You HAVE TO play each mission completely at one sitting. If you die at the very end after an hour of careful play, YOU HAVE TO PLAY THE WHOLE THING AGAIN. This is extremely frustrating and tedious, especially later in the game where missions have 3 or 4 separate parts. Even though you figured out how to win parts 1, 2, and 3, you have to do them all again just to try something different at the end. Eventually you just don't care anymore. It's absolute insanity and I think it's the final blow that makes this game a failure in spite of strong visual merits. As these reviews indicate, Ground Control flops back and forth between 5 stars and 1 star. You have to love the core gameplay, but when it's bad, IT'S REALLY REALLY BAD. I think this game could be unanimously amazing with a few patches and changes in single-player idealogy. It's trapped in the 1980's with no in-game save ability whatsoever.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed with Ground Control.
Review: THis game is not as good as I anticipated from the reviews. The motion is choppy, control response is poor and my computer locks up during game play. I opened it and now I have to keep it. Keep away from this one.
Rating: 
Summary: BEST WARTIME RTS GAME YET!
Review: Blows away anything I've ever played. As a former US Marine Tanker from 29 Palms, CA, I was surprised at how realistic and true-to-life the game really was. From tactics to weapons to troop formation to graphics and sounds, Ground Control is an amazingly real experience. The one thing that may turn people off is the view controls. DON'T LET IT FOOL YOU. It can take a little while to get used to. Unlike StarCraft, with GC the player can zoom in and out, up and down and all over for a real 3D game. There is no view that the player cannot have. But it does take a a little practice and getting used to, so don't get frustrated. Overall an outstanding game. A must for anyone serious about RTS war games.
Rating:
Summary: Camera control is awsome.
Review: I'm only going to write about the camera control. Other people have written enough about gameplay, graphics, etc. Quite simply, the camera control in this game is close to perfection. Essentially, this is how you move. You use the arrow keys to move forward and backwards, and to turn left and right. You use the mouse wheel to move up and down. (if you don't have a mouse wheel, you press shift, then move the mouse up and down). Simple enough, isn't it? The surprising thing is that it really works. You can easily command your troops from closeby. You don't have to go high up and make your units look like dots (as is the case with force commander) You can stay ground lever with them and still easily be able to attack targets, etc. The only thing is that you have to watch your back. This 3D camera view brings on a new dimension in gameplay. Since you an only see enemy units that are in your units' line of sight, and some units have longer lines of sight that others, this brings up some interesting opportunities. Ambushes are very easy to pull off now, and are rather effective. Using a scout unit, you can order artilley to hit enemy troops and they wont even know what hit them. All in all, the best strategy game I've played. One minor problem with it though. You can't save during a mission. Kind of annoying when you reach the last few missions. They probably should release a patch correcting this, sometime soon I hope. Oh yes, and the multiplayer is very good. The drop-in game works just like deathmatch and is very well done.
Rating:
Summary: A few good features....
Review: A veteran of a number of these sorts of small unit tactics games, I have often complained about the grouping functions being exclusive. That is, you cannot group 'long range' in group 1, 'fast' in group 2 and 'stealthy' in group 3 if you have overlaps in the units between them. Ground Control gives you complete freedom to classify and group your units any way you like. I find that indispensable when facing the need to react quickly to any of several different threats. Group 'fast' units under hot key 1 and, for instance, when you come under fire from enemy artillery, you can press 1, click on the offending gun and then concentrate on moving the rest of your units out of the line of fire. Find yourself facing heavy armor in an ambush, press the hotkey you designated for 'kill the tanks', click-surround the target group, and move your more vulnerable units out of the way. The ability to have a unit in both groupings means not having artificial restrictions on the ability to react quickly. All by itself, this feature places GC above TA and C&C. I find the graphics stunning, but I spent the bucks for a stellar graphics card, in software mode it's average to poor. I did run into an odd bug (not necessarliy GC's fault) that caused a system lock-up after mission 14, reloading the GC software and cleaning up my own PC with unInstaller fixed it (I never did identify the exact conflict and I have found no other players that had that problem - it's most likely my own machine). I have not delved deeply into the authoring tools that came with the CD other than to download all of the updates from the vendor, but the ability to create maps, and more importantly, create interlinking maps as a campaign looks interesting. When I get tired of playing what came with the game I'll probably spend some time creating missions. I did not, however, see any sort of a unit editor. Perhaps that will be released at a later date. If you like TA or C&C for the combat (not for the resource management) or if you are an afficianado of small unit tactics board games you will enjoy this. The interface is less click happy than most, scaling in and out of the battlefield POF is simple and intuitive. Commands are carried out with relative intelligence on the part of the ordered units. Things behave as you would expect them to.
