The year is 2140. The setting is a war-ravaged and pillaged Earth. The two remaining clans, the United Civilized States (USC) and the Eurasian Dynasty (ED), are furiously battling to control Earth's last remaining resources. As a recent entry into the increasingly crowded real-time strategy arena, Earth 2140 has several features that set it apart from other Command and Conquer clones that make for an exciting and challenging gaming experience. Earth 2140 is the result of a marriage of real-time strategy and action genres, and there is plenty of action here.

Earth 2140 comes on a single auto-play enabled CD-ROM (DOS version, Windows-95 compatible), and installation was no problem. I chose the minimum install (36 MB hard drive space) and performance has been acceptable. For game play, you can choose graphics modes of either 640x480 or 800x600 (for faster PCs), both in 65,536 colors. The ample Instruction Manual contains 68 pages, about half of which is devoted to descriptions of the various buildings and units which can be built by either the USC or the ED. Although the USC and ED share a few building and unit types, the vast majority of units differ depending on which side you choose. There are around 70 units to choose from, ranging from androids to two-legged Raptors (looking similar to the AT-ST "chicken-walkers" in "Star Wars") to Tiger Assault battle robots to heavy tanks with lasers to helicopters, submarines, and anti-gravity fliers. And the units look and sound great, too, although some of the units (i.e., androids and humanoid-robots) are so tiny that they look like a bunch of ants crawling around. When building units, you can choose from 1-5 of the same type of unit at a time; or you can set it to auto-build the same unit until you choose to change the order. The interface is mouse-driven; if you're familiar with WarCraft-type controls you'll feel right at home.

Earth 2140 features over 70 missions and allows multiplayer network play for up to six players (requires that each PC have a network adapter with IPX protocol installed). The missions are varied in their objectives (ranging from seek-and-destroy every enemy unit to taking over or destroying specific enemy facilities) and generally increase in complexity as you advance; however, sometimes the learning curve seems to take a logarithmic jump upward. After finishing one mission which was pretty easy, I was catapulted into an all-out battle which seemed (at first) nearly impossible to overcome. The intense challenge of several of the levels had me trying different strategies again and again. One of the best things about Earth 2140 is the way that the artificial intelligence (AI) changes to adapt to your playing strategy, automatically adjusting to what you throw its way, resulting in a slightly different game each time you play.

Like other real-time strategy games, it is important to manage resources (mining and power) and construct early the buildings which will help you the most to develop your armies. Creation of the buildings is interesting in that they are first created as mobile units in a production center; then you can move them to the location where you want the building to be constructed. To help relieve some of the micro-management when you?re in a particularly sticky battle and don?t want to be bothered with overseeing the entire map, Earth 2140 gives you the ability to create up to three independently-acting "virtual generals" to control groups of units, acting either offensively or defensively. Another nice feature is that it's difficult to succeed without using most of the units at your disposal. This makes it tougher for someone to successfully overpower other players by constructing vast platoons of the same type of unit. Another thing I liked was the ability to take over your opponents facilities by sending several of your troops inside; once you control the facility, you are then able to build and control their units.

The graphics in Earth 2140 are great, from the look and movements of the units and facilities to the fiery explosions. It would have been nice if TopWare/Interplay had included a map editor to extend the game's life. However, the smarter AI means that missions can be replayed with different results each time.

Bottom Line:  I had a LOT of fun with this game. In fact, I got so addicted to it that my wife thought she was a computer-widow for several days. Earth 2140 will stay on my hard drive for a long time.

System Tested On:  IBM-compatible PC with a 133Mhz Pentium; Windows 95; 64-bit PCI-bus SVGA video card; 32 Mb of RAM; 8x CD-ROM drive; Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold sound card; mouse

Minimum System:  IBM or 100% compatible PC; 90 MHz Pentium processor; 16 MB RAM; 36 MB hard disk space; SVGA/VESA 2.0 video card supporting high color mode (1 MB RAM); 2X CD-ROM drive; sound card (100% Sound Blaster compatible); 100% Microsoft-compatible mouse

Technical support is available by phone (toll number), 24-hr. BBS (toll number), e-mail, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.interplay.com.

Estimated street price - $44.95

Developed by TopWare; distributed by Interplay Productions, 16815 Von Karman Avenue, Irvine, California  92606; Phone: (714) 553-6678