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call 1-800-771-3772 gamespy cmm - .

for Rating Information © 2001 Infogrames Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. Manufactured and marketed by Infogrames, Inc., New York, NY. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Quicksilver Software Inc. L]

CONTENT RATED 8Y ESRB

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cgm * issue 145

42 COVER STORY

LUCKY

15

The stunning-looking XIII, plus twelve others to shoot for in 2003, including:

City of Heroes

Command & Conquer Generals DOOM III

DX2: Invisible War

Freelancer

Full Throttle 2

Halo

Rise of Nations

Star Wars Galaxies

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic

Tron 2.0 World of WarCraft

BY JASON CROSS, CHRIS HUDAK, KEVIN RICE, AND CINDY YANS

NEWSWIRE

24

25

26

32

66

Sid Meier's Legacy

The question isn't so much whether the legendary designer will revisit some of the games of his past. It's merely which ones will they be

BY ANDREW S. BUB

"Ghosts" of Blizzard

Blizzard announces its next game, StarCraft:

Ghost...for consoles only BY STEVE BAUMAN

Newsbutes What Are You Playing?, Top Sellers, Spotlight, and Offbeat

PREVIEWS

Of Human Bond-age

007: NightFire pays homage to 40 years of shaken, not stirred, action

BY SUZANNE ASHE

Also Previewed: All American: The 82nd Airborne in Normandy . . . .36

HARDWARE

Technicalities

When Will 3D Really Matter?—Gamers can't live without it, but the mass market ignores it

BY JASON CROSS

67 Q&A You have questions, we have answers

68 Going Flat With prices falling and quality rising, it might be time to ditch that gigantic tube monitor and go with stylishly thin LCD

BY JASON CROSS

Reviews:

Track GX odds aires os. rus 76

НОТА COUGAR aie eee eoe onte oe 76 REVIEWS

78 No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way Nobody does it better: Monolith is at the top of the gaming world with this superb sequel BY STEVE BAUMAN

Also Reviewed

America’s! Army. .--.-. ces а 92 Battlefield1942- soi Saat 84 Сеше Кто cs NACE А 94 Dirt Track Racing2.............. 98 Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest . .96 Iirks:2003..:: O SC T ATAS. 96 Майа ss а 90 Medieval: Total War............. 88 Prisoner. ot. W8L-c. АД eme. 94 SpringiBIe8k ze egg 98 Sybériac И. en 86 The hinge СЕНДА ДД. А 92

Unreal Tournament 2003 ......... 82

In 1942, specially trained soldiers were deployed to carry out commando-style missions against the forces of Japan. They were cold as steel and could strike without warning. Through sweltering

rainforests, sun-baked coral beaches and stinking mangrove swamps, these skilled heroes took

the war to the Japanese. ay s % | | Bring the hard-edged intensity of the Pacific The puter. Arm your squad with an impressive arsenal of weapons for each mi . Expetience t! ry of that 12-man unit, known

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PUBLISHER

Edward Cespedes

BUSINESS DIRECTOR Ed Mitchell

E cr EDITORIAL EUS SE Editor-in-Chief Steve Bauman sbauman@cgonline.com

Features Editor Cindy Yans cyans@cgonline.com

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© 2002 Strategy Plus, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. Unsolicited submissions become the property of Strategy Plus, Inc. If you wish to make a submission, please contact the editors.

BPA V

104

18

108

110 AFTERLIFE 102 Out of the Box Mass Appeal—How to develop a shooter for the modders... and why you probably 112 shouldn't BY BRETT TODD

Tous in the Attic

Toys for Bob is revisiting the legendary Star 114 Control Il, and plans on giving it away for free

BY BRETT TODD

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DEPARTMENTS

Upfront

Adult's Only—Gaming on the road to immaturity

BY STEVE BAUMAN

Rebound Understanding satire, loving BioWare, Britney Spears... these are our readers

Road to Nowhere

Ode on a franchise burn—Attempting to transcend the constraints of a medium BY CINDY YANS

Inside the Sausage Factory Come on in, the water's fine...—(And you don't even have to quit your day job...)

BY PHIL STEINMEYER

Three Finger Salute Battlefield 2003—Reality has left the building BY TOM CHICK

Big Time Sequel

Try out Unreal Tournament 2003 before you buy. It comes with a couple of game types, a couple of maps, a couple of models... but lots of entertainment.

Also this month:

No One Lives Forever 2 America's Army Madden NFL 2003 NHL 2003

Plus wallpapers from DOOM III, Tomb Raider, Ghost Recon, and more.

INSTRUCTIONS: The disc should autoplay once placed in your CD-ROM. If it does not, double-click on CGCD.EXE to launch the interface. If you have a defective CD-ROM, a replacement can be obtained by sending the original to: Computer Games, ATTN: CD Replacement, 63 Millet St. Richmond, VT 05477.

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©2002 Infogrames Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Manufactured and marketed by Infogrames, Inc., New York, NY. Ай trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Sid Meier's Civilization®, Civ®, and Civilization are U.S. registered trademarks. Firaxis Games is a trademark of Firaxis Games, Inc. GameSpy and the "Powered by GameSpy" design are trademarks of GameSpy Industries, Inc. All rights reserved.

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18

adults only

Gaming on the road to immaturity

Does your idea of a “mature” game include dogs having sex and/or public urination? It does if you're Acclaim, whose BMX XXX is the self-appointed poster boy for the “maturation of the game industry,” to use the words of its spokesperson in an article on CNN.com. Of course it’s hard not to wonder if this is a marketing stunt or some kind of desperate cry for attention since we’re talking about a compa- ny that managed to get someone to name their newborn child “Turok” for a year and advertised Shadow Man 2 on tombstones.

What makes BMX XXX “mature” are the following features, taken from its website: “Live strippers, pimps, ho’s, and enough dog doo to make you piss your pants.” IGN.com perhaps best sums up the game, and their editorial style, saying, “You will see boobies.”

All of you out there that have never seen “boobies” before, raise your hand, or some other representative part of your anatomy! Since it’s fair to say a large majority of readers—and at least 99.9% of our woman readers—can answer yes to the above question, how does this represent the “maturation of the industry?” That’s like saying American Pie is more “mature” than Signs because, you know, a

Acclaim is correct, its existence and accep- tance in games is a sign of maturation. The appearance of more adult themes in games is inevitable, but the baby steps will, as always, be slightly less than subtle. There’s room for everything in gaming, including something like BMX XXX. To say otherwise is to ignore the existence of, say, Tom Green. Hollywood understands this. Some people only watch movies like Requiem for a Dream, while others only watch There’s Something About Mary. There’s nothing wrong those looking for “serious” entertainment or “non-serious” entertainment. Both may be “serious” about their interests. As\ with most filmgo- ers, I bounce back and forth between extremes, though I know I'd rather watch someone have sex with a pastry in American Pie a thousand times than be forced to suffer through more of Tom Cruise acting tormented in Eyes Wide Shut. The difference between Hollywood and

4$ In adding more adult themes, whether they're sexual or not, it's time for some games to add more shades of gray, to at least try to

show some consequence for your actions, some subtext, or some additional meaning. FF

chick gets naked in it, and there's a sex scene with pastry.

Yet BMX XXX gets publicity, alongside games like the T&A fest Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, as an example of how games are growing up. C'mon, people can do better than this. These are adolescent, "Wouldn't it be cool if..." designs, and they're probably considerably cooler if you hadn't seen actual boobies yet.

Making these claims even more dubious is realizing that the themes covered in your average Final Fantasy game are considerably more "mature" than polygonal T&A. And that doesn't even take into account games like Planescape Torment, Deus Ex, or any Ultima game. What about the sharp and sophisticated humor in No One Lives Forever 2 [see page 78]? Even Max Payne tried to give some deeper meaning and resonance to its semi-random acts of wanton violence.

But we're talking about sex here, and as everyone's always quick to say, "Sex sells." That's not entirely true; it draws attention, but that sort of notoriety doesn't necessarily lead to sales. $50 games aren't impulse purchases like the latest edition of Maxim, and due to the repetitive nature of videogames, sex appeal alone isn't enough to sustain a game. Gameplay, again, wins out.

Sex will always find its way into games, just as it did back when Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry was called Softporn Adventure, and Cobra Mission emerged from the land of the rising nipple in the early “905. And there's nothing wrong with this. In fact, the spokesperson for

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

gaming, at least at this stage, is you can enjoy many films on multiple levels. Most games are only enjoyable on a purely viscer- al level. Few raise issues beyond, "The evil guy is doing something really bad. He's irre- deemably evil, and you must kill him and thousands of other irredeemably evil peo- ple." In adding more adult themes, whether they're sexual or not, it's time for some games to add more shades of gray, to at least try to show some consequence for your actions, some subtext, or some additional meaning. Moreover, as long as you're not dogmatic, none of this negatively affects the player interested only in "entertainment." e

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ANNIVERSARY

ACTIVISION.

TM, ®, & © 2002 Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved. Star Trek and related marks are trademarks of Paramount Pictures. Game собе © 2002 Activision, inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. Published and distributed by Activision Publishing Inc. Activision act ivision.com

is a registered trademark of Activision, Inc. and its affiliates. Developed by Taldren. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Interactive Digital Software Association. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners.

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› 2002 Monolith Productions. Inc. All rights reserved. Fox Interactive, No One Lives Forever and their associated logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, © 2002 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Monolith and A Spy in H.A.R.M.'S Way are trademarks of Monolith Productions, Inc. Sierra and the Sierra logo are trademarks of Sierra Entertainment, Inc. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA Logo, NVIDIA The Way It's Meant to be Played Logo and other NVIDIA Marks are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the United States and other countries. The ratings icon is a trademark of the Interactive Digital Software Association. “Computer Games Magazine, PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World

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©2002 Electronic Arts Inc. Electronic Arts, EA GAMES, the EA Games logo and Challenge Everything are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All rights reserved. NIGHTFIRE Interactive.Game (certain James Bond related properties © 1962-2002 Danjaq, LLC, and United Artists Corporation. NIGHTFIRE is a trademark of Danjaq, LLC, and United Artists Corporation. GameSpy Arcade is © 1994-2002 GameSpy Industries, Ltd. The GameSpy logo and "GameSpy"

tick a laser camera, tock and magnets tick all to help you obtain secret documents tock and then scale the walls of a large international organization 60 stories above Tokyo,

tick or defend yourself from sniper fire high above the alps tock while dodging bullets from tick would be jungle assassins all in time to tock get the girl

but don't pat yourself on the back yet tick because that Sixty seconds of Bond's world. was only one minute tock and there are still 1,400 left in the It’s more than most people day tick and 14 more classic Bond enemies to fight online. do their entire life.

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Bond related trademarks TM Danjaq, LLC. James Bond, 007, James Bond Gun and Iris Logos and all other tronic Arts™ brand.

NEWSWIRE

issue 145 • december 2002

The question isn't so much whether the legendary designer will revisit some of the games of his past.

It's merely which ones will they be.

by Andrew S. Bub

Sid Meier's Sid Meier!

24

Sid Meier is easily one of the most respected game designers in the business. To many, his name is synonymous with qual- ity gaming, and few designers have covered more genres for as many years. He was a found- ing member of MicroProse and left to form Firaxis shortly before that company was tossed around between Hasbro and Infogrames. Meier and com- pany partnered with the latter to bring Sid Meier's Civilization III to store shelves, bringing Meier and his original creation full circle.

While this was an interesting turn of events, it was made even more interesting after Meier teased an audi- ence at Gen Con 2002 in Milwaukee, saying, "Since Civilization III was such a success, we've given a lot of thought to remaking some of my other games." He then asked the crowd what games it would like to see.

Many told him they want a remake of Meier's leg- endary action/role-playing/strategy hybrid Pirates, but Meier only nodded and allowed that the game would look good with today's technology. He mentioned Colonization as a possibility, as well as his offbeat spy game Covert Action, but the crowd showed little interest in those titles. *How about Gettysburg?" shouted some

wargame fan. Sid smiled and admitted, "I'd love to revis-

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

it Gettysburg, but those are Firaxis games, we already have the rights to it and Alpha Centauri." Then Meier tantalizingly remarked "Our deal with

Infogrames gives us access to the entire MicroProse cata- log, so we have a lot of choices," then mentioned Master of Magic and X-COM. The crowd began peppering him with questions and other suggestions.

For fans of any of those games, it's hard not to be interested in a modern day remake, or any of Meier's various tank, flight, or submarine games. What would a designer like Meier bring to games like X-COM or Master of Magic? Both games are seen as classics that easily rival the best of his own oeuvre.

So what will the legacy game be? Meier said he's very interested in Master of Magic and X-COM. “We get a lot of requests for Pirates," he said with a smile, and when asked about the submarine sim Silent Service he said, "That and Red Storm Rising would be interesting to remake." When asked about Railroad Tycoon, he men- tioned only that he liked PopTop's sequel and felt no need to revisit that license.

After the event, Firaxis backtracked somewhat, saying the company hasn’t actually secured any rights to old MicroProse games from Infogrames. “Sid Meier was probably being optimistic when he mentioned that,” explained Firaxis’ PR Director Kathy Gilmore, saying the

company is negotiating for licenses but there was noth- ing she could specifically reveal. "I've been told we're negotiating for Sid's legacy titles," she said, but not the games Meier didn't design (like X-COM and

Master of Magic). She could not deny, however, that other "non-Sid" titles might be included given what Meier said at Gen Con. She also said that the licenses were being negotiated one at a time and not in a lump settlement, adding that she was very opti- mistic about how the negotiations were proceeding. She confirmed that Firaxis plans to announce the next Sid Meier game soon after Civilization III: Play the World is released in late October, but couldn't guarantee that the announcement would have anything to do with MicroProse legacy titles.

Interestingly, Firaxis recently licensed the Netimmerse game engine, a 3D engine used to power games as You take on the role of Nova, a lethal Ghost operative... or at least you will diverse as Star Trek Bridge Commander and Freedom on your console.

Force. Of course, the new engine could be for some new non-MicroProse related title. Meier only admitted that

3D has come a long way. “Games like Warcraft III and "Ghosts" of Blizza rd

Age of Mythology prove you can use the technology

without sacrificing detail," he said. Blizzard announces a new StarCraft ... Meier is notorious for extensive research, but when

asked what he's been reading lately, he only smiled and for consoles only

declined to comment, avoiding the bait. Then his family by Steve Bauman

arrived and escorted him onto the show floor leaving us

all to wonder about the next Sid Meier game, and what On September 20th at the Tokyo Gameshow, Blizzard announced its

Firaxis has planned for MicroProse's legacy. next game, StarCraft: Ghost. Unfortunately, PC gamers interested in a Special thanks to www.mobygames.com for the use of 3D, third-person, Metal Gear Solid-styled romp through a familiar

its scans of the old MicroProse games. e gaming universe will need a console to play it; it's for multiple *next-

generation" platforms only. Co-developed by Blizzard and Nihilistic Software (Vampire: The Masquerade), it's scheduled

^ for release in late 2003. Se pa ra ted at Bi rth ? "We're very excited about returning to the StarCraft If you thought Hamid Karzai looked familiar, you were right. Behold the disturbing series," said Mike Morhaime, similarity between the Afghani President and Bruno Lawrie from No One Lives pic ieee ie

$ dent and co-founder in the Forever. (With thanks to Jason McCullough) press release, pointing out that

the company's roots are in console, not PC gaming (the developer's first games includ- ed Rock N' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings for the SNES).

In other Blizzard console news, the company announced they would bring The Lost Vikings to the GameBoy Advance. e

WWW.CGONLINE.COM 25

NEWSBYTES »

26

WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING?

Brenda Braithwaite Lead Designer, MicroProse

"Dungeons & Dragons Heroes. l'm either working on it or playing it. It's really coming together now, and it's a blast to play with four players. As if | don't get enough at work, | play traditional D&D once a month, too, with some people from Infogrames Hunt Valley (formerly MicroProse) and a pro- grammer from Firaxis. | have Meverwinter Nights, but | have to wait until we hit alpha before | open it otherwise, I'll get no sleep at all. My favorite game, of course, which | play night and day is SimDiaper and RealMom

with my 19-month old daughter, Maezza."

Jason Hall C.E.0., Monolith Productions

"Aside from Vo One Lives Forever 2, | have been playing and quite thor-

oughly enjoying WarCraft III on Battle.net. | have set

up a special ‘strategy

practice’ account and have been using it to try almost every single funda-

mental strategy that | can think of. By ‘fundamental,’

| mean a generalized

theme that | can successfully use consistently throughout the game.”

