ARTICLE - Planetary Annihilation: TITANS 105067

Howdy my dudes! Sorry it has taken so long to get this out, I’ve had a hard time coming back after I broke my arm a few weeks back. Anyways, for this week: Planetary Annihilation: TITANS!

As the game starts, the player chooses where they want their
commander to land, and on which planet.

Uber Entertainment's Planetary Annihilation (PA) is an RTS in the vein of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, with a resource-stream type economy and with factories to build units. The one big difference between Planetary Annihilation and these other games is that Planetary Annihilation is played on the surface of a planet, a spherical map. This one change in mechanics does a lot to set Planetary Annihilation apart from any other given RTS, and goes a long way for making the game worthwhile.

Your commander has buffs to its build speed
and is important for quickly building a base.

Vehicles are slow, but powerful.
Also, the visuals are quite nice.

If you have ever played a game like Supreme Commander or Total Annihilation, you’re already halfway to a thorough understanding of how to play the game. These games all play similarly, in that resources are collected through a “resource-stream” economy (meaning that resources are collected and used by the second, rather than instantaneously) and that units are produced through factories. There are 5 types of units in the game, bots (mechs), vehicles (tanks), air (airplanes), sea (ships), and orbital (satellites). Every type of unit needs it’s own specific kind of factory to be produced, with bots needing a bot factory, for instance, and each type of unit has its own strengths and weaknesses. Bots can go wherever they want but are somewhat weak in comparison to other units, vehicles are limited to movement on land but are more powerful, and air units can move anywhere they want quickly, but can be easily taken down by AA guns. Of course, the thing that makes gameplay in Planetary Annihilation really shine is the planets. Units can be moved between planetary bodies by using orbital units, or they can be shot onto a planet’s surface by a Unit Cannon, for instance. This basically means that players are fighting each other on multiple maps simultaneously, creating interesting new challenges and strategies. And, awesomely, if you don’t want to kill your enemy the old-fashioned way, you can always build a Death Star-style superlaser to blow up their planet from a distance. The explosions are fabulous.

When you lose your commander,
he goes up in flames. And you lose.

While there is a lot of praise to be had for Planetary Annihilation, the game has a number of shortcomings. For one, matches can have a high likelihood of ending in stalemate if they get to the late game. Especially on one-planet matches, nukes and artillery are capable of destroying large armies before they have a chance to deal any damage, so if both players have these weapons, neither player will be able to reach the other. Another issue is that there is a relative lack of diversity in the units of the base game. With only 5 kinds of units, and a handful of units for each type, the roster is limited, compared to games like Supreme Commander. Within this roster, some units aren’t even useful on most maps, which is the case of Sea units, as most maps lack water. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that there are no factions in the game, so all players are stuck with the same limited roster. The final and most condemning issue is that of the poor optimization and an abundance of bugs. While this issue has improved greatly since the release of the game, it is still present. On less powerful machines, the game can and will slow to a crawl with greater numbers of units. The simple graphics will need to be put to a minimum within the settings on machines that are anything less than purpose-built gaming machines. And indeed even on my computer, which is on the higher end, I had issues with painfully slow menus. (If you have this issue, this post was helpful for me: PAForums) While the gameplay is generally enjoyable, the bugs cannot be ignored, and quite frankly, they should have been fixed long before the release of Titans.

All in all, Planetary Annihilation is a game with great gameplay, but it suffers from poor optimization and a rough finish. The epic scale of interplanetary combat makes for an awesome experience, but the experience can be hindered by poor performance. Generally, I am somewhat disappointed by the unit list, by the general ineffectiveness of Sea units. The proliferation of bugs is also a huge issue which has yet to be fully fixed. The unpolished nature of the game makes it a hard recommendation, but the gameplay really is fun if your machine can handle it. If you are interested in buying Planetary Annihilation, I would be ready to return it through Steam if you cannot get it to run at an acceptable level.

Tried to set up a few rockets on a moon and crash it into the main planet.
Instead, my commander got LOST IN SPACE. Unfortunately, a fairly common bug.
Also... WHAT IS THAT METAL USE PERCENTAGE?!?!?