First 50:
51. Ori and the Blind Forest - Xbox One
52. AM2R - PC
53. Total Annihilation - PC
54. I Am Setsuna - PS4
55. Planetary Annihilation Titans - PC
56. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - PC
57. Dark Reign - Rise of the Shadowhand - PC
I was trying to beat this before Deus Ex came out, but I ended up still having two missions left. So once I was finished with DX I knocked those two out. And I'm happy I'm done with them.
So Dark Reign came out a month before Total Annihilation and was all set to duel with it for RTS supremacy. Except StarCraft came out a few months later, stomped them both, and TA only managed to hang on as a cult classic. Dark Reign does a lot of interesting stuff; it's got an extensive waypoint system that is created independent of unit orders (so you can add units to a path later on), a fantastically complex fog of war and elevation system, and sophisticated unit AI that was designed to remove some of the micro. Unfortunately, all of those ended up having their downsides; waypoints were rarely necessary, the pure 2D graphics made it hard to tell what direction slopes were going in and you massively suffered from not getting line of sight for attacks, and the Ai orders still required a lot of micro to fully use, only this time it was a different kind of micro.
Rise of the Shadowhand is the expansion to the base game. The base game consisted of 12 missions you could play as either side followed by a thirteenth mission. The twelve would be the same map for each side, but you'd be taking on each other's roles. For example, one mission might be that the Freedom Guard needs to save up 30000 credits while defending against the Imperials, while playing that map as the Imperials will have you trying to stomp that same base. The expansion removes this; instead you have seven unique missions for each side. So in terms of content it's just as much as the base game. Additionally, there are two "new" factions. I use quotes because each one takes one of the base two factions and replaces half the units.
The Shadowhand is the Imperial replacement, which removes most of the hover technology in favor of cyborg walkers. This gives you more flexibility in terms of how you can attack but you end up losing out on harass. It also replaces the Sky Fortress with a bomber that shoots incendiary missiles with a large damage radius. I found them to be more usable than Sky Fortresses, so a win there.
The Xenites are the Freedom Guard replacement. This replaces the best vehicles and infantry with this horrible system of alien creatures. There is a basic melee alien and a heavy ranged alien. They do a lot of damage, but they are also feral. The only way to control them is with special control units. The low level control unit is an infantry unit with no attacks. The high level control unit is the heavy ranged alien with a guy on top. This mechanic is awful, and I ended up just making the high level control unit so I didn't have to dick around with the whole system.
The other thing about the expansion is that most of the maps are "gimmick" maps. They all seem overwhelming at the start, but in each mission you end up getting an ah-hah moment where you realize the exact sequence of steps you need to get up a couple of heavy base defenses. Since base defenses are hilariously amazing in Dark Reign once you get a basic defensive perimeter up you can sit back and build the necessary army to steamroll. The only deviations are the commando missions (ones where you don't get a base, so in every game where these show up they have some sort of gimmick), the first Freedom Guard mission, and the last Imperial mission. The first Freedom Guard mission's gimmick is actually the fact that you don't come under the threatened timer until you attack the com stations while a unit is on their plateaus. Using a Scout on the slopes and a brace of artillery lets you clear it out at your leisure, and you don't get attacked much. The last Imperial mission is actually neigh-impossible to set up a defensive perimeter on because your base is surrounded by hills and valleys. Instead you just blitz to air units and get a handful of the bombers before you run out of your starting units and use those as defense, as the enemy doesn't send any threatening anti-air units on attack.
Personally, I can't recommend the expansion to people who've played the original. I feel like the missions in the original were more interesting. But at least now I'm one of the foremost authorities on the expansion's single player content, considering just how little information there is about Dark Reign out there. Maybe I'll get bored and write something for GameFAQs on it.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
