As our catalog gets bigger and better every week, it's easy to lose track of some of the awesome games that we have to offer. We've been running one day "Gaming Gem" promos for a while now to highlight some classic titles that don't get the love of some of our best-known blockbusters like Baldur's Gate or Duke Nukem 3D. To celebrate summer, for the next two weeks until July 25th, we're going to run a Gaming Gem promo every day, so you can rediscover these lesser-known classics! Grab that plastic toy shovel and dig out gem after gem over the next 18 days. We think every game we're going to be offering on our Summer GOG.com Gem Extravaganza will be an excellent title, and we hope you give them all a try.

Today we have uncovered a hardcore RTS hidden gem ;) [url=http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/dark_reign_expansion]Dark Reign + Expansions is really the true, real RTS you’d want to play. A lot of innovative features were so hardcore that the modern games of today are using the pseudocasual counterparts.

First and foremost the whole setting, the new Hard Sci-Fi world that was created for Dark Reign is unique. You are the lone survivor of the Tograns, a human faction whose homeworld was devoured by a brutal civil war between the Freedom Guard and the Imperium. Now you have to be victorious in battle simulations of some of the famous battles between those two. If you prove yourself, you’ll get a chance to use an advanced probe launcher to go back in time and save the Togran’s leader and scientist Alpheus Togra, thus saving the whole civilization. The expansion pack adds a second campaign involving the Imperium, a rogue AI, and a secret research facility ;)

Dark Reign is full of innovations, it’s the one of the first RTS games to use fully 3D models and terrain that impact physics and damage. Fast paced action obliged the design team to drop the Fog of War system and implemented a Line of Sight that changes with the terrain elevation and the landscape. The two sides are totally heterogeneous in terms of design and units, and speaking of the units. To minimise micro-management which can be a chore with this many units and fast paced RTS action a new system was implemented, you can set the general attitude of your individual units. This regulates their rules of engagement and eagerness to fight. Top that with a simple and reliable waypoint system and you get the picture of how deep the gameplay is. All of that is driven by one of the best soundtracks in the history of RTS.

Buy it now only for $3.99 today and check out one of the best RTS games of all time!