Rating:
Summary: Unreasonable Fustration !!!
Review: After downloading the most recent video and audio drivers from my computer manufacture, updating my Bios...and downloading the 1008 patch from Sierra it still won't start. I'm not a computer geek. I don't want to reinvent an operating system or sit around for 3 hours downloading this and upgrading that just to make a da-n game, that I paid more for than a family trip to the movies, run like it should have out of the box. If Sierra fixes this game so it works, mabe I can actually review it. But for now, RETURN.
Rating:
Summary: Utter Pants!!!!!!
Review: What can i say about this game that will bring it from the ashes. Frankly nothing, its terrible. It took me around three days just to get it working and then it still constantly crashed. When i finaly did get to play, i found the levels were boring, repetative and dull. I'm a big fan of strategy games, and out of the recent titles i have bought this has got to be the worst. If you have already ordered this then cancel and treat yourself to a good strategy game like "Shogun" or my preference "Dogs of War".
Rating:
Summary: The Cutting Edge of Computer Wargaming
Review: This is an intense real-time tactical game realized in what is *by far* the finest 3-D engine ever seen in a computer game. Whether you position your camera 500 yards over your strike force for a bird's eye view of your position or right over the shoulder of one of your elite recon infantrymen as you sneak him through a narrow mountain pass, the graphics are both breathtaking and seamless. The first time you swivel up the view to a beautiful alien sky and see artillery shells arc slowly up from behind a distant hill, only to crash down and scorch a heavy armor squad in a splash of purple plasma, you will be sold. Of course, these graphics have inevitably led to charges that Ground Control is just "eye candy." Such charges are nonsense. Some people either (1) are judging the game from the demo, (2) have never explored the gameplay enough to appreciate how complex it is, or (3) are too comfortable with the very familiar ideas that dominate nearly all other real-time strategy games to appreciate one that is purely military. For one thing, no other RTS game requires you to cope with and use terrain the way Ground Control does. Vision in the game is all true line-of-sight, so you have to send forward observers to direct your artillery and rocket fire or deploy mobile radar stations on peaks or ridges from which it can scan the widest possible area. Some battles are conducted in the dead of night in jungle, and the player who can learn to negotiate the terrain by feel will have an enormous advantage. For another thing, you have to control your units on many, many more levels than you do in any other RTS game. Setting each squad's "personality" in terms of fire, movement, and formation is vital to play. Friendly fire is always a danger in Ground Control unless you position your squads to avoid it, whereas in other games your arrows, lasers etc. simply cannot hit your own men. Stealth and perception of hidden enemies are vital to success, and capacities vary by squad type. And you must anticipate your needs accurately when arming and configuring your squads before the battle: will your infantry need mortars to fire over obstacles, or should they get anti-tank rockets? Should you use ground or air reconnaissance? Should you plan an air assault, or will your opponent be too well prepared? How will you take out his artillery if he seizes a good position? When played well, the tactical demands of Ground Control make the standard RTS task of gathering enough resources fast enough to make 50 paladins (or whatever) look rather silly. If you like excitement, tactics, and having to think on your feet, get Ground Control.
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