Play

Mare

Games for a Living

Get in the Game! Careers in the Game Industry by Marc Mencher New Riders [www.newriders.com], $29.95

Mencher wants to tell you how to get a job. Before

founding a game recruiting firm (Game Recruiter), he

worked for Spectrum Holobyte, MicroProse, and 3D0, and later as a board member of the International Game Developers Network. He created his book to assist you

in obtaining a job in the game industry. It includes information from over a dozen folks in the industry telling you how to meet people and dupe them into hiring you, or alternately how to acquire the skills

Poker goes Tetri 5 Card Dash $19.99 Any fan of Tetris-style gameplay will want to take a look at this game from CogniToy, creators of the intricate strategy game, Mind Rover. This excep- tionally addicting product challenges you to create poker hands from randomly falling tiles, as you fight for high score. There is a mind-boggling race against the clock, an un-timed puzzle mode, and a freelance practice mode.

While it might seem straightforward, bonus cards, special action cards, wild cards, and cards that “eat” the currently falling card (Chomp cards)

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

that properly “sell” yourself based on your merits and background. It covers creating demos, handling interviews, negotiating salaries and Mountain Dew allowances, while discussing specific careers in game design, programming, art, and production.

all bring a much more strategic element to the game. Gameplay is level- based, each level requiring you to complete certain combinations of hands, and beware, you may find your- self falling victim to the lit- tle voice that urges “just one more hand...” The game is shareware, and you can download a demo at www.cognitoy.com.

TOP SELLERS WARCRAFT Ill: 1 REIGN OF CHAOS Blizzard Entertainment Rating жж жж

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11. Zoo Tycoon; 12. The Sims Livin' Large;

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Visit www.esrb.org or call 1-800-771-3772 for Rating Information.

E2002 Electronic Arig inc. SimCity, The Sims, Бебзопіс Arts, EA GAMES, ЁЁ EA GAMES logo and Challeage Everything are trademarks fr registered trademarks Ей Arts Inc. in the U Sfänd/or othe tries. All sights reserved. All other Рзин йесі, are the property of thelf respective owners. EA GAME an Electronic At Grand.

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Challenge Everything

“the game looks amazing — the explosions, detonations, and other effects are spectacular." —Computer Games—

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007: NightFire pays homage to 40 years of Shaken, b

but not stirred, action

by Suzanne Ashe

After a number of demonstrations of James Bond 007: NightFire where Electronic Arts didn’t allow anyone to actually play the game, it’s hard not to get antsy while the game’s pro- ducer, Michael Condrey, runs through three lev- els before turning over the controls. You control Bond as he starts off high in the Austrian Alps where he needs to penetrate a castle and collect data about a Nuke Lord named Drake. After you jump from a bomber and land near the target, you need to stowaway on a trans- port to get behind the stone walls—don’t fret, however, there are other ways in, including a shooting out some searchlights and pick- ing a lock. Although ammo is plentiful, it’s never a problem to pluck more from an enemy’s corpse. There are a few goodies, though, which are in short supply and warrant some careful handling, one of which is a mini turret gun in a briefcase. Toss this baby into the fray to lay down some ground cover while Bond scurries away.

After gathering pertinent intel, Bond makes his way to Tokyo where he sneaks past several civilian guards and gains access to more sensitive material. No use going in all Chow Yun Fat (the powers that be nicked the double-fisted pistol action that the developers threw in as added firepower). Here, a lighter touch is required. Dialing up the menu of gadgets he has at his disposal—a key chain/stunner, a ciga-

| [above] Storm troopers below! >>> That batch of cleavage does | warrant sunglasses removal.

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

rette lighter/camera, and a fountain pen/dart gun, and a PDA/decoder—Bond can effectively disarm the guards, disable the alarm system and take over the control room in about the time it takes the average bartender to shake a chilled cocktail.

"These guards are sneaky,” says Condrey. "They'll hide behind one-way mirrors, duck behind objects, kick back grenades, and do just about anything to take Bond out." He suggests that setting up hot keys before hand will aid in accessing each device.

After disabling key areas of the techno terrorists regime, you jet off to the South Pacific where you dive headfirst into more trouble. At Drake's offshore lair of evil you are able to crack a code and plan the next move. After swimming through the treach- erous South Pacific Sea, you next blast off to an orbiting Space Station where you go toe to toe with villains in space suits and jet packs. Other levels include infiltrating Fort Knox and schmoozing in a high rolling casi- no. Enemies and allies are plentiful on each level, as are weapons. Some guns are even stashed in secret areas. One such cache of goods can be found behind a bookcase Harry Potter-style. You can get to them by

ШШ

< PREVIEWS

"Do you read me, Chief? How about you, 99?" »»» [below] Able to scale tall buildings in a million awkward steps.

pushing the right tomes, until the bookcase Job to Pussy Galore.

rolls back revealing the vault behind. All in all, it appears there is plen- You can easily shift the camera angle ty of action to accompany this inter- around to take advantage of the massive active tribute to the Bond films, levels and intricate architecture. The view which celebrate their 40th anniver- can even track Bond from a distance, as in sary this year. NightFire will debut the case of the character inching across a this winter during the same time- high wire. From this view players get a frame as the motion picture release clear, yet somewhat unsettling, shot of of Die Another Day. And if actor Pierce Brosnan's face. Indoors and at Electronic Arts and developer Gearbox Software have anything to say night players can pullout the infrared gog- about it, NightFire will intrigue you enough to Play Another Night. e

gles, to peer behind a rice paper wall, or perhaps just to scan a potential date with the aid of x-ray lenses. And no secret agent's life would be complete without the crack support team of the perpetually irri- tated Q, M, and Miss Moneypenny. Although the game has all the flavor a Bond feature film, including the Aston Martin, there is no way to drive the car— it's all done in cut scenes (the console ver- sion of the game, developed by Eurocom, offers seamless driving play). Instead, the PC game offers online multiplayer levels. Here players can take on the persona of number of Bond allies or enemies in “cap- ture the flag," or “Good” vs. “Evil.” Players can assume the identities of Zoe (from Agent Under Fire), or anyone from Odd

Bond takes on three laser- equipped gunmen

with his Vil old pistol.

WWW.CGONLINE.COM 33

SUGGESTIVE THEMES SONY ONLINE » ENTERTAINMENT

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Solusek Ro, The Burning Prince

ehold the portals. Journey to the throne rooms of the Gods of Norrath and challenge them to battle. In the Planes of Power lost treasures, mighty challenges, and adventures unknown await the hearty and brave.

Classic version of EverQuest included

18 new zones for experienced players

New translocation zone specifically linking all cities

Hundreds of new and powerful weapons, spells, armor, & jewelry

Over 50 new creatures to combat including - Rallos Zek the God of War, Bertoxxulous the God of Disease, Saryrn Goddess of Torment, and more

Dozens of enhanced quests for experienced and non-experienced players alike

Also look for the

: gore official EverQuest Atlas, ] a complete and detailed collection of all the maps

of Norrath.

EverQuest is a registered trademark and The Planes of Power is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. SOE and; SOE logo are trademarks of Sony Online. Entertainment Inc. © 2002 Sony Online Entertainment Inc.; portions © 2002 Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. All rights reserved.

There will be a game based on Quentin Tarantino's upcoming Kill Bill. The movie stars Uma Thurman as an assassin who swears revenge on her former master and his Squad of international assassins. [Black Label Games]

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Lord of the Rings Е СКС

Expect even more Lord of the Rings games down the road, including Middle Earth Online, The War of the Ring (a real-time strategy game) and games based on The Two Towers and The Return of the King. [Vivendi Universal)

6; : E ASIUME

|

EL. American Conquest Ls AA

Due in mid 2003, this real-time strategy game gives you control of one of 12 different nations in the Americas. Multiple campaigns and missions will bring you more than 300 years of armed conflict from 1492 to 1813. [CDV]

IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles

This expansion for the superb flight simulator adds 30 new missions, 27 new flyable aircraft, and a dynamic campaign. [UbiSoft]

Invasion from the Skies

All American: The 82nd Airborne in Normandy

promises up close and personal wargaming by Jeff Lackey

All American: The 82nd Airborne in Normandy hopes to build on the venera- ble tradition of turn based, squad level, tactical PC games (think X-COM and Jagged Alliance 2) with its realistic depiction of small unit actions in WWII's Normandy invasion. Its predecessor, 101: The Airborne Invasion of Normandy, was praised for its depth and authenticity. Designer Tim Brooks’ goal is to retain all of the features that players enjoyed in that game and improve on the few areas that gave cause for complaint.

Like its predecessor, it presents you with a large roster of individual soldiers of varying ranks, personalities, and skills from which you must assemble and equip a squad. Reaching the battlefield will be half the battle: as is historically accurate, the transport plane may be hit by flak, paratroopers may be wound- ed, separated from their squadron, or fail to survive the jump. Thus the first task will be to reassemble the squad and then attempt to ascertain, from the game maps, where the team has been dropped relative to the mission objec- tives. The game then simulates the encounters and battles a WWII small unit might face as it strives to accomplish the missions. The plan is for the missions to present enough variability to allow the campaigns to be replayed without becoming predictable.

As with many wargames, it’s attempting to appeal to grognards and casual gamers alike, allowing the hardcore to control minute details such as weapons selection while permitting novices to automate these choices. Improvements include new art, more varied missions (including street fighting,) improved AI behavior, and more weapons effects. One common complaint about 101 was the slow soldier movement; designer Brooks says this has been addressed, and the crippled “group move” function fixed.

At this point of development, The 82nd Airborne in Normandy appears to be a nice upgrade to 101, maintaining it’s strengths and fundamental gameplay while improving on the primary flaws. It should be available by the end of 2002. e

[above] As in the real event, the odds of your paradrop going as planned is quite low. >>> [left] АЦ American will intro- duce the option of allowing enemy sol- diers to surrender (and perhaps provid- what a ae fita. Ж werk. ing vitat information). Lo set лу фин : herd, We have been шашы it r the last 3 day such am y time here- half of

GREAT LEADERS RESOLVE CONFLICT

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ТІНЕ UNITED NATIONS ISECuAIPY COUNCIL:

į Established in Geneva (1945), this ! center for diplomacy. and the peaceful ¦ settlement of international disputes i has had a spotty record. In times of ! global crisis, the United Nation does { their best to prevent armed conflict. All Î too often, however, it is not enough.

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By PETER CROSBY

ecent military aggressions around the globe have many

nation’s worried. Between the United States, China and the Global Liberation Army, tensions run high. Their leaders profess no interest in escalating the situation, but words ring hollow when satellite photos tell a different story. The issue is no longer “Will

there be military conflict?” but instead, “Who will prevail?”

ORDS LIKE:

ONTHE BRINK OP ARMAGEDDON:

Depite their inferior military resources, the GLA still poses a real threat to worldwide security.

military resources

International support for military action 15 minimal at best.

Aggression by either China or the US will be unanimously and publicly derided by the global community.

Not surprisingly, most countries still contend that non-violent embargos, boycotts and interna- tional pressure are more effective than violence.

Visit www.esrb.org or call 1-800-771-3772

for Rating Information.

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Despite the difference in resources, all three forces achieve an eerie kind of parity. The GLA's low-tech- approach is no less effective than either China's superior forces or America's advanced technologies.

Challenge Everything

Triskaidekaphobia. Now there's a wordy don't hear every day. Strictly, the моҝ ге the unreasonable fear of the nuniber33— prime number, a Fibonacci number—it do get scarier than that. Unless you count W Craven's masked mass-murderer; or Kevi Bacon, who died in the first Friday the 13 and has been dying in films ever since. T word comes from the Greek, from tris, m "three", kai, meaning “апа”, deka, meani “ten” (mathematicians may confirm that “three” and “ten” make thirteen), and ph meaning “fear” or “flight”.

In the 1980s, writer Jean Van Hamme a illustrator William Vance collaborated on Belgian comic book Х///. UbiSoft jumped franchise, so you can now expect a swee edged shooter that takes the triskai-Gree adds Belgian, a touch of French-Canadia American, and serves it up warm. Okay, it hardly Craven-esque, but you can still ex an adventuresome and gripping story with few holes, most created by your arsenal. is a peek at its innards, and just for the triskaidekaphobic amongst you, here’s t of its buddies that serve as some of the anticipated games of 2003.

The stunning-looking XIII, plus twelve others to watch

for in 2003

by Jason Cross, Chris Hudak, Kevin Rice, and Cindy Yans

All niche comics make great games 6р0 best- sellers. Isn't that a given? Of course natgpublishems with “best-seller” dollar signs in their eyes generaly want to т Ке games for Everyman. Why, then, did ОЪ Ө OP O nêkê ù shooter adaptation of Jean Van Hamme's {ЙИ ВЕ АНОНС series, XIII?

Because tiny is relative. Found only in FENG TEKE nations from Seychelles to Burkina Faso— Well EYBE hot all French speaking nations—the XIII comics рау Ы іопѕ of copies. That's not so “tiny” after all. The galê E Mique in its look and tone, and it will be focused ЗИ ИШЕ ыу for each of its release platforms, ФА ВЕРО ОЕ the heaviest because of its strength а ИЙ Ее шаан

So why did they make it? Beca HEY опена would be, in a word, “cool.”

The character you play is XIII. You аг апер оиа beach with the Roman numerals tattggedion vour clavicle: but with little else tattooed in у БАШ Amnesia a pioi device found in works from Pi@i@seape fonment to КОБЕН Ludlum's The Bourne Identity ма Speaking OF Bourne, tet s see... a man dragged from the Meditemanean ais appearance altered, amnesia...certainly тап Ж ave kened ХШ йе Ludlum Bourne books. But Van НАШЕ НА EE, indi- cating that his alcoholic doctor сһага е Е ОШУ element similarly contained in the Ludlum work, and а the rest of his ideas differ radically from those in the book.

Your mission is to find out who you really are and why all these people are trying to kill you. “You don't know who you are when you start, but then you discover who you think уа are, but then, in fact, it turns out you're not that рег5@ you're somebody else pretending to be that person fof SET

son," explams brand та е John Согһ!@ In fact, you ES secret govern- ment agent who is part of an organization thaf is linked to a presidential assassination. So you think you aa XIII, but actually you are that government agent pretending to be XIII. The super duper FBI doesn't know this, however, and is pursuing you for your role in the assassination. The other Roman numeral people (and there are nineteen more of them, from I to XX) also still think you are XIII, but now they have their own vendetta against you. Have no fear, as a General and an undercover super duper government group that know who you actually are, and they are there to help you.

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You're in charge of your own double wide empire with Trailer Park Tycoon. Your new neighbors are a bunch of crazy characters like fishing guy, gothic girl and mullet dude. And they're all looking for a cheap and easy place to live. Dodge tornados and alien abductions as you create the perfect setting for your new tenants. Build a laundromat, open a shooting range or plant some pink flamingos in the front yard - it's all up to you.

Soon you'll be kickin' back in your barcalounger downing cold ones and collecting cash. EVERYONE

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Major Jones, an Air Force officer who can pilot various military aircraft, is part of this cor- rectly informed group. She tries to help you discover the truth about your identity and about the assassination. “To describe her role we can say that she’s a kind of ‘guardian angel’ for ХШ,” executive producer Julian Bares says. “For instance, she will help you to escape from certain places where you are outnumbered by enemies, or from bases where you're jailed...Other times, she will give you concrete instructions on the objectives of your mis- sions—go destroy this, steal these documents, etc."

Your amnesia abates slowly throughout the game, and your moments of recall are illus- trated in flashback sequences. Unlike cutscene flashbacks, these sequences will allow you to move around and interact within them. You can disregard their complexity and return to the shooter at hand, or you can linger a bit and get a clearer picture of the backstory. And they're all stylized with a kind of glow around the characters that differentiates these moments from "real" time.

If you ask around about this game, probably the first thing people acknowledge in recog- nition is, *Oh, yeah. That's that French thing with the cel shaded graphics." Cel shading is the art of rendering objects to give them a “cartoon-y” effect. In a nutshell, it is a way of lighting 3D models. The models are rendered just the way they would normally be, but the artists use only one or two colors on the surface, so instead of all of the nuances of realism, you get solid colors and an object that looks hand drawn, like the “cels” of old cartoons.

Cel Shading has not been as popular on the PC as it has in many console games, and while Jet Grind Radio, Sly Cooper, and Auto Modellista have wholly embraced it, XIII is the first PC shooter to use this technique. What is interesting is that, in this case, UbiSoft has moved away from the trend we have seen ever since 3D became de rigeur for shooters, namely that designers strived harder and harder to make them more photorealistic. Although a departure, this style is extremely compelling in a first person shooter, from its visual comic book appeal to its onomatopoeia. Bam! Zowie! Boom! and many other interjections pepper the combat scenes and a persistent audiovisual "Tap tap tap" effect indicates that something sinister is likely going on around that corner or behind that door.

