Ground Control II: Operation Exodus

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ground Control II: Operation Exodus is a 2004 real-time tactics game by Massive Entertainment and Vivendi Universal Games. It’s the sequel to Ground Control and keeps 3D graphics with a fully rotatable camera. Like the first game, it emphasizes tactical combat over building bases or managing an economy, but it adds a resource system called acquisition. You gain acquisition points by capturing control locations and destroying enemies, which lets you deploy units and use faction-specific support weapons. The game is faster paced, more like a traditional real-time strategy.

Factions and units:
- Three factions exist, but only two are playable: the Northern Star Alliance (NSA) and the Viron Nomads. The Terran Empire is only in the single-player story.
- There are 33 playable units, all deployed by dropships. Units include infantry, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, aircraft, artillery, and fixed emplacements.
- Units have fixed secondary abilities; there’s no customization.

Story:
- The game is set in the same universe as Ground Control but about 320 years later. Humans have faster-than-light travel and colonized the galaxy, with Inner Sphere and Outer Sphere connected by Tachyon relays. A barrier stops travel between galaxies.
- After events from the first game, Major Sarah Parker helped reset some tech and escaped. A long interstellar war reshapes the region, with the Terra Empire threatening the Outer Sphere.
- Captain Jacob Angelus becomes a key NSA commander. An unknown spacecraft crashes on Morningstar Prime, and scientists discover an ancient Singularity Drive on the CSS Astrid that can bypass the intergalactic barrier to evacuate people to another galaxy.
- Angelus pursues a way to save NSA citizens, helps evacuate as many as possible to the CSS Astrid, but Imperial forces destroy much of the NSA’s forces and a shuttle with evacuees. Angelus ends up stranded on Morningstar Prime.

Development and reception:
- Ground Control II: Operation Exodus was announced in February 2003. It received generally favorable reviews, with Metacritic and GameSpot noting strong reception. GameSpot even named it the best computer game of June 2004.