The story of ToD involves the Nespanona, which began 1 million years ago when a highly advanced civilization got a little greedy with its transportation abilities. Excessive experimentation caused an irreversible compression of Nespanona’s planetary core. Fortunately, Nespanona's scientists quickly determined how to build anti-gravity devices that could be attached to the planet's core to slow the effects of the compression. These devices held the planet's crust together long enough for the billions of Nespans to escape and seek out a new home.

Nespanona finally broke into tens of thousands of individual islands, some as large as small countries, which are now held in place by million-year-old anti-gravity contraptions. The Cog houses (played by you) are the only ones who understand the ancient technologies of the Nespan’s Quantam Foam Gates (Transporters). Each Cog house now claims it should control the northern continent, and your job is to make it the property of your house.

To make things more interesting, the Eighth Cog House has established a trading facility of sorts where you can "bank" Water (a valuable commodity) and Crystal Moss (the most valuable commodity). You can then use this account to purchase intelligence, gate codes, news and special Shadoo ships, which are otherwise unavailable.

ToD starts you with all the essentials to begin building your empire, including one of the treasured Quantum Foam Gates for communications with the Eighth House. Unlike some strategy games, your mining vehicles start out with a full load, allowing you to immediately start building. I might suggest, as do the developers, that you start by building a fleet of mining transports.

The mining transports can recover all available resources from any given island and unload them into your silo. Mining vehicles can also be configured with automatic routes that they will follow indefinitely (until they run out of fuel) with a simple click of the mouse. Using the Quantum Communicators (QC), you can remotely send resources to whatever island you have built a Quantum Receiver on. It’s really a convenient feature that helps keep the gameplay fluid.

NiCE has created a wonderful multiple-view system for examining the vast space available to you. The detail view allows you to see, control and build your vehicles, while the empire view allows you to zoom in and out of the entire 3D wire frame world and highlights owned areas, enemy areas and un-claimed areas. These areas are revealed when one of your vehicles enters that particular expanse of space.

A third view, which is where you enter the game on each login, shows system stats, messages and online players. Your stats and points are regularly updated along with the vehicles, buildings and islands you own. This is a very useful tool for keeping up with where you are in the game, allowing you to see everything happening at a glance

In ToD, there is a wide range of warships, scouts and weapons available to you. The vehicles are simple to control and give you a good variety of the usual command options, then go that extra step with an aggression setting. I have to admit my favorite weapon is the IIBM (Inter-Island Ballistic Missile), which is capable of reaching any island within 250 km. You can purchase the IIBM from the Eighth House or build it on an already-purchased Battle Platform (another great vehicle). By using a scout or other ship you can get the island into view and then send the missile on its way.

ToD has a wonderfully usable and functional in-game interface, with all vehicles and buildings utilizing a common stat meter showing resources, fuel, command options and queued objects (construction units). Despite the wonderful design, at times the point-and-click interface can be a little cumbersome as the transparent menus lead to several mis-clicks After a bit of time, though, you learn to work around these issues and get back to enjoying the game.

The natural occurrences that continually change and evolve in ToD are another boon to the overall gameplay. Quantum disturbances, for instance, transport any vehicles in their path to random points on the map. As this occurrence roams space, you can try to avoid it or use it for strategic advantage. For example, one time I logged on to discover about 10 vehicles scattered all over the map to points I would never have otherwise been able to get to without making a hefty payment to the Eighth House for travel coordinates. Other "occurrences" include Traveling Salesmen and Traveling Miners. The Traveling Salesman, which you have to find on islands,  will sell you items you cannot even purchase from the Eighth House. The Traveling Miner will perform mining services for you, for the right amount of money.

One last thing I should mention is the help system, which was actually one of my favorite features of ToD. At any time, you simply hover your mouse over an object and press F1 to display an information window. This window details all the capabilities of the object, giving you a quick rundown of its available features. In addition to the mouse-activated help, there is almost always an available admin for chat in case you run into any problems. While I was reviewing ToD, these admins checked in on me just to see how I was doing and were quick to answer any questions.

Graphics

The graphics in Time of Defiance are wonderful though highly reliant on you having a high end video card to really enjoy them. ToD is a graphics- intensive title and really requires at least 32MB of memory on your graphics card for optimal performance. I have, however, played it extensively on a 16MB card and found that it still looks great. While I had to turn off the mist and throttle down some of the textures, the gameplay and primary graphics were unaffected. In fact, the game is still quite enjoyable on a low-end card, but can frustrate you when you have to use your camera to read some of the notification windows, which rely on the texture-based effects.

NiCE seems to have mastered the art of the 3D camera angle. The game gives you the freedom to attach the camera to any one of your numerous vessels, buildings or islands, offering multiple viewpoints onto the action. If you prefer, you can float around a full 360 degrees to observe whatever your empire-building heart desires.

The variety of camera angles themselves is fabulous, and the free-floating camera is a great viewing tool. The "follow" camera angle, however, puts you in the jet wash of your vehicle, which makes it completely unusable. Fortunately the attachment camera feature provides a number of great views and positioning for those great screenshots you're sure to be taking from within ToD.

The 3D environment in ToD surpassed my pre-conceived ideas of what an online 3D game could be capable of. I expected some lag and the jerky movements that most games incur when played online, but ToD is completely fluid with excellent online gameplay. ToD can even be played lag-free on a 56k modem connection, which says a lot for its networking code.

The sound in ToD seems well mixed, though sparingly used. While it has no real in-game soundtrack, the sound effects are good. Go to your home island and listen to your vehicle constructor as it builds, or listen to your armada as it passes by on the way to battle, and you'll be quite impressed. The battle sounds are nothing new, as they are also the typical missile sounds and explosions, but they are quite good

The number of levels available in ToD allows every skill-level of gamer to enjoy the game. Each of the 21-day long games is great for building large empires, creating strategic alliances or deceiving another player to make him/her more vulnerable. In addition, NiCE recently added special games and skirmish games, which are specifically designed for hardcore war-hungry empire builders, but last for shorter periods of time and operate at 4x and 8x speeds.

On top of the ability to continually build and destroy empires, the replayability of ToD is further increased through the league, allies and friends features in NiCE’s online community. You might find the beginner game a little slower due to the expected learning curve, but it is a great way to learn strategies before jumping in with the hardcore players.

If you're the goal-oriented type, ToD has plenty of awards to strive for: highest score, most kills, most steals, most islands, etc. You have a chance to receive an award regardless of your personal strategy. Thanks to the variety of gameplay, ToD is a game you will be addicted to for a long time to come. The real-time interaction with players around the world also makes it more interesting to see what may have happened since the last time you were logged in. So set up your defenses and build the greatest empire the Cog has ever known, but stay out of my way.

Once I played ToD, I was hooked. NiCE has created a game that combines the freedom of open play with the goal-oriented objectives sought by individuals who are in constant pursuit of some sort of trophy from a strategy game.

I will be playing this game for some time to come. Perhaps the only downside is the fee schedule. Since it is an online game, you have to subscribe to play. Monthly membership is about $8.00 USD, 6 months is about $40.25, and an annual membership costs about $65 USD. I highly suggest visiting ToD and downloading the demo before deciding whether or not you'll enjoy it enough to subscribe. The demo is a fully operational version, but it limits whom you can play against.

Overall, this is a great game that I cannot stop playing.

See more screens on the Time of Defiance media page