Although XIII is not innovative in its inclusion of somewhat more “refined” gameplay than the DOOM-like Quakedom preferred by some (it's more about stealth and the mastery of a few weapons than about dragging out the Big Guns), it still rounds out the experience with a few tricks. There is cooperative gameplay in which scripted missions involve work- ing with the NPCs to your advantage. "The dynamic AI gives NPCs the capacity to evaluate if he needs to help, to run, or to cover XIII,” explains Bares. “For example, in one level,

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players will cover the NPC, Major Jones, as she runs across a roof littered with gangsters. When you successfully get her across, she will in turn cover you. Like any character of the game, the AI will go through some routines and eval- uation to dynamically adapt itself to the player's decisions and movements." ;

As with Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, you'll be able to drag your enemies in front of you and use them as human shields. To do so, you need to sneak up behind one and grab him by the neck. And after he has served his purpose, or if he has begun to hum Country-Western music, you'll be able to dis- pose of him by handily breaking his neck and dropping him on the ground.

You're not Bond, and you're not McGuyver. Instead, mas-

command & conquer

even more clones than, say, Myst. In its latest iteratfén, Generals,

tering things like knives and crossbows becomes important, as does finding weapons in the environment. If you don't have a gun, or if it would be too noisy to use one, you can pick up everyday objects to wield instead. Ashtrays, chairs, bottles, rubber chickens with a pulley in the middle, fire extinguishers...even pieces of broken glass can serve as throwing weapons. And yes, there will be guns for those who must have them, from pistols to machine guns and sniper rifles.

Unlike the version on somewhat more "simplistic" plat- forms, the PC incarnation of the game will be able to host up to 32-player online matches and will also include a map editor. Since so many stoic level builders have had hands-on experi- ence with many of the other Unreal-based editors, making

Command & Conquer is one of the enera $ games that introduced the world to real-time strategy and garnered

Chinese are protecting their border zones from Global

Liberation Army (GLA) terrorists, and this time, there is no full-motion video at their disposal (hip hip hooray!). Instead, the story will unfold during in-game cutscenes interspersed among three eight-mission campaigns, as you choose one of three fac- tions upon which to impose your will and attempt to control the GLA situation. Instead of the normal difficulty progression from campaign to campaign, you'll see that this time Westwood has balanced the difficulty levels as equally as possible among them so that you can play them in any order. The game also introduces a new line of leaders, including the U.S. Commando- like unit, the GLA sniper, the Chinese hacker, and more. So just when you thought you couldn't absorb another Command & Conquer game, along comes Generals, which should be at least a "departure" by this point. Well it is, and it isn't.

it cannot continue to shine as brightly unless its games stand out from the rest, it has taken pains to help this happen. “What sets Generals apart is it’s unique and exciting approach to the real-time strategy category. We're creating a *Hollywood-action-war movie" type of experience that people can identify with more than they do with orcs and gods," explains Skaggs. “Beyond that and our outstanding graphics, we're working hard to evolve and perfect gameplay with fea- tures like enhanced veterancy, building and unit upgrade, and a new approach to online rankings and ladders systems."

All right, then, it sounds a whole lot like...a Command &Conquer world. But you'll take it. Right?

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

you're seeing today on CNN." But since Westwood knows that

“The franchise has always explored modern war- fare with a particular style and pacing of gameplay,"

“We're creating a “Hollywood-action-war movie" type of experience that people can identify with..."

says Mark Skaggs, general manager of EA Pacific and executive in charge of production for Command & Conquer: Generals. "Since it's inception, we've visited the high-tech, sci-fi oriented world of Tiberian Sun and the over-the-top alternative history of Red Alert. Generals continues this trend by exploring the chaos and intensity of the modern war

maps for this game should be a smooth transition.

So the XIII comic adven- ture of the 1980s steps into this decade, boldly and con- fidently, with a retro-trendy twist. Sometime next year we'll see if it cuts the mus- tard. If it does, that might prove that publishers don't necessarily need to target Everyman. And that would be, in two words, very cool.

= == == -— = = = <=

\\\\\\\\\\

“Fortunately, our laudatory statues and personal satisfaction are not ‘either/or items.' You can easily have both."

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“мете trying to take the RPG-thriller gameplay to the next level...more freedom,

more tension, more immersion, more consequence."

*...the whole game has been storyboarded from start to finish."

Tints WES Never my, choice:

Life has been tough for the space sim lately. Once the definition of “hot PC game” with titles like Wing Commander and X-Wing, even admirable space sims just don’t get the respect they deserve in the market- place anymore. Digital Anvil and Microsoft intend to change all that with Freelancer, a game of such enormous scope and production values that its oft- delayed status is almost forgivable. This game promises it all: an expansive living universe where factions battle, miners mine, and traders trade with or without your interference, all the time. But the real hook is the promised accessibility. Digital Anvil has worked very hard on cre- ating an interface and heads-up display that anyone can handle, along with mouse-driven controls that take the frustration (and joystick requirement) out of space combat without removing the excitement. Lead Designer Jorg Neumann says Freelancer is, “Part space sim, part RPG, part adventure game, part action game. With Freelancer we're breaking all the rules and doing it beautifully.” It looks like all those pieces are finally coming together for what could very well be the rebirth of a classic PC game genre.

Full Throttle, the classic adventure game from LucasArts, will undergo a facelift in the year 2003 with the release of, get this, Full Throttle II. Tim Schafer’s original game was a tale of corporate espionage and murder set in a mini-adventure format, with a few arcade sequences (gang fights and demolition derbying) thrown in to broad- en its appeal. LucasArts describes this as a “free wheeling action-adventure that will offer a humorous original story, furious bare knuckle fighting, and the thrill of high speed biking.” The hero will once again be Ben, who, for all his tough-guy appearance and mannerisms, was really a softie at heart. After all, he let a woman work on his bike while he was out on errands, and he recycled. “The first Full Throttle was hugely influential in the design for the sequel, much as you’d expect it to be,” says Sean Cleark, the game’s director. “In essence, we've used the first game as a reference point for many of our stylistic decisions. Ben is a very strong character who deserves more adventures, and the gritty world that we saw in the first game is a great place for those adventures to take place, so it makes sense to use this approach.” Clark’s offbeat humor was apparent in the last Monkey Island game—a good thing, since

this sequel will certainly require a piece of it. There are few specifics about it, as LucasArts has released little to no information and only lists “2003” as the release date.

Revive away and make our day, LucasArts.

| Www.anarchy-online.com

50

lucky $3

PC gamers have anticipated Halo's arrival since its Ё debut at MacWorld three years ago. Then the unthinkable happened: Microsoft bought Bungie

and the notorious Mac and PC developer took its hottest proper-

ty and turned it into an Xbox game. Next summer, 18 months

after its console release, we'll finally

get the shooter on the PC thanks to

the porting efforts of Gearbox. After

a year and a half of great PC shoot-

ers, will Halo hold up? Probably so,

because Halo is nothing if not slight-

ly off-kilter from your standard PC

shooter. The variety of vehicles,

always-available grenades and melee

attacks, stellar combat AI, and

unique twist of only being able to carry two weapons at a time will probably

make Halo stand out from the crowded PC shooter scene as much in 2003 and the

Xbox version did in 2001.

There will be obvious improvements like sharper textures, better overall resolu- tion, and tighter mouse & keyboard control, but the biggest enhancement will be to the already riotously fun multiplayer. Gearbox President Randy Pitchford tells us, “Our goal is to make Halo’s on-line multiplayer component be the first choice for fans cf on-line action games. The unique mix of weapons, ground and air vehi- cles, game modes, and huge outdoor and indoor environments are all available to create a most amazing on-line experience.”

When Bioware joined forces with LucasArts to develop its Star Wars role-playing games^Knights of the Old Republic, fans of Baldur's Gate’et. al., rejoiced not only at its brand new story that takes place some 4000 years prior to Episode One, but at its new races, more than 50 ways of using Force powers, and its variety of *mini games." The game will also offer a universe spanning ten different worlds, including familiar favorites as well as completely new ones. You'll check into the spaceship Ebon Hawk, but you won't check out, as it serves as shelter during the off-hours, transportation during your deployment, and storage all around. *We are applying things we've learned from the Baldur's 1 Gate series and Neverwinter Nights to make the quests more fun and compelling than ever before," says LucasArts Producer Casey Hudson, but what will help to alleviate the feeling that this is something that will just shriek "Baldur's Gate III" at every turn? Well, according to Producer Mike Gallo, there will be several things. “The view in the game is completely differ- ent than any of the games in the Baldur's Gate series," he says. "The camera is lower, to give the player a view of the charac- ters and party that they've never seen before. Most importantly, we wanted to capture the feel of the Star Wars universe with its grand vis- tas and beautiful landscapes. This obviously created some other challenges in the design and game control departments, but we're confident that players will be happy with the results!"

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

Some

Limes ss

Brian Reynolds is one of the great unsung heroes of PC gaming. He brought us

Colonization, Civilization II, and Alpha Centauri, Met IS) but was rarely able to step out of the sizeable shadow of Sid Meier until he started his own

company, Big Huge Games. So when he says, “We are creating a game for everyone who Е m ever wished to see more strategic depth in their RTS games,” we listen. We listen well. The inevitables MEN game he’s talking about is their debut title, Rise of t d а е —

Nations, and it promises to bring some of the ter- ritorial battle and large scale, long term planning

of games like Civilization to the Age of Empires milieu. This could truly be a case of “you got your peanut butter in my chocolate," where the combination of two great games, mixed together just so, produces a whole greater than its parts. If there's anyone we'd trust to pull it off, it's Brian Reynolds.

When Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided was initially announced, not only were the Star Wars junkies psyched, the entite’massively multiplayer online gaming community was bowled over as well. This joint venture with Sony Interactive brings the experienced design- ers of EverQuest into the world of George Lucas' Empire. They do intend to differentiate it from the rest of the games on the market, though. “Probably the most significant fea- ture that we've avoid- ed for Star Wars Galaxies is the use of strict ‘levels’ familiar to so many other games,” says Producer Haden Blackman. “Galaxies uses a skill- based character advancement system, j which allows players greater control over the development of their characters. We also avoid a situation where players are segregated and stratified by their rel- ative experience level. Instead, any group of characters can fruitfully join forces, and it's likely that each character will bring different skills to the table." € k Story continuity has a lot to do with which characters you will encounter in the game. s А For example, they cannot include Obi-Wan, because he's already been killed by Darth ik THE NOTUM WARS Vader, but Jabba is still alive so he will appear, as will Luke, Han, Leia, and Vader. “In 4 - : most cases, the ‘named’ NPCs will be providing missions for player characters,” explains Blackman, “although we do have special circumstances where an NPC might be an enemy. The game will also be full of “unnamed” NPCs, like Tusken Raiders, who will serve as ene- mies as well.” With weird mounts to ride, the possibility of vehicular add-ons, and the ability to become a Jedi yourself, it doesn’t get a whole lot more enticing than this.

www.anarchy-online.com

ght © Funcom 2002 All rights resen

ludy

tron 2 () ME “[It] takes advantage of 0 VU the this unique premise and original Tron hit theaters, it's offers a refreshing

finally getting a sequel. The E thing is, it’s not a movie. departure from the gritty

Disney started the resurrection ШЕЕ LL

of the Tron franchise with бег їїг5ї регзоп IRL 20th anniversary DVD last year 9

and will take it to the next log- games: ical step with the release of among these is the glow effect that makes the game look Tron 2.0, developed by what is rapidly becoming the premiere as electric as the film, and though it was co-developed with

shooter developer, Monolith. A new movie, tentatively titled NVIDIA, it should run on any video card that can handle Tron: Killer App, is sort of in pre-production, but you can put it pixel shaders. out of your mind—if the Tron arcade games made a lot more As Jet Bradley, son of Alan (creator of the original Tron money and garnered more fame than the movie, it's only right program), you'll once again be digitized into the world of that we consider the new game the true sequel. Tron, but a lot has changed in 20 years. You'll visit locations "The film Tron centers on a society of programs operating like firewalls, the “Progress Bar," PDAs, Internet hubs, and inside the computer,” says lead designer Frank Rooke, “bat- even the old computer systems from the original film. You'll tling for their lives and the freedom of other programs on toss around an upgradeable disc weapon and take down cor- game grids, which translates naturally into a computer rupted programs with other primitives: the sphere, mesh, and game." One look at the game and you know it's going to be rod. And yes, you'll hop on an all-new light cycle, designed something different. “[It] takes advantage of this unique by Syd Mead, the famous designer that worked on the origi- premise and offers a refreshing departure from the gritty nal film, as well as Blade Runner. Multiplayer fans will be hyperrealism seen in other first person action games," he happy to hear that they'll toss discs against their online bud- adds, and that's exactly what makes it interesting. dies in an online arena reminiscent of the Rocket Arena mod Monolith's game uses what they call the Triton engine, a for Quake games, so there's a lot more to look forward to version of the Jupiter system that powers No One Lives than an impressive single-player game, especially if you're a Forever 2, only with some fancy special effects added. Chief fan of the Discs of Tron arcade classic.

Did anyone think that Blizzard Entertainment would not jump onto the Wor () Магсга [ bandwagon with today's proliferation of massively multiplayer games?

World of Warcraft will try to bring the streamlined-yet-still-sophisticat-

ed gameplay that has been Blizzard's trademark to a land in which you can con-

| trol just one of the characters that you have been lassoing and ordering around for many years. “The world is very much shaped by the backstory of Warcraft, taking place a few years after the events of WarCraft III,” says Team Lead Mark Kern. *Players who have played our real-time strategy games will recognize entire lands, battlefields, and heroes. Even the buildings and towns will be familiar, right down to the little peasant trains hauling gold or lumber between townships."

While we know that designers are trying to set this game apart from its contem- poraries, it's not an easy thing to do with the immense scope of material already out there. What will work? "It really can't be distilled down to one thing," explains

Kern, “but it's rather the combination of many ele-

*Players who have

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played our real-time plus; third time’s а charm?... ments. The beauty of the art, the lay- strategy games will i ' тч

out of the world, the design of the recognize entire . d creatures, the balance of the combat,

the depth of the character develop- lands, battlefields, ment, the variety of the quests, the and heroes."

facility of the UI, the richness of the

audio, the attention to detail, and a hundred other factors, both large and small, all contribute to making the World of Warcraft a truly epic experience." Think he studied marketing? Despite a 2003 release date, Blizzard will most likely adhere to its “when it's done" paradigm, and that's (probably) a good thing.

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52 СОМ | DECEMBER 2002

THE NOTUM WARS

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geeky gear for the cyber-savvy

As inevitable as the patch that fixes the bug you encountered in your first five minutes with the latest blockbuster, it's

the time of the year when you're forced to figure out the interests of all

of your so-called friends, or relatives,

or spouses, or various paid lackeys, hangers-on, etc. Or alternately, they're trying to figure out what you

want. Since we normally cover a lot

of those game-like things in each issue—and let's face it, you probably already know what you want on that front—we decided to single out some unusual and not-so-unusual gear that ranges from the seriously cool (the Windows version of the iPod) to the seriously stupid (a SexyMouse?).

