Dark Reign 2 is a 3D real-time strategy game. As such, it’s a solid game, but it doesn’t really bring much of anything new to the table. You start off by picking either the JDA or the Sprawlers, two factions in a minor war taking place on the Earth’s surface. Bad Things have happened, and it looks like it’s all going to end soon. Both factions have ten missions, which quickly ramp up in complexity and difficulty, before you beat the game. The plot itself is pretty interesting, but will probably only really intrigue those of us who played the original
Dark Reign and care to see just how it all started.
The game itself is played in a pretty standard RTS method. You command your troops around, zooming around the map to see just what’s going on. As a true 3D game, you’re going to want to learn the controls quickly, as you’ll need to swivel your map to get better views and whatnot. Function keys set your camera at preset levels, and a nifty add-on on the Pandemic website lets you get an even better view of the action. I really wish that the game had some sort of “control introduction,” though, like Ground Control did, as it would have made my page-flipping instruction book fest a little shorter. Once you get the hang of the controls, though, moving your camera to wherever you want to look becomes a piece of cake.
You’ll be constructing bases and building units, just like in every other RTS out there. Once of the nice things about DR2 is that the construction queues are always at the bottom of your screen, so you don’t have to go back to the base to tell your factories to pump out more units. This is a very nice time-saving feature, and one that you’ll be making use of a whole lot.
I also particularly like the energy walls in the game. Most of the stationary, one-square constructions -- guns, anti-air, and even posts designed for this sole use -- can make energy walls between each other, effectively protecting your base from a grunt rush. Of course, you can turn the walls off and on as needed, to let your troops pass, which is a very nice feature. You’ll need to keep the posts in top condition, though, if you want a chance to actually survive said grunt rushes.
The game itself is usually quite interesting, with each mission really consisting of two or three different goals -- get to a location, perhaps, then protect it, then blow something up, then protect something else. This also means that the missions tend to be long -- so save often, and save carefully. They really never get tiring, though, although the “puzzle” missions are irritating as always.
Dark Reign 2 also offers multiplayer abilities, with scads of options and play modes (King of the Hill! Woo!). If you can’t find anyone to play with online, you can always do an “Instant Action” mission which throws you against a configurable number of computer players in any deathmatch map. You can also throw computer players into unoccupied slots in the multiplayer games. And if you get tired of all of that, you can go to Pandemic’s site and download DarkRain, which is basically Tetris in the DR2 engine. I have a feeling that they were inspired by the UWindow Tetris put out a while back for Unreal Tournament, and I must say that I’m impressed -- these sort of useless danglies are the kind of thing that make me like a game.
DR2 has its problems, however. The path-finding in the game is absolutely horrible, and it’s depressing to watch a line of your troops bump into each other constantly, wending their way across a vast open plane single-file at a quarter of the speed that they’d manage if they spread out a little. Urgh. And for all its fun, DR2 is decidedly standard. It doesn’t offer much more to the RTS community than it hands out, build queues aside. Even when you’re having fun, deep in the middle of a battle, you’ll find yourself overcome by a feeling of déjà vu. Yes, you have done it before -- in many, many games. Good thing Dark Reign 2 does it well enough for you to not mind too terribly much.
