Dark Reign: Have You Played This Hidden Gem?
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- Dark Reign: The Future of War, released in 1997, was Activision's attempt to thwart Command & Conquer and Starcraft. It released to critical acclaim - but the game's developer fell on hard times.
I'm Greg Lane, the founder of Auran. Thanks for taking the time to review a game that I still have such fond memories of and wonderful to see so many people still commenting after all these years :)
Glad you were able to come across it, Greg!
To this day. I still hear the Terran medic say "Who Bought it" when you click on him. Or the Martyr screaming "want some of this?" FOR THE CAUSE.
Thank you for years of fun
I still have the CD. Great game ^.^
@@mynamejeff785 A-ha-ha-ha! Yeeaaaaah!~ /Kaboom.
@@MeMe-od3ow Same. I also loved the cult like black instructions manual with it's lore dive and history within. Like the bit about the Freedom guard having one eye black to designate them as genetically cued to die and as a subclass of peoples.
Dark Reign, Homeworld and Total Annihilation were the holy trilogy of RTS games for me growing up. Dark Reign had by far one of the best AIs in any game I can recall playing it. It actively hated you, your pet cat and would launch probing raids, flanking attacks.
.... the other 2 kinda don't compare to dark reign .... or the rts of blizzard and westwood
I still play Dark Reign to this day.
The only bit that troubles me is ports of it messing up advanced mechanics of units like the sniper, or that there is no modding community to further it today. Sniper units not being able to sit idly without auto-fire on passing units is annoying especially when you want to have them mask in and wait for enemies main force to pass before flanking or taking on specific targets.
It's mechanical end was glorious. The ability to set paths and routes for your units to follow or set into an indefinite routine of patrolling was great and ahead of everything around it. Advanced controls for agro, ranges of target acquisition, and damage before returning to heal was also epic. Having phasing, temporal rifts, teleporting, seismic waves of destruction, terrain masking units, adopting enemy appearances for your units to sneak them about, desiccators(currency is water, destroying it is a chad move.) and things to depower or steal tech from their bases too, and land and air as well as hover units made it pretty replayable into the indefinite future.
The only bit missing from it's war was naval or space anything. Which looking back would have been a fine expansion should the IP have wanted to advance something. Honestly I think Starcraft only got ahead of it for shinier graphics honestly.
Why Zerg burrow when you could Phasing facility transport five units across the map unseen to unload them in a surprise, phase tank the same as burrowing critters, and even make your units look like trees and things to hide? Where Starcraft did a single feature in a moderate ability Dark Reign went all in and explored out various angles.
As for Dark Reign 2... we wont talk about that 3d mess. It was neat but it's graphics and cinematics still leave me wanting.
That game was so far ahead of it's time that it goddamn near set the bar for the next decade or more. Issue was that not many knew of it or it's release I think. Timing of it's advertisements and lack of convention interfacing let it wither on the vine. I remember picking up a 5$ cd of Starcraft prior to it's release at a computing convention in Ohio. Dark Reign on the other hand was about 20$ and was gotten from a game store with little or no fanfare shy an interesting package at the time.
This game was absolutely magic and one of my favorites! Sad that it was smothered by the RTS boom of the late 90's, with the likes of Total Anihilation, Starcraft, and Age of Empires. Great games, but DR was just forgotten about along with other RTS titles from that era. Remember Dark Colony?
Yep - Dark Colony, Akte Europa, Tzar, Enemy Nations, KKND, Earth series, Tandor, Seven years war, Homeworld...
Dark Reign and Total Anihilation were my absolute favorite RTS games.
yeah dark colony..i thought it sequel from Dark Reign hahaha.. where to play it again?
Total Annihilation : Kingdoms was also epic. Loved the cinematics, the soundtrack, and the quirky units and faction idioms.
I loved Dark Reign back in the day. Without a LAN cable or decent dial-up internet in my neck of the woods, multiplayer RTS games were basically impossible, so all my games were against the computer. And Dark Reign was the only one that had a genuinely challenging AI. It would prowl around the perimeter of your base, find any weak spot and mercilessly exploit it. The other games - C&C Red Alert, Total Annihilation, KKnD - just defaulted to "build the same bunch of guys over and over, and send them to your front door each morning to be blasted".
The manual also had an unusually and unnecessarily detailed backstory for the dystopian future world. Apparently this was because the devs had originally planned a different game in a near-future setting. When they changed their mind and set Dark Reign in a more distant era, they kept the old world concept as part of the history. It makes what could have been a generic setting feel much more solid, shows you how the sinister Imperium evolved and really makes you care about defeating them.
