Earth 2160 has just caught me completely off guard (Gamespot has a preview).

2001’s Earth 2150 was a great little game with some RTS gameplay twists - you would research vehicle chassis and weapons separately and then “design” your units with the different atoms you’ve unlocked. Granted - this was a bit of a micromanagement headache during multiplayer, but in all it added to the replayability). The single player campaign had you race against the clock to get off Earth before it blew up in 100 days (or so); you were forced to consisently balance the purchase of new units/buildings/research to help fight to gain/hold territory against the ultimate goal of affording a the end-game colonization ship that would fly your faction to Mars, leaving the other 2 factions to go to hell.

This is where Earth 2160’s story starts - Earth is toast and all of the factions are now warring over new Martian conquests. A fourth faction has also been added (der the Martians). The graphics are absolutely killer… like, Half-Life 2-quality but stuck in an RTS. The camera has support for both the top-down RTS style camera or to zoom into the eyes of any of your units. This is great news as Earth 2150’s camera system had an isometric 3d camera zoom-thang going on. It was often difficult to peer around mountains and to see/target what was shooting your units from the air. Unfortunately I’m not sure if unit-design is still in.

Earth 2150 was an enjoyable RTS game similar in may ways to Total Annihilation. It flew under the radar for most people but with screenshots like this, I don’t think the 2160 (part 3 of the franchise) will have this problem. Just take a gander (clickable)!