Genre: Turn-Based Strategy
Publisher: Dreamcatcher
Developer: Wargaming.Net
Release Date: March 2, 2005

"It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on."
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Turn-based strategy games seem to have become increasingly under-represented these days. From the glory days of X-Com: UFO Defense and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, to the relative present-day obscurity of Galactic Civilizations, there just aren't as many titles to choose from as one might hope. Answering this call is Wargaming.net, the development team behind the sleeper hit Massive Assault. Picking up where that critically acclaimed title left off is the expansion-turned-sequel, Domination. Does it manage to step out from under the shadow of its predecessor? This is what we're here to determine.

Let me give you a basic recap of the mythos behind Domination: It is sometime after the year 2129, and a war between two interstellar factions is about to heat up again. Previously, the Free Nations Union (the "good" guys) had successfully tussled with, and smacked down, the Phantom League (the "bad" guys). This titanic clash had spilled over from a mere global conflict on Earth to infect every off-world colony mankind had established. The F.N.U. (This is as tragic an acronym as I've ever heard. "Fnoo?") thought their victory complete; alas how fate laughs at such naïveté. In reality, the Phantom League merely went underground and developed some rather devastating super-secret weapons. Upon completion of these, they cropped up again in all their revolutionary fervor, blasting everything even vaguely non-Marxist in their path. This is the setting established for the events of this title, and you, the lucky player, get to guide the outcome of this multi-world conflict.

Of course, when it comes right down to it, all the Phantom League did was manufacture a few mind-control devices to make their troops much more psychotic than they already were, and whip up some advanced mecha-tank-walker things, dubbed "Bullfrogs" for no reason other than a loose sense of aesthetics. Apparently, this was enough to turn the tide from "broken and defeated League" to "major interstellar military force," but who am I to quibble statistical illogic? It is what it is; all that really matters is that you get to blow stuff up with futuristic tanks and other such armored vehicles.

This is served up in spades, courtesy of a wide array of munitions placed at your disposal. Ballistic missiles, plasma cannons, laser beam weapons (or "particle beams," which I suppose sounds cooler than "lasers"), anti-aircraft energy shields, tesla-coil towers, the list goes on. These are weapons of advanced technology, unfettered by such restraints as realism, probability, or physics. You get to wield them with the precision of an avenging hammer. Enticing, is it not?

Domination plays out in exactly the same manner as Massive Assault. Each unit has a certain distance it can move per turn, and a pre-determined number of spots it can move to within its range. Each vehicle also has one number representing armor, another representing weapon damage, and another for weapon range. You can move once and fire once per turn, although there are some exceptions. The previously mentioned Bullfrog can fire twice, as it is the ultimate in Phantom League weapons technology. There is no research or technology tree to deal with, the closest analog being which vehicle to bring into play during the recruitment phase, if there happens to be any raw revenue left for you to spend.

The combat is meant to serve as an abstraction. The battlegrounds are continent-wide, spanning many different terrain types. Countries fought over are defined by dotted-line borders, and crossing those borders results in a military response. Whether the country was neutral or not is irrelevant; if you cross over a dotted line into an area you don't already control, your opponent immediately gets to take control of local guerrilla forces to repel you. If you succeed in taking the capital city of that country despite the resistance, you then get to add that country's revenue to your recruitment tallies. Strangely, inflation is completely non-existent in the Massive Assault/Domination mythology; while each city generates between $4 and $8 per turn, the most expensive unit in the game is only $8 to purchase. Who knew war could be so affordable?

Play itself feels somewhat akin to chess, in the back/forth sense. Unlike chess, however, you have a handy "rewind" button that lets you undo moves. This only works during the current turn, so it's a good idea to make sure you're confident of your maneuvers before clicking on "End Phase." There are significantly more modes of play than chess as well, including the storyline mode, one-shot "scenario" maps, two-players-on-one-machine "hot seat" multiplayer, internet and LAN multiplayer, and two other modes (career and world war) that I cannot comment on for reasons that will become apparent later on. Wargaming.net certainly didn't skimp on variety.

As I mentioned earlier, Domination was initially intended as an expansion, not a sequel. Originally entitled Massive Assault: Phantom Renaissance, it was deemed too content-rich to serve as a mere add-on. However, considering the dearth of visible alterations to the mechanics in general, one cannot help but question how wise a plan it was to push this title to a full stand-alone.

