Is it me, or do you find that as games of this genre get more complex, so does the plot? Ok, so it has to have one. What game doesn't these days? Even the pinball games have you involved in time-travel and battling evil! Well, I'm glad to say that Dark Reign doesn't disappoint in this area. Here too, there's a touch of time travel, and bucket loads of beating up the bad guys. Or the good guys! The basis of the plot is you have to fight loads of battles between the GDI and the Brotherhood of... no, that's not right... oh yes, between the JDA and the Freedom Guard (that's better) that have already been fought. Only this will prove your worthiness to fight the ultimate battle in order to save some bloke. Inspiring stuff, huh?

New and exciting?

Almost. The game is played on the now-traditional look down map, with no grid or hexes to constrain movement, as seen in other strategy games of this genre, such as... err... I can't seem to think of any off-hand, but you know what I mean. The map itself is multi-level. That is, there are hills to go up and down, trees to avoid, and other interesting terrain features, such as rivers or lakes, depending on the climate of the world. Such landscapes of snow, desert and jungle are amongst the terrain you'll drive across, hide in and fight over. Another nice touch is the trees. They are not only well drawn, but also correctly used, so you can drive or walk your units under the foliage, partly obscuring them.

The game has full line of sight and fog of war rules. What this means in English is that you can only see what your units can see. Once an area of land has been viewed by one of your forces, it remains on your map, and you can see what is happening in that area as long as your units can see it. If you have no units that can see that particular point on the map, then it's greyed out and you are unable to see enemy units moving around in that area. This is where it's important to hold the high ground, as this will increase your range of view, and you're also less likely to have your line of sight interrupted by terrain if you're at the top of a very high hill. But bear in mind, you still get blind spots on reverse slopes of hillocks, even if they're within your sighting range.

The screen itself is divided into two parts, with the main game area covering most of the screen, and a toolbar taking up the right hand side. From this toolbar, you can give units specific orders, such as search and destroy, scout, harass, hide, follow a programmed path or other unit, or building-specific orders. On the bottom of this toolbar is a minimap, which as you can probably guess, is a small overall view of the known battlefield. There are also a couple of small bars that indicate the power levels and current water stored (more on this subject later).

Build me a building as fast as you can.

As in most other games of this type, there are a variety of buildings and units in the game that all perform different functions. To build a healthy base camp, you must have a good selection of buildings that are constructed by Construction Rigs (which look a little like the power loaders from Aliens). These are manufactured by your HQ building, so it's usually a good idea to build one of those first with whatever Construction Rigs you're supplied with at the start of the game. The next two buildings you have to knock up are a power station, and a Tiberium Refinery... sorry, a Water Launch Pad. Water is the most precious commodity in the universe, so once you have one of these, you can use the harvester... sorry, freighter that comes with it to go and collect the tiber... water (I don't know where I'm getting these wrong names from) for transport and sale off-world. This gets you more dosh with which to build other units and buildings.

Not all buildings or units are available to build immediately. Some have to have a specific building erected or upgraded to enable you to build them (sound familiar?). There is a very good selection of buildings available in the game though, which differ slightly depending on who you side with. Most buildings are common to both sides, such as:

Headquarters.

This is the most important building. It allows the construction of other buildings using Building Rigs (also manufactured here) and provides the minimap view.

Taelon Power Generator.

This is the bases' power supply. Its output can be increased by using extra Taelon crystals dug up with the Freighter (one free with every Generator! Hurry, only while stocks last!)

Water Launch Pad.

The money maker. Get water to it using those free Freighters, (one with every Pad too! Offer must end soon!), and when it's filled up, the water's sold, adding money to your coffers.

Training Facility.
This allows you to build some basic infantry unit types, but can be upgraded to produce more specialised units.

Assembly Plant.
For the construction of vehicles, this structure can also be upgraded to produce a bigger variety of units.

Re-Arming Deck.
Used to re-arm airborne units, and also allows their production at the Assembly Plant. Repairs must still be carried out at the Repair Station.

Field Hospital.
A repair station for infantry units.

Repair Station.
A field hospital for vehicles.

There are also other, smaller buildings you can construct, such as a camera tower, fixed defence guns for either ground or air defence, bridges and barricades. The unique buildings available to either side are limited. The Freedom Guard have a phasing facility which allows special units to hide underground. The Imperium (which is the name the JDA go by) have a Temporal Gate which can teleport five units anywhere on the map, and a Temporal Rift Creator. This creates a gap in the universe which sucks units into nothingness, never to be seen again (a bit like the gap at the back of the sofa).

