Planetary Annihilation Gamma Impressions

There's no accounting for taste; favourite and best are not always the same thing. For example, StarCraft is my favourite real-time strategy game, but I think most genre aficionados would agree that Supreme Commander and its expansion, Forged Alliance, have long been considered the best technical examples of what the genre is capable of.

A spiritual successor to the also highly regarded Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander presented future warfare on a revolutionary scale, sporting an engine that could just as easily render thousands of units doing battle by land, sea and air simultaneously as it could enormous map straddling behemoths and true to scale nuclear explosions. The game's nuanced economy and macromanagement systems were also orders of magnitude more complex than those of its contemporaries. Indeed, worries of impending Zerg rushes seemed antiquated by comparison. 

With the franchise in an apparent state of dormancy following a poorly received sequel, Uber Entertainment have taken it upon themselves to create their own heir apparent to the large scale sci-fi RTS throne in the form of Planetary Annihilation.  The gameplay here is a carbon copy of that found in the Supreme Commander games; the only real difference is that Uber have taken the next logical step, offering fully realised interstellar warfare that can rage across multiple planets rather than restricting it to a single battlefield. The play area can range from a lone planet to an entire solar system, making the experience scaleable in terms of both your skill level and how much time you have to devote to each session. Given that Planetary Annihilation is such an obvious elaboration on what's gone before, you'll probably already have a pretty good idea of whether it's going to appeal to you or not. Needless to say, I can't recommend it enough to fans of its would-be predecessors.

Planetary Annihilation is currently going cheap in the Steam Summer Sale. It should be noted that it's available as part of the Early Access program, meaning the game is playable, but very much still in development, hence the Gamma suffix.