At just a little larger than a Zippo lighter, you won't find a wealth of controls on Creative's Nomad MuVo (actual size, left), just forward, back, play/pause, and volume. But simplicity is what it’s all about. There's no software to install—just slide out the player section from the battery section and jam it into a USB port, and it'll show up as a removable drive. Drag CREATIVE ‘n’ drop up to 64MB of Windows Media or MP3 files there for listening, or drop any other file to transport it to another computer. On the other end of the spectrum lies the Nomad Jukebox 3 (above), a 20GB or 40GB portable MP3 player with both USB and Firewire con- nectivity. It's a little smaller than a portable CD player and features a relatively simple interface, although its less elegant than what's found on the iPod. Creative's bundled software is ghastly, with overly designed interfaces and pointless splash screens that pop up on Windows startup. Thank God it works with Media Player, which, even in its slightly convoluted state, is better than Creative's stuff. [$129-$499, www.cre- ative.com]

56 CGM | DECEMBER 2002

Playlists Broiwse Extras

Settings ` About

v v V WV V

Giving in to the overwhelming demand, Apple is now releas- ing a PC version of its popular iPod (actual size), and it's still the smallest, prettiest, most user-friendly hard drive based МРЗ player out there. Barely bigger than a deck of cards and weighing less than seven ounces, the large wheel interface and big screen make it easy to use. Provided it's exclusively used with MP3s, as the iPod won't play Windows Media files. Oh, and it's FireWire-only, so if all you have is USB, you're out of luck. And it's not cross-compatible, so Mac iPods only work on Macs and Windows iPods only work on PCs, though quite conveniently Apple made a way for Windows iPods to be converted into Mac units (but not the other way around). Okay, so it has some drawbacks, but if all you've got are MP3s and you only want to use it on a PC with a FireWire port anyway it's one great digital music player. And you know those PC hackers will extend its functionality before long. [$299-$499, www.apple.com]

Want something that holds more songs than a standard MP3 player but is cheaper than a hard drive- based one? The RioVolt SP350 (right) plays regular audio CDs as well as MP3 and Windows Media files burned on CD-R and CD-RWs. The new version improves on last year's model by including the for- merly extra-cost car kit for free, plus it offers 32 minutes of skip protection and improved headphones. It still includes an FM tuner, a remote, and a carrying case, and software upgrades to past models

added support for WinAmp playlists. Оп the downsized front, the Rio S35S (actual size, below) is the latest version of the player that started the entire portable MP3 craze. Though not quite as cool as the MuVo, it’s still small enough to attach to your wrist, has 128MB of memory (upgradable to 256MB), includes a clock and stopwatch, and has an FM tuner for those days when you can't live without your

sanitized corporate radio. [$179-$199, www.sonicblue.com]

WWW.CGONLINE.COM

57

geeky gear for

58

10 under $10

Like a fine wine, great games don't go bad with age, they just get patched. Not only can you buy five of these games for the price of one brand-new triple-A hit, but they'll run fine on older computers. Find them on the bargain rack at your local retailer.

Aliens Versus Predator Gold

Patches to the first made it a much bet- ter game than it shipped, and it's still good enough to make you jump out of your seat. It's certainly better than Primal Hunt for the sequel.

The Curse of Monkey Island Snappy cel-shaded animation and a talking skull named Murray make the third Monkey Island game better than the fourth installment.

Dungeon Keeper 2

It's part environment sim, part real-time strategy, all funny. Be the bad guy and crush the do-gooders!

Grim Fandango

Still one of the best adventure games of the last decade. For extra-good boys, find a walkthrough online, print it out, and stuff it in the box. Just in case.

Homeworld Cataclysm

This stand-alone product is easily con- fused for a Homeworld add-on, but it doesn't require the original. It is, howev- er, every bit as good.

Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 11

One of the greatest shooters of all time, and a pretty fun online game to boot. If your old rig can't handle Jedi Knight ЇЇ, the force is with the original.

Serious Sam

You don't need to splurge for Second Edition when the first is almost the exact same thing. Pure arcade blast- 'em-up fun, it's like a first-person Robotron.

StarCraft

For all of the people out there who haven't played it (both of you), this is still one of the best real-time strategy games ever made, and different enough from WarCraft Ill not to be ignored in favor of Blizzard's latest.

Typing of the Dead

It's the best first-person typing shooter ever made. Worth $10 just to laugh at the opening scenes where people shoot zombies with keyboards and Dreamcasts on their backs.

X-Wing Alliance

The last great X-Wing sim. Enough said. _

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

Being the "Ultimate Mousepad" seems to have as much importance as being the premiere nose-picker in the world, but there's just a little something about the stylish mousepads from EverGlide that bring out the uber-geek in the geekiest of geeks. Maybe it's the shapes, or the pat- terns (designed for optical mice, appar- ently), or the texture of the pad itself, but they just work. Whether they work better than your desk, a piece of paper, or a pic- ture of Natalie Portman is unknown. And until MouspadMark 2003 is finally released, we'll never know for sure. [$9.99-$17.99, www.everglide.com]

The Armchair Mousepad is for the lazy gamer who wants to deathmatch from the comfort of his or her Lay-Z-Boy. As you might guess from the name, it's a mousepad that attaches to the arm of a chair. You may think it's dumb today, but with wireless networking and gaming laptops taking off... it may be essential tomorrow. Now if they could hook up with EverGlide... [$19.95, www.gizmojockey.com]

Anyone who's tried to move their computer has probably said to themselves, "there's got to be a better way to do this." Enter the GearGrip accessories from CaseAce. Strong Velcro straps wrap around your computer or monitor with a soft durable handle up top to make carrying easy. Some models have pockets on the side for your keyboard, mouse, cables, etc. It's a simple idea done right that really reduces the stress of lugging your PC to your buddy's house. [$19.95 - $39.95, www.caseace.com]

It's about time clothing got wired. At least that's the theory behind the SCOTTeVEST, a "technology enabled" jacket. Sporting more zippers than a leather fetish convention and more pockets than a mar- supial petting zoo, it's surprisingly stylish. So what makes it "technology enabled?" Consider the "con- duit" system to run wires from your MP3 or CD player to the loops that hold your earphones in place, or the storage area for your pocket PC or Gameboy, the one for power supplies, another for maga- zines... basically, it's the only jacket that requires a manual to operate. By wearing this jacket, it's vir- tually guaranteed that you'll be the uber-geek wherever you go. Now where did you put that pack of

gum.... [$139.99, www.scottevest.com]

eal ime Ие S nooter

COMING 2003 $- 2 pe

Ww W W ‘ G A M E S Я С О M

geeky gear for

Fantasy Flight Games has been cleverly mucking about for a number of years now,

10 you may bringing role-playing and fantasy games based on various intellectual properties have missed into your living rooms, basements, and convention centers. Some of its newest Sure, everyone knows about or remem- games for this season are A Game of Thrones, a collectible card game based on bers the WarCraft Ills or the Neverwin- George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels; the Call of Cthulhu ter Nights’, but what about the games Nocturne RPG campaign; and most highly anticipated, the latest expansion for its that fell through the cracks? series of popular Tolkien games, Lord of the Rings: Sauron. This version puts you Age of Wonders Il: The Wizard's Throne in the roles of the hobbits Merry, Pippin, Fatty, and Frodo, on their quest to destroy One of the best games released this the One Ring. Requiring the original boardgame to play, you'll work cooperatively year, this turn-based stunner sports across four boards to overcome challenges and attempt to prevent the Ringbearer more pure gameplay than most of the from being corrupted. [$19.95 - $44.95, www.fantasyflightgames.com]

games on this list combined.

Command & Conquer Renegade

It's hard to imagine "missing" any Command & Conquer game, but this one kind of left the public eye almost imme- diately after shipping. Multiplayer, in particular, is still worth your time.

Disciples Il: Dark Prophecy

Released very early in the year, this is the game Heroes of Might and Magic IV is trying to be. It's polished, looks good, and has a ton of gameplay.

As New Line's second installment of the huge Lord of the Rings film trilogy releas- es worldwide this holiday season, there are four additions to the Two Towers Action Figures set. Joining Elf Archer and Berserker Urk-Hai, Grishnach and Merry, and Ugluk and Pippin are Legolas, Faramir, a Gondorian Ranger, and an Easterling Warrior. The six-inch, deluxe, fully-poseable figures come complete with accessories and are based upon real-scan molds. [$9.95-$21.95, Global Operations www.theonering.com]

It's very Counter-strike, yes, and the net code wasn't great at launch, but patch- es improved play considerably. Too bad no one’s playing it.

Duke Nukem Manhattan Project

A simple, fun, inexpensive, side- scrolling throwback, and the only place you'll see Duke again in your lifetime. Probably.

Laser Squad Nemesis The creators of X-COM go purely online. Fans of turn-based tactical combat should try this out at www.lasersquadnemesis.com.

Since 1983, Dragon's Lair merchandise has come in many forms, from books to binoculars and guns to game tutorials. ¥ With the advent of Dragon's Lair 3D, Digital Leisure has released action figures of Dirk the Daring, Princess Daphne, Singe, and the evil Mordroc. The set contains all four sturdy, well-articulated figures, plus accessories such as Dirk's Eyeball Tentacle Creature, and Daphne's Fire Drake. Detailed yet simplistic in design, these figures should last through the next century. [$29.95, www.digitalleisure.com]

Schizm: Mysterious Journey There haven't been many good adven- ture games lately; this is one of them. It's a must-have for fans of Myst.

Star Trek Bridge Commander X-Wing creator Larry Holland's superb simulator came and went, but not because of a lack of quality. Its cine- > matic qualities captured the feel of the The large variety of Final Fantasy X Trek universe, and outstanding Al let Action Figures will give collectors quite you to feel like a commander instead of arun for their money this holiday season.

a pilot. There are both fixed-pose and fully-pos- able figures with varying degrees of detail. They are intricately costumed, - and some have thin and pliable material for pants and elbow armor that allow for freer movement of joints and a more real- istic physique. They range in height from

6 1/2to 14 1/2inches, and most come with accessories that befit their faithfully recreated characterization, such as Kimahri Lonzo's oversized spear, and Lulu'S animated doll weapon, Mog. [$12.99-$34.99, ccls.diamondcomics.com]

Starships Unlimited: Divided Galaxies If you're waiting for Master of Orion III, you might want to give this a try. It's 4X space strategy at its best-nimble, elegant, and addictive. Check it out at WWNW.apezone.com.

Warlord Battlecry 2

Possibly the year's best real-time strate- gy game, SSG continues to update this sleeper, adding 13 new downloadable scenarios, new music, and a new side Al. Amazing.

60 CGM | DECEMBER 2002

Ву The Developers of the Award-Winning Imperium Galactica’ and Imperium Galactica ІГ

NIm-

IRON

=: amt Lor Раа c

rea AG ic ЧАС Bea =

IN 2104, MANKIND IS ENGAGED IN A FRATRICIDAL WAR BETWEEN EARTH AND MARS POPULATIONS. AFTER WEEKS OF FIERCE SPACE BATTLES AND HEAVY LOSSES, BOTH SIDES HAVE TO JOIN TOGETHER AND FORM THE LEGIONS o OF IRON TO FIGHT A NEW ALIEN ENEMY FORCE. —

",..promises to breath new life into the deathly quiet genre of “the game simply looks gorgeous and also plays sci-fi 3D RTS gaming...one of the best looking games on the E3 very well to boot.” - HOMELAN showroom floor. "- GAMESPY

www.hegemonia.info

VIOLENCE COM Spy BY Cb DREAMCATCHER © gam REDE. (ш) wanadoo qme

Software © 2002 Wanadoo Edition. ккө өем to Dres see Miaria Inc n Sonn h America. Co-published by Wanadoo Edition аг ard ren cher Interactive Inc. Developed by Digital Reality. DreamCatcher design and mark are trademarks of DreamCatcher Interactive, Inc. Microsoft®, Windows® and DirectX® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other brands, product names and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Ай Rights Reserved.

TEEN

CONTENT AATED BY ESRB

geeky gear for

ESAE UU me omm omm oum om ommo на ы

Eager to capitalize on the success of the new Monorail, town residents are buying up Springfield, Monopoly style in Simpson's Monopoly. It includes customized money and game board; Monorail Stops and Monorail Stations replace houses and hotels and the Chance and Community Chest cards. Also, one of the world's most challenging puzzles mixes with one of the world's most challenged men with the Rubik's Simpson's Homer Puzzle. Twist and turn Homer's head to your heart's content. Of course the original had all those pretty colors, but Homer definitely has...that five o'clock shadow. [$11.99-$34.99, www.winning-moves.com, www.usaopoly.com]

shop 'till you drop Or at least until your fingers bleed. Here are a few online shopping destinations for the cyber junkie.

COMPUTERGEAR A store for serious geekiness. [www.computergear.com]

RPGWEAR

Your life won't be complete until you broadcast your love of EverQuest to the world via a T-shirt. [www.rpgwear.com]

THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED... ...and for a very good reason. Do you

Cheapass Games, dedicated more to entertainment than aesthetics, is releas- ing four new games this season. Freeloader is a quick-playing board game “for 3-6 losers.” You drift through the neighborhood accumulating free stuff from your friends. Fightball is a card game that explores the world of a ruthless future sport. Lord of the Fries is undergoing a makeover. Set at the fast food restaurant of the damned where everyone is a zombie and there's only one brain to pass around, it's now appearing in full color. Finally, Diceland, Deep White Sea is a tabletop combat game that uses paper dice as the char- acters. The game system is original, and the dice are eight-sided, printed in full color, and about two inches per side. Cheapass has been nominated for a total of 23 Origins Awards, the high- est honor bestowed by the US Hobby Game industry. Have they won any? You can bet your Cheapass on it. [$7.50-$14.95, www.cheapass.com]

For those looking to "blow" a set of speakers without trash- ing their tweeter, the Revo HotAir Inflatable Portable Speaker System is what aural dreams are made of. It is, by far, the finest inflatable speaker system on the market, pro- ducing rich, deep... well, it generates noise that mostly resembles the source material. But they are small, portable, good for a few laughs, and can be used as floatation devices. Oh wait, the box specifically says you can't use them for that, damn. [$45, www.ellula.com]

VU PLAT SIE TNT

like shopping at Spencer Gifts? Find the stuff that lingers (for years) on the bot- tom shelf of that fine mall chain at this

website. [www.johnsonsmith.com]

THINK GEEK

The epicenter of all things geeky. Hardware, caffeine, you name it, it has it. [www. thinkgeek.com]

62 CGM | DECEMBER 2002

Fashioned after the Venus D'Milo, just in case you thought it p had no class, the SexyMouse (not actual size) may put a lit- tle excitement in your "point ‘n’ click." The naked body mouse includes adapters for PS/2 and serial ports, and is fully com- patible with all systems and major applications. Right and left click your way to paradise as each mouse comes with a six foot extended cable that hints at a far more extendable you. [$19.95, www.kopes.com]

THE POWER OF FIVE

REVOLUTIONIZE THE WAY YOU INTERACT WITH YOUR PC

P5 is an electrifying and innovative PC peripheral that gives the user total intuitive interaction with

3D and virtual environments (Games, web sites,

educational software, etc.).

With P5, brandish a mighty

>

sword in a video game, walk through an online room or pick up objects on a screen, each with simple movements of your hand. No complicated keystrokes.

No fumbling of à mouse or joystick.

PUT THE POWER OF CONTROLLER FEATURES FIVE IN YOUR HANDS - Lightweight, ergonomic OCTOBER 2002 design for easy, intuitive play.

Weighs just 4.5 oz.

The first widely available Virtual 3D controller. "Joystick and mouse control “over all 3D applications.

6 degrees of tracking ensures

realistic movement.

* Bend sensor and optical- tracking technology gives true-to-life mobility.

* Easy, plug-and-play set-up.

Special Premier Edition Features 3 New P5-Enabled Free Games

Including Hitman 2, Tiger Hunt, and a Demo Version of

Beach Head 2002.

RECEPTOR FEATURES * Infrared control receptor with scratch-resistant, anti-reflective lens * Easy-to-use anywhere — desktop, living room, etc.

For a complete list of retailers, visit www.essentialreality.com

E SES EN TARA L КЕБА сот www.essentialreality.com $ 0 f tw a I e D GameStop Mean

PC

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IS

OO A feast for the eyes and mind. an excellent game and a perfect example of

. what an MMORPG should be." | Matt Leyendecker, ActionTrip.com | ;

9 5 out of IO "Totally absorbing. a game that.I'll be playing long after this review is posted." Jason Maclsaac, €lectric Playground > ^.

"earth & Beyond continues to impress with 4 great graphics and great gameplay." à H^. Jeff Green. Computer Gaming: World YR: f i, с А

Ф 4 Earth & Beyond - shows a lot of style

t =. and a lot of vision."

5 Chris Hudak Computer Games Magazine

sci-fi crowd the persistent-world game

"Earth & Beyond should oer the hardcore m P

they've been waiting for."

+ à Rob Smith, Editor-iri Chief, PC Gane -* e ле тев) ce

Blood

Violence The content of this game may change due to interactive exchanges.

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Challenge Everything" © 2002 Electronic Arts Inc. Electronic Arts, Command & Conquer, EA GAMES, the EA GAMES logo and Challenge Everything are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in thé U.S. and/or otfier countries. All rights reserved.

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HARDWARE

technology for today

JASON CROSS

when will 5D really matter?

Gamers can't live without it, but the mass market ignores it

The PC games market has never been more healthy. 2001 should have been a horrible year for PC games, financially. New PC sales took a nose- dive, the economy was bad, and all the marketing and mass-media atten- tion was placed squarely on the launch of two new console systems (Xbox and Gamecube), the incumbent system they challenged (PS2), and the new lord of handheld gaming (Game Boy Advance). What's more, the general quality of game releases was a bit on the poor side, with some notable exceptions. By all accounts, overall PC game sales should have slumped big-time.