Domination, like its predecessor, was constructed with a home-brewed graphics engine that performs admirably well. It's remarkably detailed, and that same "TLC" scales beautifully. Regardless of your camera positioning, the game retains its visual acuity, even when zoomed right down to nigh-first person perspective.

One can easily fall into a false sense of security regarding framerates with a turn-based title like this; the action is, after all, subsumed by tactics. Your "frags" are hardly dependant on liquid FPS. However, smooth gameplay is still a big plus, and I'm happy to report that Domination succeeds fairly well on this score too. Scrolling around any size map, regardless of troop numbers, is quick and stutter-free. There is but one exception to this: snow-based maps, which are quite choppy, for some reason. Why this is confuses me because there aren't any extra particle effects to account for it.

Domination also sports a rich palette of colors for its wide array of futuristic weapons. Each different unit has at least one striking particle effect or vibrant glow to it; an effective (and tastefully subdued) flair to underscore that these aren't just high-caliber slug-throwers you're seeing in action. Domination includes a pleasant little addition in the form of destruction cut scenes. Anytime something larger than a tank gets destroyed the camera quickly zooms in and the resultant explosion is shown through a slight slow-motion effect. It's subtle, but it sure does add a stronger sense of drama.

If there's any one flaw in the eye-candy of Domination, it lies in the overall design of the game world. There are plenty of details, tons of great lighting and effects; the sky box is realistic and dynamic, and the water looks spectacular, even though it looks nothing like actual water. It just looks like fabulously glossy liquid. All of these things should, in theory, make for a truly impressive graphical offering, but the entire world is noticeably generic. For a universe that's supposed to be one rich in highly advanced technology, it is woefully un-poetic in its realization of what that kind of tech can be from an aesthetics perspective.

Harsh as it might sound, the mecha and armored vehicle design looks roughly on par with that seen on high school duo-tangs the world over. Obviously Wargaming.net has a solid grasp of how to implement 3D; now all they need to do is match that skill with an infusion of inspired artistic direction.

While lacking in dramatic flair, the interface of Domination does exactly what it's supposed to do, and it does it well. Installation is a relatively painless two-disc affair, and un-installation is quick and thorough, leaving no folders full of left-over junk files. The menus are clean, easy to understand, and easy to use; they aren't too bulky and they don't obstruct your view while playing. The HUD is simplistic, but not so much so that functionality loses out. The options cover as wide a range as you could hope for: sound, graphics, gameplay, and network. There are even two separate lists for the kind of information that pops up on-screen during the game itself. You can tweak confirmation windows as well as redundant details that you'll eventually get so used to that they become unnecessary. Yes, all in all, the interface is beyond adequate.

However, there is one frightening scar that defaces this delicate flower, and now that we've examined the beauty, we must force ourselves to gaze at the hideous, and this will undoubtedly be a deal-breaker for many of you. Domination uses the Starforce copy restriction system. Be fairly warned: installing this game means that any virtual device drives you might use (for legitimate purposes or otherwise – shame on you if it's the latter) will in all likelihood cease functioning. It is also unwise to attempt to remove Starforce once installed. It has a known track record of corrupting Windows directories when people try to remove it.

While I understand and respect a publisher's right to protect their products, I thoroughly disagree with the lead-pipe cruelty that legitimate users are subjected to with Starforce. It is for this reason that I mention it, and score accordingly against Domination and Dreamcatcher. In the end, even if you are completely innocent of the kind of activity Starforce is designed to prevent, it still hits your system significantly. It slows performance and places undue stress on your CD-ROM. In my opinion, no game should do these things.

I'm torn when it comes to gameplay, mostly because Domination really is a fun little title, despite its glaring setbacks. It's engaging, and goes down so smoothly that it's all too easy to find yourself saying "just one more map" at 3:30 am when you need to be up for work at 7:00 am. It's very much like futuristic chess, without the centuries of tradition and culture. That said, let's look at why this is really too little, too late.

I've already mentioned the many modes of play, and I applaud the variety. However, the style doesn't really change from mode to mode, and so it begins to feel like the same old, same old in relatively short order. There is no tech tree, no research, and the resource management is all but non-existent. This omission may have been made to streamline the game, but I find it feels like they've excised an integral part of the strategic experience.