A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.

Failing that, a Triple Rail Hover Tank would do nicely.

There's an excellent selection of units on the battlefield in Dark Reign that can walk, drive, hover or fly around the combat area. Only three units are common to both sides. These are the Construction Rigs, Freighters, or Hover Freighters. The rest depend on who you're rooting for.

The Freedom Guards can call on five different tracked vehicles, namely a Skirmish Tank, Phase Tank, Triple Rail Hover Tank, a Tank Hunter and a Shock Wave (which is basically a portable earthquake). There's a nippy Spider Bike (very handy around town) and Hellstorm Artillery provide that 'reach out and touch someone' capability. Airborne units consist of either a Sky Bike (based on the Spider Bike), and the Outrider which is the Freedom boys' behemoth of the sky. They've even modified Construction Rigs to become slow mobile anti-aircraft defences. There are also two different armoured transports available to move ground troops around, one able to move underground using Phasing technology.

Talking of infantry, they have Raiders who are able to phase, Mercenaries who have a bit more firepower strapped to their shoulders, and Martyrs who are suicide cases with big bombs on their backs.. Scouts have the ability to morph into inanimate objects to escape detection, and Infiltrators who, if they are able to get into an enemy HQ, can steal plans for enemy buildings. On the less destructive side, there is also a Field Medic and a Mechanic who repair infantry and vehicles respectively.

The Imperium forces have Scout Tanks, Plasma Tanks and the huge Tachion Tanks, while SCARAB units provide powerful artillery support. They also have a very interesting selection of other vehicles, such as the Shredder which is basically a hovering set of spinning blades or a Hostage Taker, which grabs enemy units, brainwashes them, and sends them back out under your control with a huge bomb strapped to their back. For mobile air defence, they rely on a MAD unit, which fires bladed orbs at enemy aircraft. They have an air force consisting of an unarmed Recon Drone, the Cyclone, a good all-round multi-role aircraft, and the Sky Fortress, which houses the largest plasma cannon known to man, and it flies. Slowly. The Imperium boys can also be ferried around in armoured transport.

As to the footsoldiers, there's the Guardian, armed with a laser rifle, or the Exterminator that can hover and fire chemical grenades. The Bion is a heavily armed cyborg, and the Imperium's Infiltrator does the same job as the Freedom Guard model. No mechanics are trained by the Imperium, but they do have their own warped version of a medic called the Amper. This lunatic cyborg fires darts into wounded soldiers that restores their health to maximum, but the serum also leaves the unit poisoned so it will eventually die anyway. This slow death also works on enemy units.

Controlling units is (surprise, surprise) almost identical to that other game who's name escapes me. You click on a unit, and then click elsewhere on the map for it to go there. The cursor will change to a targeting cursor if placed over an enemy unit, causing it to head for it and open fire as soon as it's within range. You can drag a box over a few units, and control them around as a group. But this similarity makes good sense in this instance. Why change something that works well? To players of this type of game, controlling the units effectively (and therefore playing more effectively) will be very easy.

Let there be Light

When you get tired of fighting over the same old ground, Dark Reign comes with a Construction Kit, which allows you to create your own maps, set mission objectives, and even develop new AI personalities to fight against. You can place units, buildings and other objects, set unit orders, and make scope for up to eight players in multi-player mode. Which brings me nicely onto multi-player. The game can be played in the usual modes of single player, or head to head via network (up to eight players), direct serial link, modem (at least 14.4Kbps) or internet (up to four players running at least 28.8Kbps).

So come on, is it better than Command and Conquer or what?

Tricky. It is very similar to Command and Conquer in many ways. Possibly too many. But it does have some very nice touches, such as being able to simultaneously produce different unit types if you have two or more Assembly Plants or two Training Facilities. When you send units to be repaired, they then return to the location that you originally sent them from upon completion of repairs. You are able to pack up buildings into trucks, and move them to another part of the map. The terrain height makes a difference. The graphics are vastly superior. The different weapons fire looks and sounds different, with very different explosions, and different effects. There are a lot of new ideas in there. But there are quite a few old ones too.

But hey! Wasn't Command and Conquer a damn fine game? And so should this be. Just don't expect to see something completely original.

Dark Reign will be published by Activision and is due to be released in September 1997.

Please note. Most of the information in this preview was gained by playing a beta copy of the game. However, some parts of the game are not yet completed, so information was also used from the provisional manual that I received with the game. As is usual with previews based on beta`s, some things mentioned may not appear in the final version.

Tim Still for Game Over!