Planetary Annihilation

 PC
Metascore
62

Mixed or average reviews - based on 18 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 18
  3. Negative: 2 out of 18
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  1. IGN
    Sep 17, 2014
    48
    A cool idea about robot armies battling across an entire solar system breaks apart when the realities of controlling multiple worlds at the same time set in.
  2. Quarter to Three
    Sep 13, 2014
    20
    The lack of variety is just another bad call in a series of bad calls. With only a single faction, with nothing resembling a tech tree or upgrades, with maps having only a single shape (a sphere inside a sphere) that negates terrain, Planetary Annihilation misses many of the elements that make a good RTS a good RTS. It instead is so in love with its concept, which isn’t very good in the first place, that it never gets around to the vital business of being a good game.

Awards & Rankings

42
#42 Most Discussed PC Game of 2014

User Reviews

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User Score
5.6

Mixed or average reviews- based on 418 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 188 out of 418
  2. Mixed: 64 out of 418
  3. Negative: 166 out of 418
  1. brianpurkiss
    Jul 1, 2014
    10
    Planetary Annihilation is simply an awesome, "epic scale" Real Time Strategy Game. Notice I said "epic scale," not "large scale." After all,Planetary Annihilation is simply an awesome, "epic scale" Real Time Strategy Game. Notice I said "epic scale," not "large scale." After all, multi planet gameplay, planet smashing, thousands of units, and 40 player matches can be described as nothing less than "epic scale."

    Planetary Annihilation introduces a number of genre changing mechanics. Primarily, the randomly generated spherical planets and the ability to fight on multiple planets simply hasn't been done before. Not to mention features like Planet Smashing, Galactic War (randomized campaign), and the ChronoCam. The ChronoCam allows players to rewind and fastforward gameplay in the middle of a match to watch events that they may have missed.

    On top of that, Planetary Annihilation's gameplay is fast paced, exciting, and strategy intensive. It's very possible for players to out maneuver their larger opponents, or exploit weaknesses and beat someone with a much larger army.

    If you are a fan of RTS games, I highly recommend Planetary Annihilation.    … Full Review »
  2. System_operator
    Sep 8, 2014
    4
    Not a terrible game by any stretch of the imagination, but one full of missed opportunities.

    While it is stable it can be a lot of fun,    Not a terrible game by any stretch of the imagination, but one full of missed opportunities.

    While it is stable it can be a lot of fun, especially with friends.

    PA is probably best surmised (in my opinion) as a dumbed down version of TA/Supreme Commander played across planets instead of flat maps. It does have a few interesting features to draw in the crowds; epic scale, planet smashing and the metal planet 'anniahlaser' being the three.

    The reason I have only given PA a 4/10 is because of the missed opportunity this game represents. I was an early Alpha backer - paying upwards of £70 for the privilege. I backed after reading the promises made on the kickstarter page and the hope that we were going to get a 'supreme commander killer'. Unfortunately upon release I am disappointed. I feel like the game lacks polish (from wonky unit animations and odd planet smashing textures to poor strategic options when invading planets and the navy STILL feeling like a second class army choice) and has a pretty poor choice of units - none of which feel interesting or innovative!

    To compound matters elements from kickstarter and early development don't feature in the release version: where is the unit cannon?! where are the 40 player games?! where is the DRM free server?!

    I wish Uber had delayed longer, fleshed out the unit roster more thoroughly, really thought about planet invasion (instead of the JUST SPAM ASTREUS tactic) and ensured the promises they made in development were fulfilled.    … Full Review »
  3. werrs
    Sep 7, 2014
    0
    Next-gen RTS without a save support? Are you kidding me?

    It's almost impossible to find any RTS in history which doesn't have the saving    Next-gen RTS without a save support? Are you kidding me?

    It's almost impossible to find any RTS in history which doesn't have the saving possibility, beginning from the very first Command & Conquer in 1995.

    Now it's 2014 and the caption on Kickstarter tells us that "Planetary Annihilation - A Next Generation RTS". Are you kidding us, seriously?

    Here is the quote from Kickstarter:

    "Folks at Uber Entertainment have worked on games like Total Annihilation, Command & Conquer, Supreme Commander and Demigod. We are hugely passionate about Real-Time Strategy and can’t wait to show you our vision for the future of the genre."

    Is it a real future of RTS genre, where even save is not possible in single player campaign? Is it so hard to implement? We have tired from **** console ports on PC recently, but now we have got even worse release of the "PC exclusive". Even the backers who have financed the game production on Kickstarter cannot change anything, because nobody listens to them.

    Should we blame the online-only DRM which prevents game from saving because it's being played on the remote servers instead of local PCs? Previously developers were promising to make the LAN play possible, but what we have got at the release? Nothing except of online DRM.

    During the Kickstarter campaign developers should have warned all the potential backers about what will be the game's state on release. That it will have online-only DRM and no save possibility, etc. I believe that not a single cent would be given to them in this case.

    Honestly, developers should return all the money to the backers. Only in this case they will have the moral right to keep that online DRM without a save possibility and sell the game in its current invalid condition. It's not a next-gen RTS, it's even worse than every current-gen and past-gen strategy games.    … Full Review »
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