Remember the great real-time strategy gold rush of the late '90s? During this period, games such as Command & Conquer, Total Annihilation, and Starcraft all helped define the conventions of this popular genre. Unfortunately, EON Digital Entertainment's Mission: Humanity is sort of like the three-legged pack mule that arrived embarrassingly late to collect its share of the bullion. The game attempts to capture some of the strategic gameplay and epic sci-fi adventure in which its early predecessors excelled. Instead, because of its ugly graphics, bad sound, faulty artificial intelligence, and extremely dull gameplay, it winds up crashing to the ground like some ill-fated hydrogen blimp. Oh, the humanity!
Mission: Humanity doesn't even offer a decent premise. According to the manual, Mission: Humanity is a real-time strategy game set in the "not-so-distant future." Aliens have plundered Earth, and the human population has somewhat successfully appropriated the alien technology to its own advantage. Haven't you heard this one before? And it's just about all the briefing you get. There are no cutscenes to further the plot during the course of the game.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Upon first playing, you'll probably notice that by today's standards, the units look about as outdated as those in the first Command & Conquer game--only a lot worse. Of course, when you see the first unit suddenly disappear into thin air after it gets shot, you'll also wish you were playing Command & Conquer instead. The sounds aren't any better than the graphics, either. No matter which unit you select--or even which side you're playing, for that matter--the responding voice is exactly the same, save for a few variations. Furthermore, the bland, techno-inspired music couldn't be more forgettable.
As you might expect, Mission: Humanity's gameplay completely falls flat. As in many real-time strategy games, you begin by building a base and power plant and then proceed to mine for resources. You advance through the game by conquering the current planet you're on, thereby moving on to the next planet. There's a bit of a twist; you actually need to keep track of all the planets under your control, and can reallocate resources and troops between them. Also, the battles take place on spherical maps, which are supposed to be suggestive of a spherical planetary surface; hence there are no boundaries on the maps, because they simply wrap around. You may upgrade technology, but initially there are only three unit types available. Actually, these three units are all you get for the majority of the game! If you have the patience, you can play until a fourth unit becomes available later. And if you have nerves of steel, you can conquer all the planets up to the final alien home planet. At this stage, the game actually switches to an interior isometric view of the alien base. The idea of conquering planet after planet until finally infiltrating the alien home base is actually pretty good. But the execution of this idea in Mission: Humanity is poor, and offers little reward for the effort required in getting that far. The computer opponent's artificial intelligence is terrible. Often, you'll send units into the fray, and they won't automatically defend themselves from oncoming attacks. And this is assuming that you can even get the units to move in the right direction, which isn't a trivial matter since the game's pathfinding is so bad.
If for some reason you're still interested in this third-rate real-time strategy game, it's also worth noting that far superior games of the same ilk now sell at a discount for around $10 less. There really is nothing good and nothing redeeming about Mission: Humanity.