The writing, to be blunt, is atrocious. It has ESL smeared all over it; what should be brusque militaristic dialogs instead come across as macho posturing by teenagers. Poor syntax, poor grammar, typos, and the occasional character omission ("Óank" instead of "Tank", etc.) make the storyline campaign agonizingly difficult to sit through. It really does lower the overall mood to that of a bad B-grade sci-fi film. Ed Wood is spinning in his grave.

The AI sadly doesn't shift in the least when you crank up the difficulty; the only change there comes in numbers. The harder you set a given challenge, the more units the enemy gets. From a statistical perspective, there are situations where it is a numeric impossibility to win. It's not as if there's any such thing as hit percentages, so it's not like you can rely on probability to deliver you that one sweet game where the CPU misses at critical junctures.

The next dirty laundry to air lies in the complete absence of functionality for two of the play modes. "Career" mode does nothing at all. It pops up a graphic to choose your side, and then does nothing from that point onward. "World War" mode does nothing more than remove the menu entirely, leaving you with an endless loop of the in-game demo and a forced shutdown via the task manager. After I discovered these oddities, I attempted to patch them away. Instead of doing nothing, post-patch Domination crashed every time I tried to do anything, even modes that worked prior to the patch. In the end, I had to completely uninstall and then reinstall to regain stability. There are too many setbacks, and not enough merits, so the fun comes at too high a price.

Multiplayer is a strange creature, not at all what I'm used to. Instead of two people from various places around the globe logging into a central server to hook up and play a turn-by-turn match, Domination instead sports a sort of abstract bulletin board service. You log in, look for a game, and once found, you play a turn. This isn't done real-time; once your turn is complete, the data is sent to the master server where an email is relayed to your opponent. He can then log in at his convenience and play his turn, which is then bounced to the server where you are then sent an email, etc. and so on. This means a single online match can take several days or even weeks to complete. It's not at all what I'm used to, but I can't help but find it curiously interesting, even quaint.

This mild amusement isn't significant enough to overcome my desire for a more rapid-fire online model. It can also be quite difficult to remain enthusiastic about a game that takes that long to play through; the prospect of your opponent losing interest and dropping out is all too real. In the end, my gravest concern for internet matches is that you are given only four months of online play for free, after which you are expected to pay for the privilege of this snail-paced multiplayer "action." I'm still somewhat on the fence regarding usage fees for anything other than MMO titles. Also, the fact that there doesn't appear to be any information regarding how to pay or how much you'll need to shell out doesn't inspire confidence that their system is rock solid.

I wish I could say the audio is as impressive as the graphics, but alas, I cannot. There are sounds for everything at least, and for that, I'm grateful. Sadly, the sounds tend towards the same non-descript blandness that plagues the visual design. Lasers (pardon me, "particle beams") sound like, well, lasers. That is to say, they wouldn't be out of place in an old Space 1999 episode. Explosions don't really shake the bone marrow like you'd hope, and the massive barrels hanging off of the Bullfrogs clack more than explode. A somewhat mallard-esque effect doesn't quite inspire awe, if you get my meaning. Finally, the minimal voiceover work would have been better served with more than one actor. Not that I have issues with the silky smooth and heavily accented woman who handles the few phrases that accompany the warning pop-ups in game, but I find that repetition sets in quickly when there's so little variety on display.

This unassuming-yet-functional approach applies to the music as well. On the one hand, it's far better than a bleating MIDI, and on the other hand, it's no John Williams composition. Neither passionate nor epic in mood, the soundtrack can be turned down with no ill effects on the flow of the game at all. When it comes to an OST, no impression is easily as undesirable as a bad impression.

All told, I cannot say that I didn't enjoy playing Domination. It is a fun game, and that is ultimately the most important goal for a developer. However, there are so many stark shortcomings that I cannot help but warn people away from spending more than bargain-bin prices on it. It is clear that it was unfinished upon publication, and it doesn't deviate significantly enough from its predecessor to properly establish itself as a whole new chapter of the franchise. Combine those two facts with the unpleasant odor of Starforce copy restriction, and you're faced with an imbalanced hassle-to-entertainment ratio. I sincerely hope that Wargaming.net continues with this line, because I see great potential in it. As of this moment however, they still have much work to do.

Score: 5.5/10