One cheesy trick I used on later levels as Freedom Guard was to build one of those morphing spy units, turn her into a fake tree, and stealthily move her onto the enemy's water aquifer--blocking it so the tankers couldn't use it. 🤣
I never did make it to the end of the game, though. Never got to go back in time and save Togra. 🙁
Played that back in 1997 with my dad. Rest in peace dad.
Thank you so much for covering this game! I played at launch and absolutely loved it!!! What a great game!
Definitely an under rated game. I prefer Total Annihilation but I also think Dark Reign was a great improvement on the C&C formula.
I know Americans can't say Melbourne, but I didn't know they couldn't say Brisbane either 😂... Good video though, I never played the game when it came out, I was mostly into wc2, cnc, and aoe back then, however in the early 2000s I bought some second hand games and found dark reign. The only thing I really remember being outstanding was the music, and was actually looking up the OST when I found your video.
Australia doesn’t exist.
Appreciated! It's always nice when somebody points people to this classic. It was one of the first games I played back then and it was still enjoyable when I played through part of the campaign some years ago. The soundtrack and unit aesthetics as well as the unit voices are certainly a big part of that.
I did find a very detailed document on the unit stats some years ago which were probably extracted from the game files, which did give me a whole new appreciation for the units.
I beta tested the game back in the day. You could also hide units in woods, which was cool. At the time all I played was this and Total Annihilation.
Total Annihilation was awesome as well.
I still remember the screams of the freedom guard martyrs vividly
Channel is so underrated, keep your work it will blow up soon
Later games like Earth 2160 and Warzone 2100 where you could design your own vehicles was somewhat the pinnacle of rts games for me.
This was my first multiplayer RTS. I absolutely loved the way the game had "spotter" units with good line of sight or stealth, and "artillery" units with crazy range (multiple screens). Also the soundtrack is _amazing,_ and still worth a listen today (check it out on RUclips!). A bunch of my teammates from those days still played games 10-20 years later (VuP was fairly big in Tribes 1 for a while too). I wish Jeehun Hwang had kept making gaming music instead of movie music; his movie stuff is so forgettable and bland, but his gaming stuff was _amazing._
Dark Reign 2 was alright too. Reasonably good music, but the gameplay didn't really make the transition to 3D.
KKND (Krush Kill N Destroy) Command and conquer (Red alert) and Dark Reign were a major part of my childhood. I recently reinstalled Dark Reign and am playing it now... so much nostalgia!!
Nice video, well made. It would have been cool if you gave a shoutout to the multiplayer community that's still active.
This game literally just popped in my mind now!!
I can’t believe I remembered the name, I must have been like 10yo ! The nostalgia is hitting me hard rn - thanks!
I love the game even more when playing in super battle mode against another opponent. And the crazy buildings in portals that you can send a black hole open up task for your base so there’s an end build crazy weapons to kill everybody
I played this around the time it came out. It's an extremely ambitious title that stands head and shoulders above the rest of the "C&C clones" at that time. Sadly I found the game to be very difficult, as the control scheme and interface were a bit complicated and the AI was very ruthless. I don't think I was ever able to beat more than 3 or 4 missions.
Dark Reign is certainly difficult, because you're right, the AI is ruthless. It throws everything at you all the time. It's not all that smart, but it moves so fast and has so many units that it can just overwhelm you.
When I gave the campaign another try more recently it gave me a whole new appreciation for the mission design and at least to me it seems that the AI really profits from often being put into a better position than the player.
The prison break mission with the Imperium is one of my favourites. Your base is in shambles when the missions starts and you need to first rebuild everything, pull together the remnants of your army and then determine what the main angles of attack are before going on the offensive.
Dark Reign was one of my favorite games growing up. I was too young to make it very far in the campaign at the time, so I spent most of my time in the editor creating elaborate maps. I credit that experience with pushing me into a career of videogame development and software engineering. I still listen to the sound track from time to time.
My favorite thing to do in this game was sneaking around as a sniper camoflaged as a bush.
... And then a hover-seesaw randomly parks next to you ;7
@@pierre-mariecaulliez6285 Happy memories 😬
My friend and I, just out of highschool and living in Brisbane at the time went to our local game store to pick up something new.
I spotted Dark Reign and saw it was developed in Australia and my friend picked up Total Annihilation.
Within a week neither of us looked at Dark Reign ever again, it was completely eclipsed by Total Annihilation in every way that mattered and honestly I never looked back.
I'm also a Total Annihilation fan. It's by far my favorite RTS of the era. I'll do a video on it someday - but because I love it so much, it's going to have to be a much longer and more involved vid.