But according to NPDTechworld, sales volume was up from 62.9 mil- lion to 65.3 million, about a 496 jump. Dollar sales saw a similar leap, from $1.36 billion to $1.42 billion. All those games, even in a “weak” year, and all I can think is “where are the 3D games?"

If you're reading this magazine, you probably think I'm smoking crack. 3D games are everywhere. Gamers have been buying video cards with 3D acceleration for ages. Hell, we went out of our way to buy video cards that didn't do anything but 3D acceleration back in the days of the Voodoo2. The magazine you're holding, and others like it, regularly focus most of their attention on games with some pretty slick 3D graphics. When it comes to games, 3D is definitely king. Or is it? Let's take a look at the numbers. The 20 top-selling games of last year were as follows:

1. The Sims 11. Black & White

2. RollerCoaster Tycoon 12. Frogger

3. Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone 13. Roller Coaster Tycoon Loopy 4. Diablo Il Expansion: Lord of Landscapes

Destruction 5. The Sims: House Party Expansion 6. The Sims: Livin' Large Expansion 7. The Sims: Hot Date Expansion 8. Diablo Il 9 0

14. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 15. Backyard Basketball

16. SimCity 3000 Unlimited

17. Backyard Baseball 2001

18. Age Of Empires II: The Conquerors 19. Max Payne

20. SimCity 3000

. Sim Theme Park . Age Of Empires ЇЇ: Age of Kings

Those games probably account for half of the 65 million games sold last year. Of everything on that list, only two actually require real 3D acceleration, Max Payne and Black & White. Two whole games! What's going on here? Why are all the big sellers ignoring 3D acceleration?

The general theory from the suits is that one of the rea- sons those games are so successful is because they don't need a fancy high-end machine to run, and that assumes 3D acceleration. Okay, that seems logical, but I think it assumes a causal relationship where there's only a correla- tion. The processor and RAM requirements for the games

66 CGM | DECEMBER 2002

above are fairly slim, but still steep enough that anyone who has the CPU and RAM required to run them probably also has a card with reasonable 3D acceleration. I would submit that most of the games on the list above are breakout hits because they're accessible, easy-to-play games that in many cases relate in some way to real life or pop culture. Or they're from Blizzard.

This focus on avoiding 3D acceleration seems to fly in the face of the fact that all the hit con- sole games are 3D. You have to look long and hard to find a 2D game on a console system these days at all, let alone a popular one. The experi- ence of “quality 3D" is obviously a selling point. I think PC game publishers and developers are just afraid to embrace it in games that are made for a wide audience. When I look at the equipment in a $799 PC from six months ago, I think they can give up that fear.

And perhaps they are. Mass-market targeted titles are starting to require 3D acceleration. Age of Mythology is an obvious example, but SimCity 4 is a better one. The top 20 list for this year, I predict, will be almost half-filled with games requiring 3D acceleration. The rest will be Sims expansions. The 3D push should have been hard- er, though. Last year's list should be almost full of games requiring 3D acceleration: better looking games that stand up better next to the latest con- sole fare. I honestly think that one of the reasons PC games aren't selling as fast as their console cousins is because the mass-market games don't deliver enough “wow” factor, and the PC games that have the “wow” factor are too hard to play or too esoteric for the mass market. e

TIP OF THE MONTH

Startup appli

Everyone talks about updating dri- vers for video cards, and I've read about updating drivers for sound cards, but how important is it to update drivers for every- thing else? Motherboards, monitors, etc.? Also, how important is the quality of the monitor? Other than getting a non-flat mon- itor and the size, are monitors that differ- ent? When upgrading a video card or over- all system, can you use the same monitor? I am thinking about getting а new com- puter, but | have so many programs on my current computer that the thought of hav- ing to start over is quite daunting. Is there a way for a non-technically savvy person to transfer files (MP3s, photos, saved doc- uments, etc.) from the hard drive in one computer to а new computer? Also, if | go from Windows 98SE to Windows Me in the new computer, would the programs from the old computer that were "created" with 98SE still be able to run? Greg R.

A e Lots of good questions there, Greg. e First, it's extremely important to have the most up to date drivers for every- thing. Monitors typically only have one inf file that describes them, and it's rarely updated, but out of date motherboard dri- vers can cause incompatibilities, poor per- formance, you name it. Similarly, updated firmware for CD-ROMs and such can add new capabilities or make them work better with some software. Even new keyboard or mouse drivers can add features and fix bugs. Always keep all your drivers current,

TECHBYTES

New skin on an old favorite — Just in time for the PC game- buying rush of the holidays, Microsoft is re-tooling and re-releasing a couple of their more popular SideWinder periph- erals. Both the Sidewinder Force Feedback Wheel and the Force Feedback 2 joystick now feature sporty red styling. There's not much else new about them, though: the guts inside are the same as before and the price hasn't really changed, either (they're $100 each). So if you see what looks like an all-new Sidewinder in the store, look again. It's probably just Ф a restyled version of the one you've already got.

send questions to qa@cgonline.com

not just the video and sound card.

For regular tube-style (CRT) monitors, there's honestly not nearly as much differ- ence in quality as there used to be. Even cheap CRTs have quite good clarity, bright- ness, and supported resolutions/refresh rates these days. When you upgrade your computer, or any part of it, you absolutely can use the same monitor. In fact, I would recommend spending a little more on a really good large monitor, with the inten- tion of keeping it through several upgrades. The same goes for speakers, by the way.

If you're getting a new computer, it will almost surely come with Windows XP, not Windows Me, and that's a good thing. The easiest way to transfer all your files and documents would be to use a CD-R drive to burn them onto a few CDs, and then sim- ply copy them from the CD onto the hard drive of your new computer. There are a great many archival and backup utilities out there, but if you're moving to a new operating system and a clean slate, they're not always best for the task. If you want to save items from your email program, use its “export” feature. You're going to have to re-install your programs on the new com- puter, but almost all of them should work fine: the money you've invested in your software won't go to waste.

Is it beneficial these daus with an

operating system such as Windows XP to reboot after playing a large game such as Soldier Of Fortune Il, before 1 start a session of lets say, Civilization III? |

Faster graphics memory with GDDR-3 — The problem with using traditional graphics technologies like DDR and DDR-2 for graphics chips is that they're developed with general computing needs in mind. The JEDEC, the committee that ratifies these standards, also moves too slowly for a graphics industry that wants to put out new product twice a year. So it looks like the graphics guys are doing their own thing now. ATI recently announced that, along with the world's leading DRAM vendors and with input from other graphics vendors, it has complet- ed the third DDR specification, called GDDR-3. Traditional DDR provides clock speeds up to about 400MHz, and GDDR-3 will start out at about 500MHz and scale up to 800MHz (we're talking "DDR" speeds here). In that regard it's similar to DDR-2, which we'll see in graphics cards pretty soon now and in systems late in 2003. But there are a few differences in the

< HARDWARE

am hoping that rebooting after each gam- ing session is a thing of the past and | can finally let go of the habit.

Alan T.

A e Windows XP does a pretty good job e of clearing out the memory a pro- gram uses when it quits, even in many of the cases of poorly-behaved programs that have memory leaks or other problems. There's very little benefit to rebooting after each gaming session. I personally leave my Windows XP computer at home running for weeks on end without rebooting.

| want to upgrade to Windows XP,

but Гуе heard many people com- plaining they cant view Java web sites and a few others. Is there a way of installing Windows XP without IE 6? Also, can IE 5.5 work with Win XP? | visit a lot of Java enabled sites, and | don't want to install an OS that won't permit me to view certain web sites.

Fred

A: Well, there's Java and there's

e JavaScript. JavaScript is far more common, and it works just fine with IE 6. There's no way I know of to install Windows XP without IE 6 or to “down- grade" to IE 5.5, but don't worry. All you have to do to run Java programs in IE 6 is go to Sun's website at java.sun.com and download its own Java Virtual Machine.

two technologies. GDDR-3 will use single-ended, uni- directional strobe that separates the reads and writes. DDR-2, by contrast, uses differential bi-directional strobes. It also uses a "pseudo-open drain" interface technique that is based on voltage rather than current, which makes it possible for graph ics chips to be made that are com- patible with DDR, DDR-2, and GDDR-3. All this technical mumbo- jumbo means that GDDR-3 is better suited for the

kinds of point-to-point connections where a graphics

chip talks directly to RAM, rather than going through a bus (as DDR and DDR-2 is optimized for). In contrast to DDR-2, the new memory type should more cheaply scale to higher frequencies and use a little less power as well, a benefit to laptops. We'll probably see graph- ics cards using GDDR-3 late in 2003

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GOING 1 Zl

WITH PRICES FALLING AND QUALITY RISING, IT MIGHT BE

If television

and movies are to

be believed, just about

everyone in the world has a

three-inch-deep liquid crystal dis-

play (LCD) flat-panel monitor. But TV and movies are big fat liars-they use LCD monitors because they look great and are a lot easier to schlep around the set. Most of the world still uses big

bulky CRT monitors, which weigh five to ten times as much and use at least twice the electricity as an LCD. Flat-panel monitors have other benefits: they're far crisper than most CRTs and they don’t draw the screen in horizontal scan lines linked to a refresh rate but rather draw the whole screen at once at a locked rate of 60Hz, effectively eliminating any and all flickering. And when an LCD monitor says it's 17 inches, it's all picture from edge to edge, unlike tube monitors that have a tube size and a “viewable area” an inch or two shorter. A 17 or 18” LCD has the same screen size as a 19” CRT.

With all the apparent benefits of flat-panel monitors, why not make the switch? For starters, they're still about twice as expen- sive as a good CRT. What's more, there are still some visual quali- ty issues, especially where games are concerned [see sidebar]. Whether or not these problems bother you enough to steer you from the benefits of an LCD is a matter of personal taste, but if

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

TIME TO DITCH THAT TUBE MONITOR AND GO

WITH ST YLISHLY THIN LCD

by Jason Cross

you're ready to take the plunge, we're here to help.

When looking at a flat-panel monitor, the specs are definite- ly important, but if you ask LCD experts what they feel is important, the response is unanimous: trust your eyes, not the numbers. Resolution is important in the context of making images scale better, but so is the quality of the monitor's scal- ing circuitry. The monitor should have uniform lighting throughout with no bright or dark patches. Whites should be white instead of having a colored tinge, and blacks should be very black and not dark gray. Pixel response time is crucial. Is it a sleek piece of kit that will make your friends and cowork- ers jealous, or is it a thin, flat eyesore? Does it have a video input for a TV or game console, and how about a USB hub? Many factors go into choosing an LCD monitor, and the best thing you can do is try before you buy.

HERCULES PROPHETVIEW 920

The big brother to last year's 15" Hercules LCD monitor is the ProphetView 920, a 17" model that shares its younger sibling's sleek styling. It's an extremely slim display, taking up even less desk space than most, and its metallic blue exterior adds a splash of color without distracting. The monitor looks pretty good using the standard DVI hookup (a DVI to VGA adaptor is included),

but the lighting isn't entirely even. The image gets slightly darker toward the top of the

screen, and we had a hard time adjusting the colors to give us both nice dark blacks and

accurate bright colors at the same time, though the on-screen display controls are quite good. The fast response time makes this one of one of the better game-playing monitors, with blurring

in fast-action games apparent but minimal. The ProphetView 920 is slim on amenities: there's no

telescoping stand, no USB hub, no speakers. The composite video input is a nice touch, but we couldn't 4

get a crisp and stable picture, so it's not going to make your Xbox or PS2 shine.

PHILIPS BRILLIANCE

180P2

Sometimes a monitor tries to be all things to

all people and ends up being nothing to anyone. Such is the case with the Brilliance 180P2, a large 18" display with what Philips refers to as a "multimedia

base," their fancy way of saying "speakers and microphone." The sound quality is poor enough that you wouldn't want to use them, and they're so close together that it kills stereo separation. There are two inputs, both analog VGA and digital DVI, but no s-video or composite video input, which is a shame considering the multimedia base. Perhaps it's just as well, because the image quality isn’t very good. The panel just couldn't seem to lock in on the signal from our video card very well, resulting in odd two-inch-wide bands of alternating sharpness and blurriness when viewing desk- top graphics. Endlessly playing with the phase lock controls just couldn't quite make it go away. Gray levels could be better, and the scaler is only average-you'd want to Stick to the native resolution if at all possible.

PHILIPS 150MT

The smaller of the two Philips displays

here is far more interesting, but just as hard to recommend. The 150MT is a pretty small monitor at only 15", with a meager resolution of 1024x768. It's very bright with good con- trast and a zippy response time, but image quality is marred by slightly uneven lighting and at a native resolution this low, no scaling technology in the world is going to keep the screen from turing into a blurry mess when running at 640x480 or 800x600. Input is only through a VGA connector-there's no DVI. While the screen itself doesn't impress, the bonus features are worth crowing about. There's both composite and s-video input, plus full-on YUV component input to get the most from your DVD player or game console. There's even a cable-ready TV tuner and a handy remote control so you can watch the boob tube without running up to your desk to flip the channels. Philips even thought to include line output and headphone jacks on the side. It’s a shame to see so many great features paired with a small, low-res screen with slightly uneven lighting. It's even worse to ask an astounding $900 for it, almost as much as much larger 18” panels.

| *

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69

HARDWARE »

BENO FP2081

The lord and master of this roundup is undoubtedly BenQ's FP2081. This giant 20” screen absolutely dominates your desk without taking up an obscene amount of space. The wide border is a little bit of an eyesore, but you get over it quickly when you see how good the screen looks. Blacks are black, whites are white, and colors are vibrant and accu-

rate. The quality scaler combined with a native resolution of 1600x1200 makes text and images look good at almost

any resolution. The 25ms response time delivers games that, while not as clean as a CRT, were some of the sharpest seen on an LCD. The on-screen display controls are great, even including picture in picture, and though there's no phase lock adjustment, in all our tests the FP2081 never needed any tweaking at all. It even gave us a perfectly jitter-free picture when we plugged an Xbox into the S-Video input (composite video input is there as well). The price is definitely steep, almost twice as much as most 19” monitors, but this is an envy-inducing monitor if there ever was one, and if you have the means, it’s worth it. Computer mes CHOICE

CTX SV900MD This 19” monitor is an odd mix of good and bad. The image quality is generally pretty good, with nice even lighting, good lights and darks, and a sharp, stable picture. But this — . маз the only monitor of the bunch that — аы, - doesn't appear to have its own scaler, as the "ERES a option to use the monitor’s scaler was grayed out and we could only use the video card’s, which is slightly infe- rior to most of those built into the monitors. The built-in speakers are placed far

PLANAR PL191M In almost every way, shape, and ан ыа cotes micas ЫЫ uds НЯ form, this is the CTX SVSOOMD. The panel and DVI ports are both available as well as a nice two-port USB port. There was mini-

mal blurring in games, confirming the listed 25ms response time, but scrolling web pages with.colored text and backgrounds created odd flickering artifacts at times. Overall quality is still pretty high and the price isn't bad for a 19" display.

is exactly the same, with the same USB hub, \бА and DVI inputs, speakers, and controls. The on-screen display is identical. The performance is the same, both on paper and in real-world tests. The only real difference is its looks: while both CTX and Planar have models available in both white and black, the styling of Planar's case is slightly more appealing.

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HARDWARE »

LCDS EXPLAINED

Everything you always wanted to know ...but were afraid to ask

Just when you though you have got a grip on monitor technology-dot pitch and all that-they go and change everything. LCDs are fundamental- ly different from standard tube monitors (CRTs) and are described by a different set of measurements. Here's the lowdown on what it all means and whether or not it's important.

Brightness Also called /uminance, it's how much light a monitor puts out and is measured in candelas per square meter, abbreviated cd/m? and commonly called "nits." If your room is a dark cave, a low nits rating won't hurt you, but look for a high rating-at least 250-if the monitor is used in a well-lit area.

Contrast Ratio Described as some sort of "to one" ratio, like "three hundred to one" (300:1), it represents the difference in bright- ness between the brightest brights and the darkest darks. It's not important anymore, as all modern LCDs have perfectly good contrast and their anti-glare coatings make the differences mostly irrelevant.

Viewing Angle Another statistic you can ignore. In most cases, it's good enough not to make any difference unless you regularly crowd four people around your computer monitor. If that’s the case, look for a horizontal viewing angle of at least 160°.

