The story is pretty straightforward and rarely did it actually peak my interest. Sadly this is somewhat becoming commonplace even with good RTS titles like Sierra’s Ground Control. Since Blizzard’s Starcraft, it seems as if developers cannot weave a tale to match their game’s main strengths. The opening intro to Dark Reign 2 tells very little about the setting, leaving a lot up to the in-mission scripting and between mission briefings. Both end up doing an adequate job but the support probably could have been a bit better.

The plot revolves around a really worn out planet Earth currently inhabited by two types of people. The Jovian Detention Authority can been seen as the haughty people who live in their dome cities, and the Sprawlers, who can be seen as those people from Road Warrior. A planetary problem crops up and to survive the Sprawlers band together for the first time, creating a troubling situation for JDA. Both decide that in order to make it through this planet wide catastrophe a war will take place.

Dark Reign 2 utilizes a great level of difficulty scaling between missions to pretty much train the player without them really knowing it. A lot of scripted events guide the player along through each mission, pointing out objectives, but not being completely overbearing. As mentioned above the in and between mission briefings are probably the only real link to a story that could probably have been a bit more impressive.

Pandemic Studios, who is also known most recently for their work on Battlezone II, took up the project of crafting Dark Reign 2 and this at least guaranteed one thing, fantastic visuals. While the environments are not quite as jaw dropping as those found in BZ2, they pull off what they can quite effectively. Excellent use of textures, which are for the most party pretty clean, and various other bits of eye candy present a very colorful world that feels very alive. Even in the very first missions the atmosphere changes are vast as the player goes from a city, to a cold wasteland, to a lush jungle complete with a light rain. Both the Jovian Detention Authority (JDA) and the Sprawlers differ in their looks, each style accurately representing the side’s way of life.

This ended up being a very successful jump to next dimension. Since the overall style of the visual representation is so complete, it compliments the game very well. The only minor problem I have involves pivoting the camera, which requires the use of the two mouse buttons in a particular order. Sometimes the mouse command goes through smoothly but a lot of times it can be rough to get the camera to pivot at the desired angle. The terrain, while composed of many different levels of elevation, rarely gets in the way of the players view, which is something that really annoyed me in Topware’s Earth 2150.

Unit balance is acceptable, but not the best; half of this is due to the fact that more than a few of the units have an equivalent on the opposing side. This is unusual since a lot of RTS titles tend to go for units that counter each other in certain situations instead of simply being equal in most. It does end up working to a degree but it makes for some rather bland battles. The best units are, like most games, near the very end. One carry-over unit from the original, the ‘Sky Fortress’, is still one really cool way to deal out some death.

One other trait from the original involves the way the tech tree is linked to a building’s level. Much like Age of Empires, certain units can only be built if existing buildings are upgraded. This works out great, putting some tighter control on the more powerful units while keeping the spatial requirements for a viable base relatively low. Most of the time the player can decide where they plop down their headquarters, with the ability to use terrain and resource advantages how they please.

The play mechanics in general are basic by today’s standards. Units have set abilities and availability only limited by the unit limit placed on the game. Pandemic has utilized a good line of site system, which works well between ground and air units, and some general unit behavior settings. Since the gameplay is pretty old school the control over the game is extremely polished, and that I suppose is one of the benefits. The waypoint and control group system is really quite fantastic. Dark Reign 2’s HUD does a great job making everything easy to access and modify.

The AI is really pretty good. Dark Reign 2 gives the option to adjust AI tactics in skirmish mode, but despite the ability to dictate the AI still tends to act on its own. At times it can be completely smothering, and completely forgiving at others. It may be hard to visibly see the effects of choosing AI habits, it can be very unpredictable, and its attacks tend to vary, which is something most human opponents do. This is the mark of good AI.

Dark Reign 2 has all the normal bells and whistles of any real-time strategy game, skirmish, online play, and the ability to add new functions. The ability to add to the game is something the developers have actually been using these past few weeks. One example is a utility that allows people to listen to their MP3s and control the play list while they are still playing DR2. Not really something that is needed but it does seem handy. The release of a few new official maps has also been made. This kind of support shows some promise and I sincerely hope they keep it up.

There might be a good reason an mp3 utility was added; the music is really not that great. It isn’t bad to the point where a person will cringe upon hearing it, but it is very forgettable. Most of the sound effects for the game do their job adequately, but they do little else beyond that. A lot of the explosions and weapons fire have dull impact effects. Some of the sounds from the environments themselves are a lot better and add to the experience a little bit, but those types of things alone cannot make up for everything.

If I judged purely by visual presentation Dark Reign 2 easily matches up with some of today’s titles, unfortunately the gameplay exhibited is getting rather dated, and presentation alone cannot spice up gameplay. This isn’t to say the game is something to overlook, a person just needs to realize when they pick this game up, there is nothing too revolutionary about it, it feels very much like the old forumla some of the latest RTS titles have advanced upon. In a lot of respects that is the main reason Dark Reign 2 might fail to stand tall with titles like Ground Control, Homeworld, and Starcraft.