Miss Jeb Radec back in 1998...
Dark Reign awesome
I played the demo of Dark Reign, on release, as a kid. I don't know if I somehow got the full version or downloaded the manual. But I had a binder with all the unit portraits and descriptions printed out in A4. Adults would ask me what I was reading. I would innocently explain "The Imperium's Hostage Taker and how it vivisects and lobotomizes people. Turning them into zombie slaves, who then suicide bomb the enemy" unaware of how concerned these adults suddenly became.
I don't think I'll ever forget what the S.C.A.R.A.B acronym stands for either.
The AI was very adaptive and sneaky too, it could setup ambushes, and the stealth system worked really well. As said, StarCraft took over, but it was a very solid & fun game.
Yes and you could setup patrols and set up units to heal themselves, or they'd go out engage the enemy and draw them back into either artillery fire or neutron guns. You could setup squads, barrages, and all sorts of things.
@@atlasnetwork7855 Absoutely; way more advanced than the 'competition'. If you didn't step in with micro-management, the AI would slaughter you, no matter the fire-power advantage you had.
Great review and have subbed for more content. I did play this little beauty back in the day and it was definitely one of my favourite games. Great gameplay, great music, and was much darker/grittier than most other RTS games of the time.
I got dark Reign 2 on disc a couple years ago! (After playing army men RTS, and as I also love older games/still have my hunk of junk PC that's able to run them) and i have to say, it's fun as hell! all the community created mods and custom maps, the updates that we're realesed on the games official website. All in all, it feels good to live through memories of people living at a time in which i wasn't born! And even though i may not generally be good at RTS games, i can always jump in for a quick match or do story missions whenever I'm bored!
I think i might be the only person still actively playing DR2. I heard the official online servers shut of in 2004 with the community servers starting to disappear around 2008 to 2009.
Man this brings back a lot of childhood memories. On the hidden gems category Giants Citizen Kabuto would be an awesome game to cover too.
Australian here. I played dark reign and really liked it. I saw its main competitor as Total Annihlation, rightly or wrongly, rather than starcraft. I found it was more immersive than total annihilation and i think it was due to design and graphics.
First game I bought at about 13 years old. I still remember how the (huge) box smelled. Along with Heavy Gear, Homeworld and a few others this was a great era for gamers. I spent more time in the editor than the game itself because it was just too hard.
I've just managed to get it working again. No wonder I never finished the campaign. The AI is brutal.
The AI really is brutal, lol. It's a non-stop assault.
The cd art is so nostalgic
DarkReign was amazing. Gameplay, AI, maps etc were all fantastic.
The only downside I saw, was the story. It just didn't get you hooked that much and thus the game lacked the "atmosphere" that games provided like C&C and Starcraft.
If the internet were already established back then, i'm pretty sure the fantastic modding capabilities of DarkReign would've made it much more popular even to this day.
In terms of modding capability, DarkReign offered back in 1997 already what C&C only offers in the recent years with the various fan projects like FinalSun (map editor for TS), TS Client, TS Vinifera, FinalAlert (map editor for RA2), RA2 Ares, etc
In DarkReign you could for example create units with multiple independent turrets and weapon systems and with restricted turret rotation angles. Even today hard or impossible to do in TS or RA2, where units have max 1 turret, always a 360° rotating one and impossible to give weapons to the chassis and the turret.
Graphically DarkReign also provided back then a big bonus with its variable facings/directions for units (e.g. you could create units with only 8 facings like infantry, 16 for small vehicles, 32 for bigger vehicles), not to speak of allowing to animate units, projectiles, buildings etc (e.g. facing specific animated projectiles are impossible in TS/RA2).
Thus you could theoretically mod DarkReign into a full C&C or Starcraft, but not vice versa. Such powerful was its modding capability even back in 1997.
With the right modding fan community back then and a way to share results via the internet, i'm sure it would've gone strong even today.
Dark reign really is actively supported to this very day with new releases and mods and upgrades produced on a regular basis. And there was an actual starcraft mod for dark reign, and frankly it was better imho than starcraft. Also check out "Edge of Darkness" DR expansion, "rise of the shadow hand" and the "battle for the outer rim".
This game and submarine titans was my childhood
I tried a demo a long time ago, but only recently got a full version and then bought it on gog when they finally added it there. Very unique RTS.
I remember playing this at 7 years old, good times. I always tell people it's basically age of empires but in the future
Cool just found this and the expansion while thrifting the other day and am building an old PC in order to play older games like this. Pumped. Glad I picked it up.
