I’ve written about plenty of mobile and web browser MMOs like Soldiers Inc. and Nova Genesis, so I’m going to write about something a bit different today. I’m going to write about a client based strategy MMORPG called Planetary Annihilation, the successor to the original Total Annihilation game. I stumbled upon Planetary Annihilation on Steam a couple of days ago and have been playing it quite a bit over the last 24 hours both online and single player. Starcraft was my first real time strategy game, but I remember playing Total Annihilation shortly afterwards. Planetary Annihilation is an incredibly fun game and builds upon the same core gameplay of the original title. Where the game really shines is its incredible scale.
Unlike traditional strategy games, Planetary Annihilation lets players battle on land, air, water, and even space. The game can be configured so the map takes place In an entire solar system, giving the game an epic scale typically not seen in RTS games. This kind of scale is usually reserved for slower paced games like Sins of a Solar Empire or Civilization V. On a slight tanget, I haven’t played Sins of a Solar Empire, but the company behind that game recently released a new MOBA called Sins of a Dark Age which is quite addicting IMO. The goal of the game is simple, destroy your enemy’s commander before they destroy yours. Metal and Energy are the game’s two resources and can be obtained in infinite quantities by capturing metal resource locations and building energy plants. The game’s scale really becomes apparent after getting 30 minutes into a game, as players can literally field 1,000+ units on the screen at once. In one long, drawn out game, I managed to build 800 ships and send them enmasse against my opponent, which was an epic battle. The sheer scale of battles in Planetary Annihilation is unmatched by any other game. I mean, technically, you can have thousands of soldiers on Sparta: War of Empires or other strategy games, but they’re just numbers on the screen. They aren’t actually on the field like they are in Planetary Annihilation.
My biggest complaint with the game is that there aren’t many players online. I think the game was marketed quite poorly as it’s hard to find anyone online to play with. The game did get a lot of flack by releasing the game to early access users for an eye popping $100 price tag. I ended up buying it on the Humble Bundle for like $5. So yeah, on the PC front, I’ve been playing Planetary Annihilation, but Iv’e also been playing Trove and Magicka: Wizard Wars. Both are fun and free to play. I’m a petty big fan of MOBAs too, and Dragons and Titans caught my eye earlier when I stumbled upon it on Steam. It’s actually available for Android as well through the Google play store. It’s one of the only mobile MOBAs i’ve seen and will likely write about it later. Anyway, that’s it for now. Anyone else play Planetary Annihilation? Anyone wanna play with me sometime?