ое о 25g мазен A) neto: wmm conne comico 2002 10-1 hmi

зиф Poorte @ мез © D-a

Computer

m t * теш clubhouse turn. Plus: Th

А slow pixel response rate means more blurring in games

Pixel Response А CRT can change the color of a pixel almost instantaneously, but the individual pixels of an LCD take a lot longer to change, and this is the pixel response rate (often just called response time or response rate). This is listed in milliseconds, and sometimes even separated into the “rise” time (how long it takes to make the pixel bright) and the “fall” time (how long to make it dark again). The catch is, they measure the time to go from full brightness to full darkness, which is actually faster than the time to go from partially bright to partially dark. So if a monitor says it has a pixel response time of 35ms, it takes 35 milliseconds to go from black to white and back again, but it would take even longer for it to go from, say, dark purple to lighter purple. This means that when something moves across the screen there’s a little blurring trail as the pixels fade away in the previous location. The better the response rate, the less noticeable this smearing effect is. The best LCDs have a combined rise and fall time of about 25ms. There are 1000ms in a second, this means the pixels change about 40 times a second under ideal conditions. The very best desktop LCDs still create a bit of a smearing effect with games that you won't see on even the cheapest modern CRTs. This is biggest downside to gaming with an LCD so you'll want to get it as low as possible. Anything under 35ms will work fine for watching movies, but for games, go as low as you can afford. If you want to test pixel response rate on a monitor in a store, load up a web page with lots of colored text on a colored background, grab the title bar, and move it around the screen a bit. You'll get a good idea of the blurring you'll see in games. e

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Resolution Unlike CRTs, LCD moni- 1 tors have one resolution, referred to as its

native resolution. \f your monitor has a res-

olution of 1280x1024, then displaying your

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desktop or games at 1280x1024 look very sharp. If you run at 1024x768, the image will have to be scaled up to 1280x1024 to fill the screen, which makes things look

2 blurry. Just how blurry is dependant on the quality of the sca/er in the monitor or video card, but the higher the LCD panel's reso- lution, the smaller the pixels and therefore the less noticeable the blurring.

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1) A 1024x768 screen at native resolution 2)....scaled up to 1280x1024 3)...and scaled up to 1600x1200

72 CGM | DECEMBER 2002

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HARDWARE »

SONY SDM-V72W

Sony's new widescreen entertainment monitor is something of a curiosity. A 17" monitor with

input options galore (s-video,

composite, YUV component, VGA, and audio) the big deal here is that it's a widescreen monitor with a resolu-

tion of 1280x768. That's the good news, but it's also the bad news. The resolution and YUV input make

it ideal for HDTV input, and it's nice to watch DVDs or play widescreen-enabled games with it and

the extra desktop space is nice, but at 17" it's a little small for "sit back" entertainment like movies. Worse, since most games don't support widescreen modes, using the 1024x768 dis- play mode effectively gives you a 14.7" display. The paper specs list a response time slightly faster than anything else-22ms-but while the blurring was minimal, it wasn't noticeably better than most 25ms screens. The speakers are decent as built-in fare go, and the svelte remote and slick on-screen menus are nice touches. This is a monitor we really want to love,

but the $1,000 price and limited size get in the way.

TO LCD OR NOT TO LCD? If we were to pick just one of the LCD monitors tested here to keep on our desks for the next few years, it would be the BenQ FP2081. The image quality and response time are just too good, and that huge 20” screen is to die for. But truth be told, we're pretty happy sticking with a good CRT for the time being. Sure they're bulky and the image isn’t quite as sharp as a good LCD running at its native resolution, but even the world’s best LCD creates a smearing effect in games due to the relatively slow response times.

In the near-term, there doesn’t appear to be much effort involved in improving the

LCD's shortcomings, as manufacturers instead focus on lowering prices. But further

Screen Size Resolution

cr x SV900MD б 19" 1280x1024 BenQ FP2081 20.1" 1600x1200 Hercules ProphetView 920 17” 1280x1024 Philips Brilliance 180P2 18.1” 1280x1024 Philips 150MT 15" 1024x768

Planar PL191M тэ” 1280x1024 Sony SDM-V72W 1280x768

(wide screen)

75 CGM | DECEMBER 2002

out, perhaps 18 months away, is a new technology called Organic LED, which should be cheaper to manufacture, are brighter, sharper, thinner, consume less power, and best of all, have response times up to a thousand times faster than most LCDs. Don't hold your breath waiting for them to arrive just yet, though. The first OLED devices will be cell phones and small handhelds, followed by a few laptops, and ultimately desktop displays, and it'll be at least a couple years before they're commonplace.

In the meantime, if you're in the market for a new monitor or buying a new com- puter with one, maybe a space and energy-saving LCD is the thing for you. You'll have to shop carefully to find one that won't impair your gaming, but the benefits

might be worth the effort and extra cost. e

Brightness Contrast Pixel Ног. Price reponse viewing angle

170° $999 160° $1840

150° $749

160° $1099

$899

$950

$999

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HOTAS Cougar Did Thrustmaster chop this out of an F-16? This is heavy metal!

Xo kK KY

MANUFACTURER Thrustmaster (www.thrustmaster.com) MSRP $299.00

OK, so you might never actually find yourself in a real cockpit of an F-16 but the HOTAS Cougar from Thrustmaster is the very EDITOR'S next best thing. Based on CHOICE the plane's block 52 stick and throttle controller, this is no mere joy- stick. It has s a full metal casing of both the flight control stick and throttle and together these carry some real weight. There are 28 programmable buttons spread across the two units; multiple hat switches and even an 18-pound spring for solid resistance. None of this would mean much if it didn't delivered the goods when you're taking to the virtual skies but the HOTAS Cougar is one impressive bad boy of a stick and it doesn't get much better. With its Foxy programming software and numerous pre-sets for key flight simula- tions, it's like a workhorse for most mod- ern day flight simulations. The downside is that it's overkill for period games set during World War I, World War II or Korea almost to the point of being utterly anarchistic with its button layout. However, for those current-day jetsetters this could be the last word in controllers. Setup and connection to Windows XP is truly simple, certainly easier than passing airport screeners these days. It uses a full speed USB connection and features 16K of

Ж:

Computer

76 CGM | DECEMBER 2002

internal memory to access pro- gram settings. And while you might never notice it, this stick is hardware upgradeable using Flash so you'll be able to receive any updates on the soft- ware as well as hardware side. At $299 the HOTAS Cougar isn't cheap, especially when com- pared to most flight controllers and all-purpose joysticks, but it is like a dream device for the hardcore and faithful. It doesn't come with pedals but it is compatible with standard analog input devices. Considering its weight and size this is probably best used by serious flight simu- lation gurus because this is not something you'll want to take out and put away a lot, unless you think you need to hit the weights a bit. —Peter Suciu

TrackIR GX

It might be time to look around for a different controller

EKEN >>;

MANUFACTURER Eye Control Technologies, Inc. [www.eyecontrol.com] MSRP $129.00

One thing that has been missing from first-person shooters and even flight simu- lations is that sense of fast movement that kind of disrupts your field of view. Games don't simulate it well because even if you make a quick jerk on the mouse the experience is more like a quick move of a camera than a turn of your head. Now there is a game controller that actually comes close to recreating the natural movement of your head - but so far the results don't impress.

Eye Control Technologies,

Inc. has

к

REVIEW

introduced a gaming controller meant to replace the mouse by using a camera to track the movement of your head. The trackIR GX was originally developed as device for people with physical disabilities and the company believes it could be a viable mouse alternative. The results vary so significantly that the final judgment is still out, but from initial trials with first-person shooters and flight simulations—the intend- ed target genres—this game controller sim- ply lacks control.

The biggest problem is that this camera device must sit on top of your monitor while you wear some sort of simple sensor, which is little more than a stick-on dot. If you're not one to wear glasses or a cap then you're stuck with a dot on your forehead. The tracking for simple tasks like navigating the Windows desktop is reasonable but it only moves the cursor and leaves the clicking to other hotkeys. There are an additional 17 possible head positions to replicate these keys as well but that essentially requires learning a new skill to use properly.

In games, especially first-person shooters, you are meant to keep your head perfectly still until you choose to make a movement. Nod or shake your head in reaction to some- thing on the screen and your onscreen view suddenly changes. Far too often in games like Day of Defeat and Medal of Honor, you have to nod up or down to re-center your view. The results are better with flight simu- lations but mostly because a mouse is pretty much a secondary controller, taking a back- seat to the joystick and pedals.

The trackIR seems like an ideal way of allowing gamers who have lost the use of their arm(s) to play, but overall this is not a controller that will give you a gaming edge

if you have mastered a mouse and key- board combina- tion. —PS

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world with this superb sequel by Steve Bauman

GENRE Spy Action

DEVELOPER Monolith [www.lith.com] PUBLISHER Fox Interactive/Sierra [www.foxinteractive.com/ www.sierra.com] REQUIREMENTS Pentium Ill 500, 128МВ RAM MULTIPLAYER 2-4 players; Internet, LAN ESRB Mature

Ж:

Computer

EDITOR'S CHOICE

When you’ve built a franchise around a single dominant element, sequels present a unique challenge. If you’re Men in Black II, you lose the coolness of discovering the unexpected ways aliens integrate with normal society, leaving you with nothing to do but revisit the same places with decidedly mixed

results. If you’re the next Austin Powers movie, you’ve exhausted all the time-traveling culture clash kitsch possible so you toss in more urine, poop, fart, and sexual references than a John Waters movie. If you’re No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way, with its groovy 60s spy setting and strong female lead, you slow down and deepen the game- play of the original while retaining and expanding the elements people loved. In other words, you make an already superb game even better.

This isn’t too much of a surprise. Unlike movies, games sequels are almost always superior, if only

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

This is definitely a game with character(s). The Lithtech engine’s superb facial animation brings the cut scenes to vivid life.

No One Lives Forever 2: А Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way

Nobody does it better: Monolith is at the top of the gaming

technologically, to their predeces- sors. Besides, developer Monolith is on a roll, with the original No One Lives Forever, Aliens Versus Predator 2, plus the upcoming Tron 2.0 and Matrix online game. A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way takes the original’s setting and polishes the hell out of everything. The gameplay, a mix- ture of pure gun-toting action and cool, stealthy spying, is refined to near-perfection, with a simple skill system that gives you obvious, tangible feed- back that you’re becoming a better spy. It’s full of cool gadgets, clever humor, and superb pacing that makes it feel like a comedic role-playing/adventure/action hybrid, a sort of Deus Powers. The single-player game offers the kinds of memo- rable moments the original is famous for, and there’s also a simple co-operative multiplayer game for up to four players that lets your take on subsets of the sin- gle-player missions. It’s entertaining the first few times but loses steam quickly; however, it in no way diminishes the impact of what is a superb overall game.

Cate Archer, super spy

Once again, you take control of the British super spy Cate Archer, now voiced superbly by Jen Taylor instead of Kit Harris, as she battles the nefarious H.A.R.M. and tries to uncover the meaning behind something called “Project Omega.” Though you’re no closer to finding out just what H.A.R.M. actually stands for (you can uncover its mission statement and marketing problems), you do face off against some familiar and not-so familiar foes: Dmitri Volkov, Magnus Armstrong, a new director of H.A.R.M. with a serious mother complex, and Isako the ninja. After facing off against entire levels full of mimes, particu- larly ones that speak in outrageous French accents and tend to run away like they're riding a pony, it’s hard to imagine why we've been deprived of killing them for so many years.

As Cate tries to diffuse a taut situation between the Russians and the US, she finds herself traveling to exotic places, meeting interesting people, and generally killing them in all sorts of sneaky ways. There are levels set in Japan, India, Siberia, and H.A.R.M.'s needlessly complex undersea and underground lairs (in the latter, you'll finally uncover the why and how of lava). In a slightly windy Akron, Ohio, you get to search through Tom Goodman's bachelor pad, giving you tons of insight into his character (just check out the door to his "secret" spy area).

Extraordinary * * * * * Excellent * * * * Maybe ж ж ж

Mediocre ж ж Contemptible *

[top] Your mascara сап come in handy in a tight pinch. >>> [bottom] If you can't kill ‘em, crack 'em up! The level in India lets you really use some of Cate's weirder arsenal.

Spuing for fun Along the way, you uncover bits and pieces of the story from various H.A.R.M. internal memos (they need a better document destruction policy) and the over- heard conversations of the various talkative guards and henchmen. But mostly you watch a lot of superbly produced cut scenes. In the original game, as clever and well-written as they were, these tended to be interminably long. For A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way, they’ve been tightened and shortened, so much so in fact that it’s hard not to wish they were a little longer. They range from funny to downright surreal, such as the scene that plays out in the “Endgame.” It involves game shows and square people... you really need to see it to believe it. If the plot and settings don’t quite reach the zippy highs of the original, it’s certainly not the fault of the game but a case of our own raised expectations. It’s all pretty damn amusing, if not downright funny, with marketing weasels every- where taking a lion’s share of hits. With almost every other action game being full of macho blustering and dark colors supposedly making them all intense and scary, it’s practically radical for this game to be bright and shiny and, well, sometimes girly.

Paranoia and Spying in the House of Games

Deus Ex

RATING ЖЖЖ *

Our Word "When it's all done, you might even find you again, just to build a different J.C. Denton and tackle things diff

In Cold Blood

RATING Ж ЖЖЖ

Our Word "Its mix of classic adventure-style gameplay, intrigu ing storyline, logical puzzles and just a touch of action make it a topnotch choice for fans of thought-inducing gameplay

Majestic

RATING Ж Ж

Our Word "...most of the game is earnest, limp, and slow. The truth is out there, but in this case, it's not really worth finding

The Messenger

RATING Ж Жж Ж

Our Word "...it is aimed at the adventure purist who is willing to scan and shuffle without complaint... waging intellectual war

against the forces of evil.’

Metal Gear Solid

RATING Ж ЖЖ

Our Word "[It] may have been one of the first games to blaze the 'stealthy action' trail, but more recent PC offerings have done it better, which leaves this port showing its age."

No One Lives Forever

RATING ^ ЖЖЖЖ

Our Word "It's the absolute antithesis of every hackneyed blast- a-thon... no other shooter has come as close to living up to our raised expectations for the genre."

Sanity: Aiken's Artifact

RATING Ж Ж Ж

Out Word "If you are entertained by style alone, this game may be right up your alley. If you also want truly challenging puzzles and combat that rewards creativity, you may be a bit disappointed."

Spucraft: The Great Game

RATING ^» ЖЖЖ

Our Word: "[It's] like nothing else you have ever tried. ... if you're not already paranoid, [it] will guarantee sleepless nights."

Traitors Gate

RATING Ж ж Ж

Out Word "There's a lot to like in the way the world is built with емегу- thing inter-connecting, and the tools you must make use of in order to proceed... but there are too many flaws that detract from the fun."

REVIEWS »

^ 80

The spy they love

The camera, and the 3D artists, love Cate Archer. She has better hair than any other character in gaming, and her outfits are incredibly posh. She's fun and sexy because she feels like a truly three-dimensional char- acter rather than a caricature. The attention lavished on her in cutscenes is astounding. She comes alive, as do all of the other characters, because the Lithtech engine allows a full range of facial expressions. The sheer number of animations, eye-rollings, and gestures makes it appear that Cate Archer isn't just a 3D char- acter animation, but an actor giving a performance.

The environments are equally impressive. When discussing graphics, people get hung up on polygon counts and texture resolution, focusing on the mechanical method of creating the look while essen- tially ignoring its most important element, the overall art direction. Even if the graphic engine wasn't up to par in the game—and the "Jupiter" version of Lithtech is phenomenal, better looking and faster than its pre- decessors—it would still be a beautiful game. It's full of amazing little details—stop and laugh at some of the bizarre signage and strange objects—and its adherence to that bizarre 60s aesthetic makes the graphics of the supposedly more technically sophisti- cated but grotesquely cartoonish Unreal Tournament 2003 look like the notebook scribblings of fantasy/sci- fi novel art-obsessed 15-year olds.

The audio is equally distinctive. Unlike the warmed-over metal or industrial retreads seen in every other action game, the soundtrack is full of appropri- ate ethnic motifs for each environment, though played with appropriate 60s instrumentation. It's more Esquivel! than Reznor—instead of grinding guitars or pounding synthesizers, you get a lovely Theremin in the underwater lair, some extremely cool Indian and Japanese motifs, and something disturbingly reminis- cent of the theme from Elevator Action in Siberia.

Spy games

All the presentation in the world doesn’t compensate for weak gameplay, but once again Monolith hits the target. It makes perfect sense for a spy game to emphasize stealth, and if the original was too unfor- giving and lacked some of the basic tools of stealth, like leaning around corners, A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way pulls off the trick of making it equally satisfying to either blast or sneak your way through each level. You’re rewarded more with the latter approach, as it allows you to soak in more of the guard dialogues that add so much flavor to the game.