You should do a video on Urban Assault, criminally underrated 3d rts from a two man studio in Berlin :)
UA is such an underrated game! A demo came with the AoE Expansion disc, and I'm almost certain I spent more time on the Urban Assault demo than AoE :D
Dark Reign 2 was the first ever RTS game I played and I had a blast with, and the soundtrack is awesome.
I was a beta tester for Activision in the late 90's and early 2000's
well it was miles ahead both cnc and starcraft. amazing mechanics, loveable visual. loved it. starcraft lacks much of DRs capacities
My gateway computer from 1998 came with 4 games, quake 2, hexen 2, heavy gear, and battlezone. The last game I would play was battlezone, which is a shame as it turned out to be my favorite. In the game there was an extra content section which contained a demo for dark reign. It got me hooked. I remember some months later going to a normal small grocery store with my mom and near the check out counters they had a rack of discount PC game. Dark Reign was in there and purchased it. One thing to comment on is the user manual. It was a soft covered booked themed to look like the religious tomb of the faction that the story revolves around. It was very high quality.
I loved this game, and still dig out my old CDs every now and then to play again. I still listen to some tracks off jeehun's soundtracks. Just a masterful game. I think if they somehow added a third faction and re-released with a bit more story/cinematics, I really think an invigorated dark reign would be a huge hit. The AI, the pathing, the auto repair... So ahead of its time. It has features which should be standard, but haven't been touched in modern games.
My absolute favorite RTS game of all time.
I actually never have. Total annihilation was my absolute favorite. All of the ta inspired games thereafter. I saw dark reign and star craft and ended up picking up sc. It was good but no ta. I've played many of the rts games over the years. I'm 34 now and still have to say ta is my fav. Ta, bar, sup com, zero k are among the greatest and what do you know all ta spawn
Edit great video. You got a new subscriber
I was born 89 and this game was my life!!!! Well that's until Dad's PC could finally run Dark Reign 2 lol. I read that box and user manual a million times before I could play it lol.
THANK YOU ALL INVOLVED!
"Seismic activity detected"' Still sends chills down my spine to this day.
Think i'll go back and play it again. I never beat the final mission and I tried SO many times.
all rts games from 1997 are great
it really was a fine year
I was completely hooked on this game for like an entire year. Thanks for the nostalgia. Sucks hearing about how Auran treated their staff though. Such a shame.
Dark reign will break your balls, and force you to learn guerilla warfare in a way that no other RTS will.
Man. Your channel is so dope. Brings me back. Literally a fuckng crime youtube algorithm isn't skyrocketing you to get you the limelight you deserve. One of a kind. Keep it up.
Thanks Lasek!
Played it in the 90s and really liked it however one thing I remember was the imbalance between the Freedom Guard and Imperiums. Those choosing Freedom Guard didn't stand a chance or maybe I wasn't that good at the game at the time.
So this game helped save Activision from bankruptcy? I'll leave the discussion on the pros and cons of this aside but imagine how different the gaming landscape today would be if that happened.
This was an *INCREDIBLE* strategy game, for its time & I *WISH TO LORD ABOVE* it was still available on modern computers with *Windows 11!!*
Unfortunately, as *Microsoft* keeps fixing their systems *Until they Break* a ton of sweet old PC games are out of the loop now, and it is a *SHAME!!*
My dad and I played this a fair bit when I was a kid. I'm not sure how I handled it as a child because when I've tried to play it as an adult, the difficulty has been very unforgiving. It reminds me of other RTS games from that era like StarCraft which had no difficulty options and very unforgiving AI for beginners. Still, I think it is a very underrated RTS considering the quality and features for the time it released.
I remember I had to decide between Dark Reign and Starcraft, still happy that I went with Starcraft :)
I played Dark Reign, I loved the story line . the editor was awesome the units were great. the built in mode of scout , harass or seek and destroy was great.
My uncle worked briefly with these developers on their train sim game in his 30s with Auran JET remotely, it was that game engine which convinced him to exit the video game industry, he said the complexity of it was too much for him.
Played it, finished the campaign multiple times.
Played a lot on multiplayer too
Still play it now days.
In fact I uploaded my walkthrough as well recently.
Played it back in the day when I was a kid. :)
Where did you get the images of the GameSpot article at 1:30 and the magazine article at 1:00? I'd love to read the full articles :O
Holy shit I think I bought a copy of this back in the day before starcraft hit store shelves and became my obsession
I loved this game. I particularly loved the pathways and personalities feature.
