pretzleman2000's Full Review: Total Air War for Windows
Clones, more-of-the-same, the lack of innovation; these are all, sadly, a part of game design these days. If there is one positive thing to be said about the glut of derivative titles, it's that the well-done, innovative ones stand out even more. Case in point:
Microsoft's ALLEGIANCE. Rather than crank out another WWII-dog-fight-style space sim that would pale in comparison to the ultra-refined FREESPACE2, Microsoft went and created a multi-genre hybrid game that works. In other words, the innovation alone makes this a contender for Space Sim of the year.
Trans-genre Studies-
Like the recent BATTLEZONE games, Allegiance melds real-time strategy with another genre, and succeeds. At its core, gameplay is akin to that of a spaced-based RTS skirmish map: A "commander" looks at the overall system map, and starts clicking around on the units in his team. He decides where to send miners to harvest resources, where to build stations in order to create more ships, and which intercepters should be dispatching the incoming enemy-bomber horde. All this in order to wipe out the other teams, and to control all the sectors in the map.
The twist is that, with the exception of miners, every unit is controlled by another flesh-and-blood gamer. Gamers not only pilot fighter-craft, they can man turrets of bombers, gunships, or anything bigger, or spring for taking the helm of a mighty capital ship. The numerous upgrades, weapons, and factional differences (as of press time, there were three basic factions, with varying tech trees and units) help round out the sense of indivivduality. This was a classic from the moment it hit the shelves. ALLEGIANCE could well be the first persistent online space sim that actually works.
This NEW boxed Allegiance for Windows 95/98 by Microsoft from 2000 is still factory sealed.The scanned picture in this listing is the actual item you ...More at eBay
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