Creeping around also gives you more chances to observe the excellent AI. In some ways, it’s actually dumber; for playability reasons, it tends to investigate various noises with less urgency or certainty and has a very short memory, often giving up the chase (or in the case of the Indian officers, keeling over to catch their breath because they’re out of shape). You can knock over bottles and make noise—unintentionally or not—and they’ll immediately investigate, but just as

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

quickly break off the search. You can unscrew lights to darken rooms and keep the AI from turning the light back on and discovering you. Unlike the first game, all alarms are localized, keeping your occasional slip-ups from becoming large- scale problems. It’s the first 3D game since Thief II to make stealth entertaining, and it’s considerably more forgiving than Looking Glass’ game, because in a pinch, you can always just blast your way out of a level.

Monolith also improves on the exploration-aspect (i.e. “adventuring”) of the genre by rewarding you for discovering bonus objects and completing sec- ondary objectives. You can spend the points you accumulate for completing tasks and finding objects on improving various attributes, like stealth, search- ing, carrying, etc. While the first game had a similar system, it was hidden well enough that that no one noticed or cared about it. Every skill improvement is now obvious and drastic, proving even more motiva- tion and reward for improv- ing Cate and exploring the environments. The tweaks let you tailor the game more to your style of play.

The superb interface fea- tures minor changes that strip away the tedious parts of your typical 3D action game. There are simple little things, such as the “Action” button automatically reload- ing your weapon when it’s not engaged in some action, and more complex ones, such as automatically switching to the best tools for a given job. Monolith alone seems to realize that it’s a lot more fun to decode messages and pick locks than to constantly switch between your weapon and your decoder or lockpick. When you do change weapons and/or tools, you get to experience what have to be the best putting-things-away and taking-things-out animations ever.

Armed with her mighty banana, Cate Archer takes on evil in all of its forms.

The spy we love It’s little details like an inconsequential animation that make this such a special game. And when you compare the output of all of the companies producing 3D shooters nowadays, a game as vibrant and alive as A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way exposes how creatively bankrupt the others are. They all produce safe, attrac- tive, and competent shooters, but their games are completely predictable. Their macho bluster keeps them from giving off any sense that they’re slightly unhinged—it’s impossible to imagine anything as surreal as the “Man Handler” scene appearing in anyone else’s shooter. Too many developers equate dark and dreary with serious and tension-filled. There’s more tension and action sneaking around one level of Cate Archer’s candy-colored world than there is in the entire Solider of Fortune series or in something like Max Payne.

No one does this kind of game better than Monolith at this point, and no game released thus far this year is as good as No One Lives Forever 2.

UPSIDE Improves on the original in every way imaginable, beautiful looking, superb production values throughout, seriously fun in a very non-serious way

DOWNSIDE Ends too soon, multiplayer sounds better on paper, sound and crash problems on some machines

RATING Ж ж Ж Ж Ж

Fron n the maker: of the ward wi П] 11] 14 ` Euro pa Uni ver:

Hearts of Iron, the first WWII game of grand strategic scope, covers the war from 1936 -1947 and lets you control and conquer any country in the world. Assign political leaders and promote generals as you struggle against the great alliances of the new world orders of Fascism, Communism and Democracy!

pa radox ˆ rights reserved. All other trademarks and copyrights are the properties of their respective owners. es RE

82

GENRE First-person WWE Shooter DEVELOPER Digital Extremes/Epic Games [www.digitalextremes.com/www.epicgames.com] PUBLISHER Infogrames [www.infogrames.com REQUIREMENTS Pentium Ill 733, 128MB RAM MULTIPLAYER 2-32 players; Internet, LAN ESRB Mature

Dude. Die, bitch! Ownage! Unreal Tournament 2003 rocks. It rawks! Don't forget to turn the safety ofí! To read this review, you have to say everything in bold face as if you were announcing a monster truck rally on Tuesday night. Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday! Now try it again: Unreal Tournament 2003 really rocks! Dude, that's better.

It's righteous. It's absolutely bad ass. Aíter you capture the

by Tom Chick

flag, you can press a key to smack your own ass. How wicked sick is that? Monster kill! When you're doing really good, Unreal Tournament 2003 even says “holy shit!” Out loud! It cusses, something they don’t do so much since Kingpin. Kingpin! Dude, don’t let your Mom hear.

This faux-pro-wrestling over-the- top piercing shrillmanship stuff is all up in your face. You can’t even pick your character model without the announcer bellowing its name. Cannonball! Subversa! Widowmaker! Brutalis! Badass gladiators, all! When was the last time a game’s shell screen had you reaching for the volume button? Hat trick! Thirty Seconds! Multi Kill! Holy shit!

out, wicked sick!

Talking smack

It’s exhausting, embarrassing, exasperating, and maybe even irrelevant. But it highlights that even as games get more advanced, they can be as juvenile as ever. Unreal Tournament 2003 will not stop reminding you that it’s as cool as stuff like Vin Diesel, the WWE, and Limp Bizkit, which you can take to mean whatever it means to you. This would be a non-issue if the game weren’t so

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

[left] These levels rock, for serious! [above teft] These guys are righteous bad-asses! [above right] Dude, check it

slathered in this overbearing sensibility.

It’s not just the high school smack talk. It’s the gra- tuitous bone-crunching sound effects, like snapping stalks of celery, as a body is blown backwards. It’s the limb-jangling rag doll physics wracking a corpse as it plummets down a pit and bangs off the bars of a series of grates placed for no reason other than to show off the rag doll physics. It’s the blood spraying, the de-limbed torsos, and the headless corpses with flames where their heads were before they got sniped clean off. It’s the supremacy of twitch action, the ultra-fast default game speed, the new double jump- ing, the new wall bouncing, and the new adrenaline combo power-up boosters like tap-tap-taptap, tap-tap- tap-tap, or tap-tap-taptap. It’s the tutorial explaining that “it is in your best interest to hop as much as pos- sible” and the jump boots being replaced with shim- mering jump pads built into the level design. It’s no thigh pads and no shield belts, but big fat obvious glowing orange shield icons spinning around. It’s the

Unreal Tournament 2003

| The day the magic died... but at least it died a beautiful death

weapons tuned and balanced so thoroughly that victo- ry can only be decided by the raw skill and reflexes that shut out newbies, who will get their asses kicked until they learn to like it, get better, or quit playing like a bunch of panty waist bitches who can go offline, turn down the speed, switch off dodging and adrenaline, and dial down the bots a notch or two if they want, but stay the hell off the servers unless they wanna be lunch meat for your clan.

Here is first-person hyperaction, an unsophisticat- ed and complex groove of killing and being killed as

tavy attack in

[above] This guy is about to smack his own ass, no joke!

pumped up as a power mad thirteen-year-old on a sugar jag. As other shooters grow up and grapple with words like realism and storyline and preten- sions like mise en scéne and sly humor, here we have an unrepentant throwback to the simple need for speed. It's been out of fashion for a while, but it's back like the reincarnation of id's Quake III. This is the second time the developers at Epic have trumped their counterparts at id. The first time was back in 1999 when both Quake III and Unreal Tournament were released. Unreal Tournament was the far supe- rior product on so many levels: aesthetics, variety, depth, accessibility, innovation, flexibility, and what- ever people meant by broad terms like "gameplay" and "fun". Quake III was a soulless technical marvel that played really fast. Now Epic is trumping Quake III again with Unreal Tournament 2003, its own soul- less technical marvel that plays really fast.

But it's pretty

There’s no denying that it’s a state-of-the-art technical marvel without parallel. You’ll need serious hard- ware, since it eats CPU cycles and video memory for breakfast and then comes back for seconds while other games are still sipping their first cup of coffee. There are curved surfaces and intricate detailing for no reason other than to make you stop and say ‘look at all those curved surfaces and all that intricate detailing’. Are polygons so commonplace now? Is lighting really that cheap? Does a ceiling fan really need to cast a lazy spinning shadow on the floor?

$300 graphics card.

These graphics do manage to breathe new life into conventions like lava, castles, and snow (although it seems that no amount of Epic’s lavish detail can revive the stale look of hi-tech industrial grunge). Like Wing Commanders and Quakes of old, this is an upgrade-your-hardware game that’ll wring every penny’s worth of splendor from a

But Unreal Tournament 2003 is soulless because it’s missing so much of that sense of discovery that made Unreal Tournament great. You won’t find anything quite like the thrill Epic delivered three years ago, when you first played assault mode running the length of a speeding train or swimming down to an undersea base, when you fig- ured out the shock rifle combo or flew your first redeemer, when you played with the virtually unlimited combos afforded by all those mutators, and traded shots with Steve

Polge’s convincingly. fallible bot AI.

Not that Unreal Tournament 2003 doesn't try. The AI is still first rate, so a tip of the hat to Mr. Polge. But the new game modes con- sists mainly of a) everyone rushing after one person or b) everyone split- ting into two groups. There are no trains or galleons and in the undersea base, the undersea part is just window dressing with alien shark models swim- ming around out

there while you're dry inside. The shock rifle combo is a feature instead of a secret and the new Ion Painter elicits a shrug more than anything else. The mutators read like a perfunctory list of options: low grav, big head models, instagib, been there, done that, got all the T-shirts three years ago. It all feels like a pod people version of Unreal Tournament. It's not that the magic is gone. It's just not magic anymore.

DOWNSIDE

RATING

It's wicked sick Ownage of the speed freak first-person shooter

action genre!

And it won't stop reminding you

Ж Ж Ж

WWW.CGONLINE.COM

83

REVIEWS »

84

баў

Computer

EDITOR'S CHOICE

Battlefield 1942

The new king of the multiplayer (only) shooters

by Benjamin Е. Sones

GENRE Online Shooter DEVELOPER Digital Illusions [www.dice.se] PUBLISHER Electronic Arts [www.ea.com] REQUIREMENTS Pentium Ill 500, 128 MB RAM, 32 MB Video Card MULTIPLAYER 2-64 Players; Internet, LAN ESRB Teen

Sometimes great games take you by surprise. Such is the case with Battlefield 1942, a game created by Digital Illusions, a little known developer of racing sims and pinball games. Remember Motorhead? Pinball Dreams? Barbie Groovy Games? Don't worry, no one else does either. [Console fans may remember Rallisport Challenge for Xbox, though. —ed] You can bet dollars to donuts that everyone will be talking about Battlefield 1942 for years to come, because it is easily one of the best action games this year, and possibly the best online team-based game ever. Go figure.

If you played the wildly popular Wake Island demo that circulated before the game's release, you're probably nodding your head. Of course, if you played the Wake Island multiplayer demo, then you probably already bought the game, too. As a sales pitch, it was awful- ly convincing. The full game is even better, but it shares one thing with the demo: it is essentially a multiplayer-only experience. Not only that, it's one best experienced through the low-ping luxury of a broadband connection. The documentation recommends modem users stick to 16 player games, and that's too few players by half for many of the maps. Of course, you can always play off-line... or not. The game box says nothing at all about the solo campaign, and that is probably just as well. It is terrible. Put it out of your mind.

If you fall into the “online shooter fan with broadband" category, make no mistake this is one of the best games of the year, a perfect bal-

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

ance of fun and realism, and simple mechan- ics with complex permutations. The World War II setting provides a familiar backdrop with immediately recognizable enemies, bat- tles, and goals. You may have heard of the long-time PC gaming pipe dream called the "virtual battlefield." Here it is.

Did you see that?

Perhaps the most endearing feature in the game is this: neat stuff happens. It's not the carefully storyboarded, choreographed, and scripted neat stuff that is the hallmark of post-Half-Life shooters; it's the type that comes from carefully constructing an envi- ronment filled with tangible goals and assorted instruments of destruction and then setting a bunch of completely unchoreographed players loose in it. Carefully scripted neat stuff can be visceral and engaging, but it is a hollow sort of thrill that comes from having exactly the same experience as every other player. Remember storming Omaha Beach in Medal of Honor? So does every other player that picked up the game. They probably remember it exactly as you do.

The neat stuff that happens in Battlefield 1942 is even more entertaining for its spon- taneity. The game sets the stage but the players create the drama. Imagine running through the hedgerows of the Normandy countryside. You hear the sounds of several battles raging in the distance, and an M7 Priest is shelling tanks from the relative safety of a nearby roadside ditch. You see a German Engineer mining the bridge to Carentan, and so you drop to one knee and take him down, rush to the bridge, and pick up the mines that he dropped. You hear a low roar, and a group of players swoop overhead in a B-17 bomber, heading North on a bombing run. Two German fighters are dogging it, and the sky erupts in puffs of flak as another player opens fire with an AA battery. One of the fighters

« REVIEWS

goes down in a ball of flames, hitting the ground 40 feet away. You have a fraction of a second to realize that the wreckage is [elockvise from right:'Sniping roosts are handy... rolling towards you, and another to get just remember to check your back every now out of the way. So you dive over the side and again. »»» Submarine pilot: the ultimate of the bridge just as the fighter rolls across сотре. с nU Mou cf Dici the spot where you

were standing in a cloud of dust and debris, setting off the mines in a spec- tacular explosion that kills you before you have a chance to fall 50 feet to the river below.

That sort of thing happens in the game. All the time. muster before it loses

The spice of life the battle. You deplete

The game matches this incredible variety your enemies' tickets

of events with an equally incredible vari- by killing their soldiers

ety of content. If you get tired of or by holding objec-

hedgerows in Normandy, you can take the tives, sort of like a

helm of a Fletcher-class Destroyer in the Domination mode in

waters off Midway Island. Or battle tanks Unreal Tournament, but

and snipers in a brutal street battle amidst the objectives have intrin-

the ruins of Stalingrad. Or lead a tank col- sic value as well. Some func-

umn through the maze of canyons at tion as spawn points. Some

Gazala. Or face down deadly Tiger tanks contain caches of ammo, or med-

in the frozen countryside at the Battle of ical lockers, or vehicles. Some are

the Bulge. There is a little something for strategic chokepoints. You do not seize objectives merely to fulfill an

all manner of tastes, and if you get tired of abstract requirement for victory. You seize them because they are use-

one map you can move on to another. ful. The weak, Gamespy-powered server browser is the only real chink You can also try out any of the five dif- in the game's online armor.

ferent “kits” (Assault, Medic, Anti-Tank, Engineer, and Scout), each of which is use-

ful to differing degrees and in different About that solo game... ways on each map. If you cut your chops “Now really,” you may be saying to yourself, “if the multiplayer game playing an Assault grunt in the streets of is so wonderful, the solo game can’t be that bad, right?” Yes, it can. Berlin, you will find that being an Engineer And it is. Honest. No, it does not make for an interesting diversion. in Tobruk is like playing an entirely differ- No, you cannot use it for practice, even if you have a machine power- ent game, and that is a good thing. ful enough to run it with more than a handful of bots, which you With so many kits, maps, and vehicles, almost certainly do not. All you are missing is some of the dumbest you might think that the game would be a AI in shooter history playing on exactly the same maps that you could bit... overwhelming. It's not; in fact, it be playing online. Just pretend that the solo portion of the game does does a superlative job at balancing accura- not exist. It's better that way. cy and entertainment. It's exactly as realis- When you get right down to it, Battlefield 1942 doesn't need a solo tic as it needs to be, and not one whit campaign. If Digital Illusions had decided to leave it out altogether, more. The vehicles are easy to operate, this would still be a fantastic game. If you have the bandwidth to run with simple and consistent controls. Foot it, buy this game. If you do not have enough bandwidth to run it, get combat employs some interesting but logi- more bandwidth. Then buy this game.

cal twists, such as weapon fire that is more accurate when you are crouching or prone. Tying it together is the best conceived set UPSIDE The best multiplayer shooter since multiplayer shooters of goals since Counter-strike. The highlight ЕГУ | is "Conquest," in which each team starts

with a number of "tickets" that represent А WEISEN RATING the number of reinforcements that it can » db. db. db. dh.

DOWNSIDE Don't even ask about the solo game

WWW.CGONLINE.COM 85

REVIEWS »

Syberia Let’s go adventure gaming, let’s go! by Matthew Peckham

GENRE Adventure DEVELOPER Microids [www.microids.com] PUBLISHER The Adventure Company [www.adventurecom- panygames.com] REQUIREMENTS Pentium Il 350, 64 MB RAM, 3D accelerator MULTIPLAYER None

ESRB Teen

Writers keeps trumpet- ing the demise of « insert genre» gaming every cou- ple years. It's like the industry has a two-year sliding memory bank. Fortunately, developers like Microids keep popping up to prove the fair-weather pundits wrong with games like Syberia. Old-school fans of adventure games pay attention: this is what you've been wait- ing for since The Longest Journey.

The game opens in a rustic European village some- where in the French Alps. It is raining. A wind-up drummer stutters along, frowning, leading a bizarre funeral procession up a cobblestone street. In the background, a lone violin plays a mournful dirge. A horse-drawn carriage passes, piloted by a hunching, silvery figure: Mechanical men in ties and trench coats follow, taking lurching steps, not quite in lock-

; step, sporting top hats and umbrellas. From the get- go, you know things are not going to play out on the straight and narrow.

You assume the role of perky Kate Walker, an attorney for the New York law firm Marson and Lormont Associates. Your firm has sent you to Valadiléne—an alpine village in France, home of the Voralberg Toy Company and the “world capital of mechanical toys and automatons"—to close a major business deal. Voralberg toys have been around since the 13th century, but over the past decade or so have fallen out of demand due to the rise of electronic forms of entertainment (like, ha ha, video games). Now a multinational company wants to buy Voralberg Manufacturing. But when you arrive, the last heir and owner has died. A little investigating turns up information that points to another possible heir to the factory, and thus begins your real quest: to hunt down this enigmatic figure by following a series of clues that will lead across Europe and even- tually to the remotest regions of Asia.

The developers have pointed out that puzzles in the

86 СОМ | DECEMBER 2002

[top right] Inside the great library of Barrockstadt. >>> [above] The smoky city of Komkolzgrad, a veritable Stalinist paradise.

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game would buck the tradition of Myst-style abstractness, where playing the right tune on a key- board might open a doorway but leave you wondering what the hell the keyboard was doing there in the first place. To their credit, this is mostly the case, and it really lends to the sense of accomplishment as you work your way steadily between the game's four primary locations. Rarely are you left wondering what to do next, keeping you from abandoning the game for a week or a month (or forever) because of some silly checkerboard brain teaser. The game adds a cell phone to Kate's inventory, which is necessary to solve cer- tain puzzles while at the same time providing for occasional interrup- tions by friends and relatives that help flesh out Kate's raison d'etre.

The downside of super-integrated puzzles is that you will also tend to solve them perhaps a bit too quickly, propelling yourself through the plot at a breakneck pace and reaching the satisfying conclusion all too quickly. In fact, what gives the game legs is also another one of its problems—Kate’s on-screen motion. She's quite the slowpoke. It's not a big deal at first, but you find that getting her from point-to-point is a chore, especially given the intricacy of some of the environs, but these are minor quibbles.

Visually, the screen is filled with images of haunting originality. Corroded metal landscapes bleed into lush organic terrariums; delight- fully idiosyncratic characters greet you at all points on your journey; creaky “tik-tok” automatons shuffle along brick streets, perch over doorways, and tip their Fred Astaire hats at you with surreal politeness. It’s like Frank L. Baum and Fritz Lang fell into a mixing bowl some- where and this is what rolled off the baking rack. The music is solemn yet inspired, in the tradition of the best adventure games, blending almost perfectly with the mood of a scene or the flavor of a moment.

Syberia is a boon for adventure gaming. While it doesn’t necessari- ly propel the genre forward, it does capstone all the elements that make the genre great, as well as provide plenty of reasons to sustain it. Adventure fans or anyone partial to rare storytelling, don’t miss this one.

Computer Games EDITOR'S CHOICE

UPSIDE

Brilliant, original visuals, riveting story, and voice acting that doesn't suck

DOWNSIDE Ends too soon, Kate tends to amble around like Grandma at the

grocery store

Leod od

RATING

QUT OF GRITTY TEXTURES AND INTRICATE. INDOOR ENVIRONMENTS: Pc скис

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5. AONE OF THE MORE INTERESTING ‘SHOOTERS OF THE FALL SEASON.” | -GAMESPY

THE FACE OF WAR НА$ CHANGED

Western Germany, March 1964 - The last Great War continues to rage on. À front line divides war-torn Europe and separates allied and enemy troops. You have been assigned the ultimate mission, which if successful, could finally put an end to the 50-year war. Battle through 6 massive campaigns as you attempt to destroy key military positions deep behind enemy lines.

Iron Storm will have you battling 3 in the muddy trenches of the font line, infiltrating an enemy science

complex, sweeping out sniper nests, battling onboard an enemy infested armored train, and more. The fate of entire nations now rests solely in your hands.

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- www.iron-storm.com BLOOD AND GORE * VIOLENCE ә о On XY Wwanadoo = [Cj CONTENT RATEO BY — ML ic games ESRB ROM 4x Studio РА °

Software © 2002 4X Studio/ DreamCatcher Interactive Inc/ Wanadoo Edition. Package design © 2002 DreamCatcher Interactive Inc. GameSpy Arcade is © 1994-2002 GameSpy Industries, Ltd. The GameSpy logo and "GameSpy" are the trademarks of GameSpy Industries, Ltd. The ratings icon is a trademark of the Interactive Digital Software Association. DreamCatcher design and mark are trademarks" Bf DreamCatcher Interactive, Inc. All other brands, product names and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.All rights reserved.

REVIEWS »

Medievat Total War

A game of thrones: Shogun's heir has matured by Kelly Wand

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GENRE Historical Strategy DEVELOPER The Creative Assembly [www.totalwar.com] PUBLISHER Activision [Www.activision.com] REQUIREMENTS Pentium Il 350, 128MB RAM MULTIPLAYER 2-8 Players; Internet, LAN ESRB Teen

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Medieval: Total War is an entertaining, thoroughly Anglicized follow-up to 2000's well-regarded austere blood- bath Shogun: Total War. Though markedly more soaked in period detail and enhancements big and small, it's good for all the same reasons as the original. What gives Medieval its zing is how its paired modes of turn-based empire building and realistically chaotic battle screens complement each other as well as Lance Bass and an airless vacuum probably would have in a more idealistic universe.

The designers have upped the ante by adding over a hun- dred new classes of units; the number of separate gunpowder- using troops alone would nicely satisfy the barracks of many another real-time strategy game. Also heartily welcome is the integration of castle siege warfare, complete with trebuchets and catapults necessary for the demolition of gatehouses and arrow towers that otherwise tear your men-at-arms to ribbons. Few games have ever delivered the tactics-over-glitz satisfac- tion of decimating vastly superior forces using terrain, morale, and careful positioning of combined arms the way Medieval does; patience and intelligence prevail over numbers every time here, and that's solid design.

Graphically, though, despite big gains made since Shogun, the detail on the individual units is scant to none and the move- ment animations are herky-jerky at best, regardless of your res- olution or what's under your hood. Things only get worse the

88 CGM | DECEMBER 2002

АКТ ЛЛ ТТ

larger the forces involved. Clashing armies simply meld into a twitching mishmash of colors, bouncing flags, and indiscriminate screaming, especially on Gamespy's Internet multiplayer, where it's safe to say that the kinks just haven't been worked out. Mid-game crashes are common, which is even more frustrating considering how long it takes just to set one up (up to eight players handpicking and upgrading six- teen armies with the assigned florins available takes a while).

The game comes with only three stand-alone historical battles, all involving England, and two are merely riffs on Braveheart. But the number of historical campaigns, some of which require unlocking, compensates big-time. They feature scenarios of Saladin, the 100 Years' War told from both perspectives, the Mongolian Golden Hordes, and a bunch more. No commemoration, oddly, of the 1453 battle at Constantinople that marks the deadline for the single-player campaign, but the map editor makes filling such blanks a matter of moments.

The single player campaign is Medieval at its most engrossing. As in Shogun, you administrate the expansion and infrastructure of an empire chosen from among twelve factions such as the Danes or the Arabian Almohads, all across what looks like a giant boardgame map of medieval Europe resting on a weatherbeaten oaken table that evokes nostalgic memories of old-school wargames like Kingmaker and Diplomacy. With the occasional battle providing background chorus, the bulk of your time is spent building watch towers, assassins, bishops et al., and sending them out to harangue or charm your AI opponent factions.

The fun is in the wealth of near pointless but fascinating details, and in the vagaries of fate. It’s possible, for example, to have nothing going on but six princesses scouring the Siberian steppes for possible suitors to forge a strategic alliance. Religion also plays a larger but subtler role this time. Shogun featured two religious factions, the Buddhists and the Christians, each of which allowed recruitment of a different type of warrior unit (the Buddhist monks were semi-magical). Here there are five religious factions, and their effects are purely politi- cal. The Papacy, for example, can excommunicate a Catholic faction, making them fair game for “crusades,” a legal excuse to march troops through neutral lands and take them out militarily to acquire their lands and wealth. The Islamic version is a jihad, which can only be taken advantage of to reclaim invaded territories. Upgrading your province’s church to a cathedral allows you to build Inquisitors, which can be used to put enemy generals on trial for heresy and burned. Fleets create trade routes and blockades and even fight. The victory conditions include a “Glorious Achievements” option, the specifics (and difficulty) of which vary from faction to faction.

With its rich in atmosphere and wealth of strategic options, Medieval is compelling for long hours into the night in the way of all games we'll think back on smiling in our old age. The more you play it, the more you find.

I've heard of uphill battles but this is ridiculous. Clashing armies too often meld into a twitching mishmash of colors. bouncing flags. and indiscrimi- nate screaming.

UPSIDE Lots of fun, rich in atmosphere and strategic options, capability for

battles involving more than ten thousand troops

DOWNSIDE Each of those troops adds ten bucks to the hardware require- ments, post-WarCraft Ill movement animations already look dated,

spotty online stability

ЖЖЖЖ >

RATING

it's what's inside that counts.

сиге

With 350 new cards, the Onslaught™ expansion is the perfect entry into the Magic: The Gathering“ Online game. And the new Morph mechanic allows you to keep a poker face as your opponents lose their heads. That's because you play Morph cards face down. So they won't know what's lurking underneath, except that it's going to be one nasty surprise.

free game download www magicthegathering.com

Mafia Grand Theft Edsel, capiche?

by Douglas L. Erickson

GENRE Angry Taxi Simulation DEVELOPER Illusion Softworks [www.illusionsoftworks.com] PUBLISHER Take 2 [www.take2games.com] REQUIREMENTS Pentium Ill 700, 128MB RAM, 32MB 3D Accelerator MULTIPLAYER None ESRB Mature

Where are the Keystone Kops when you need 'em? >>> [Inset] Is it Valentine's Day already?

There’s little doubt that Grand Theft Auto III would become the template for many games to follow, but it comes a pleasant surprise when one of the first “urban sprawl” crimeland sims—Mafia

from Czech developers Illusion Softworks—not only manages to be a solid genre entry, but also quite distinct in its own right. As an overall experience, it pulls the would-be legitimate businessman in like few other games have ever accomplished. Well-voiced cinemas, great camerawork, and solid dialogue envelop the player in a world of classic New York (called “Lost Heaven” here) gangland pulp, and the tight mission scripting makes sure that the extremely linear story plays out minus the hitches that plague more open-ended games of

this variety.

The game’s strongest suit is the main story mode, which places you in the role of fledgling Mafioso Thomas Angelo, a former taxi driver driven into the clutches of “good guy” mobster Don Salieri due to a chance

encounter. Through the course of several missions, and aided by the aforementioned cinematics, you watch Thomas grow into a Made Man as he helps the Salieri family business wage war against the rival Morello clan. As expected from a game that takes its basic cues from GTA3, there is also a Free Mode, which provides a set of basic objectives to accomplish in order to accumulate cash for upgrades, as well as practice your mob- ster skills. Complete the story mode and you'll unlock the

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

DOWNSIDE

RATING

Extreme Free Mode, a rather torturous test of vehicu- lar skill with fifteen-plus “driving tests” the player can participate in.

A great deal of the story portions will find you fer- rying Tom and his cohorts from mission to mission, which provides a smart opportunity for the urban engine to strut its stuff. The gritty Depression-era gangland facade is perfectly assembled and meticu- lously crafted, featuring grungy storefronts and ram- bling trolleys everywhere. It’s easy to get lost in the ambience, with the melodic strains of well-composed jazz riffs ringing in your ears and the orange hues of a New York sunset streaming buy as you coast across the Giulani Bridge in your rattling Bolt V8 Roadster.

The central theme is driving, and why not? The game provides the player with a vast selection of vehicles modeled after famous cars from that era, each with their own distinct look and feel. On wheels or on foot, the controls really shine, and a slick weapon selection interface makes beat downs and drive-by’s alike amazingly fluid and rewarding. One gripe, however; the directional compass is pretty vague, which necessitates having the map open while you drive, which will cause quite a few accidents until you learn the lay of Lost Heaven.

The biggest strike against Mafia, though, lies in its inability to capitalize on the glorious urban sprawl it attempts to portray. In the story mode, the missions are so tightly scripted and linear that deviation from the strict path will lead to failure. Why bother render- ing a vast city to explore if none of the promise is real- ized in the mission design? And in Free Mode, the lim- itations are all too plain: playing taxi is lethargy-induc- ing; random violence lacks the sense of escalation in Grand Theft Auto, and despite the various objectives, there really isn’t very much of interest to accomplish— it’s all about collecting dough from cop-capping and random crimes. It’s a gritty snowglobe of a thing, and even the most violent of shakes can’t keep the novelty from wearing off all too quickly. There’s no doubt that Mafia is an urban sprawl engine first and foremost, with the mission design’s lack of ambition unwilling to test its inherent potential.

Like a young Michael Corleone, you can see the strength in Illusion Softworks’ favored son, even as it is held back by its weaknesses. Unlike so many other games that put their engine first, though, Mafia is still a fun, engaging game that provides an incredibly immersive experience. In a hobby where elves and space marines have become the hallmark of the generic, it’s an offer that’s hard to refuse.

Visuals finer than Veronica Lake, cinematic work top-notch, controls are tighter than a Sicilian family

Free play duller than an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, population Al glitchy, mission design stiffer than a Sinatra highball

Ж Ж Ж Ж

Xo * Xo

Computer Games Magazine (Editors' Choice) Computer Gaming World (Editors' Choice)

| ICE

"a PC gaming classic for the Ages." 95 out of 100

PC Gamer

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92

America's Army: Operations

СУШИ x xx

GENRE Shooter DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER US Army REQUIREMENTS Pentium Ill 766, 128MB RAM, Internet connection MULTIPLAYER 2-20 Players; Internet ESRB Not Rated

Uncle Sam wants you! If you have honed your reflexes to razor sharpness through hours and hours of hardcore gaming and have the kind of chiseled physique that one can only achieve through a strict diet of cheese doodles and Jolt cola, you could be exactly what the Army is looking for. The free, downloadable America’s Army: Operations may be a recruiting tool in spir- it, but in practice, it’s a realistic online shooter. Before you can leap into action blasting your fellow potential future enlis- tees, you need to complete a series of training missions, which act as a kind of tutorial. Once you get through training, you’re ready for action. A Gamespy pow- ered server browser makes it very easy to find games, and there are plenty of servers

The Thing

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GENRE Shape-shifting Action DEVELOPER Computer Artworks PUBLISHER Black Label Games REQUIREMENTS Pentium Il 400, 64MB RAM MULTIPLAYER None ESRB Mature

The Thing is a sequel, of sorts, to John Carpenter's creepy and underrated 1982 film (tagline: “Man is The Warmest Place to Hide”). You’re the leader of a military rescue team sent to an Antarctic research outpost to investigate strange goings-on. Since you’re taking orders from the guy that plays Cigarette Smoking Man on The X-Files, you know there’s going to be trou- ble. Sure enough, trouble comes in the form of an alien that likes to take the shape of any living thing it bumps into along the way.

Though gameplay-wise, it’s a fairly typi- cal third-person action game, The Thing features superb production values, a few exciting action sequences, and delivers

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

to choose from, many of which are run by the Army itself. The actual missions are played in rounds, Counterstrike style, with each of the two teams having different objectives to meet for victory. Because this is supposed to get you excited about the good guys, each side sees their own troops as the good ole US Army and the other side as the nogoodniks through the wiz- ardry of modern technology.

Once you get into the fray, realism is the name of the game, and the result is a very deliberate pacing. There are really only four different weapons in the game, and you can’t just run out with guns blaz- ing and expect to do well. Strategy and

Welcome to basic training.

More proof that vomit makes or breaks a game. Your teammates can't quite keep lunch down when they stumble on some of the more grisly Scenes.

tons of gore for its eight hours-or-so of entertainment. Its main innovation—the notion that in order to succeed you must earn the trust of the members of your team—is novel but underdeveloped. