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WZ2100 is an old RTS game made by Pumpkin Studios which originally came out in 1999. Unlike most RTS games, which focus on just unlocking units in a linear path, Warzone was unique in the sense that you were able to design your own units from a myriad of various parts, allowing a total of 70,000 possible units- everything from construction trucks to VTOL craft armed with plasma cannons.

The story is essentially as follows: Warzone takes place near the end of the 21st century. Most of humanity has been destroyed by nuclear war, and much technology was lost in the process. You are the commander of "The Project", an effort to restore our technological horizons through exploration and research. Your primary foe, early on, are Scavengers- these are groups of ragtag, second-rate hostiles that are weaker than you from the get-go, but make it up for that physical weakness with sheer number and defensive structures. Many Scavenger bases contain technological Artifacts- by destroying (or as the game puts it, eradicating) a Scavenger base and collecting an Artifact, you can then reverse-engineer that Artifact by using a Research Center and then be able to produce it en masse, whether it is a defensive structure, weapon turret, or a new method of propulsion.

Besides the primary Campaign, there are also Challenges, side missions you can undertake that are meant to test your skill as a commander; the popular Skirmish mode, with up to 8 factions on a single map, and many settings for the mode such as the intelligence of each faction, whether or not alliances can be made, how advanced your base is when you start, etc; and finally, Multiplayer mode, which is essentially just Skirmish with human players.

There's a plethora of user-made mods and maps available here; the game is completely free and can be downloaded here.

PROS
-Free
-Unique design system
-Varied gameplay
-Re-playability value
-Usermade Mods

CONS
-Not much official support: the game itself was "revived" in 2005 by a third party group of fans, and the original company is dead AFAIK.
-Graphics may seem lacking in comparison to other RTS games today, but on a high resolution they're pretty nice.
-Friendly AI can be a bit wonky at times due to the mediocre pathfinding: sometimes units will bump into each other or move out the way, etc.
-Most missions have a set time limit to accomplish, usually an hour from what I've seen.

i'm up to give it a try

i'm getting a little bored of starcraft.

I'd be up for trying it but this one dude in my German class has been bringing his laptop and stuffing it down our throats all week. It seems kinda sub-par, to be honest, almost like they intentionally bit off more than they could chew.

I've downloaded, but I doubt it'll take Dungeon Keepers spot on my taskbar.

Or Battle for Wesnoth, for that matter...

Or World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru and the other penumthing... I have so many games to play, bloody bundle.

Uberbeard wrote: Or World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru and the other penumthing... I have so many games to play, bloody bundle.

I noticed you forgot Aquaria.

Bought that and played through when it came out.

Oh haha. I was gonna say. It's definitely worth a playthrough.

Anyways, back on topic, should we just have a massive Wolfire forums game?

Warzone 2100 has weird memory problems on PPC machines. At least all the builds I've tried have.

Really? Well, the newest one (2.3.0) came out in mid-April of this year and it's the only one I've played, and I've encountered no such problems here

The sound will eventually cut out and all you'll hear is the music. All other sounds will die off, if you keep playing it'll usually crash out. Its probably because my computer is really old, and from what I've seen they don't have many people who use PPC processors anymore as it is.

That's pretty odd, though I don't use a PPC processor so I wouldn't have had this issue anyways. Maybe it's fixed in 2.3.0?

Anyways, I've played some skirmish games that last four or five hours and I have never had the sound cut out on me :O