Hi, got and played this game quite a lot in 1997/98, and even preferred it over Starcraft. Replayed it back a few years ago with a friend online, did a few missions as well as a warm up. It's still great, graphics outdated, but not more than its competitors. The only exception, and only one that i liked more than Dark Reign was Age of Empires. AoE 2 being my all time fav, this makes Dark Reign taking the 3rd place 👍
Command and conquer series
Total annihilation
Dark Colony
Dark reign
Z
KKND 1 and 2
Ground control (no bases?!)
Mech commander
Oh man I miss the RTS generation…
One of my favorite pc games overall, played the hell out of it growing up. Wish I could play it on my current pc.
If you haven't tried the GOG version, it seems to work well.
@@computergamingyesterday I'll see if I can try that, thnx
@@computergamingyesterday My version is better. Restored content missing in the GOG version, working animated menu transitions, maps, bug fixes, working multiplayer, expansion pack music and more.
Well I was 2 in 1997 so I didn't play it then, but I did play it a few years later.
I remembered this game, didn't pay this much but it was fun as an RTS of its day.
Played it! Enjoyed it! Got the expansions. Wish it could have further developed.
Never got to play D.R. nor Total Anihilation.
Stuck with Red Alert and later KKND and Dark Colony.
Oh I did not play this one, but KKnD (Krush,Kill n'Destroy) would be another hiddem gem to cover.
one of the better c&c clones i played nearby all of em
i did play it in 1997
the music and lore left an impression on me as kid :)
wish there was more: what happened to the freedom guard/imperium war in the end anyways?
I think it's explained in the final missions/cutscenes, and in the expansion
that game was my game and my mother's fav game at the time ( yes my mom and dad were gamers ) Not as Avid as i am but yeah ! Total Annihilation Starcraft and Dark Reign were dope games ! ( by the way i was 5-6years old and played these games) actually finished the Campaign without mom and dad xD was proud as fuck at the time i remember that pretty well !
I liked this game a lot back in the day. It was very different from Warcraft and C&C and just felt dark and gritty and cool. I think I played the second one too, but I can't actually remember... If I did, it was not great enough for me to remember any details what so ever...
Yea, it did feel dark and gritty. And nothing was cooler than dark and gritty in 1997 :D
4:00 "There is no equivalent of the tank rush in this game"
*eherm*
Case Study #1: Tank Rush vs Tank Rush in a competitive multiplayer DR match (and usually how most MP matches go):
ruclips.net/video/Bxj9f14-tno/видео.html
Great videos!
I spent so much time in dark reign, skirmish mode with the modem set to baud 4800 not that i knew why. Id still play it today if i could... Wait... Theres no reason i couldnt...
I played DR in 1997, I play DR still to this day, I have a abandonware version I downloaded about a year ago that I use and I feel zero remorse about using this pirated version because I still have my copy of Dark Reign, it's just that modern PCs don't have CD ROMs so I can't install it.
Played it long long ago, and the sequel killer soundtrack on the sequel
my childhood!
oooh yes i did, still own the cd&manual! was just great & different from c&c but sadly mostly forgotten 🤨
wow im astonished 😯 how can you even mention "Pandemic Studios" and not mention BattleZone2:CombatCommander ?! 😓one of the greatest games ever made?!
thats like mentioning "Volition" & not talking about Freespace 1&2!
Its story was my favorite.
Played that a long time ago. I liked it, but I liked C&C more. Dark Reign 2 I played alot more.
Why don't they re-vamp dark reign! RTS these days don't compare to Dark Reign. Also Dark reign is so good because it's such a simple fun game
It was great, but the final mission was impossible. EVEN with infinite credits.
Got the game to run __ sort of __ on a windows 7 hp from long ago...
... Going to work out the issues soon.
still got a working original cd of the game but did not like the expansion shadow hand. love the super weapons. freedom guards rule!
Is there anyway to ge this game again i played it at launch, would love to give it anotehr try
This game was C&C for gamers with an IQ!
Played this to death and the sequel which wasn't as good but still fun.
How can you get this game,?
Great game, mechanics superior to C&C
This was my favorite RTS until Starcraft... Starcraft destroyed all RTS games with its PVP.
I loved this game, Terran penalties and ai made it so much fun especially with multi player. I don't think I ever finished the campaign once I discovered online play.
Why do you have two mice lol?
I'm a tech reviewer in another life. Occupational hazard.
yes I played it but never liked it
First Dark Reign 1 is good 2 is crap
JFC. American saying the names of Australia cities is halarious. Like how do you fuck it up that bad, it is the same language.
Total Annihilation is better
I played both Dark Reign 1 and 2 and glad I did back then while playing starcraft:brood war as well. They are gem of RTS back in 90-2000s Love Dark Reign 2 toward water battle vs the other 2
Bought it when it came out. Still have the disc.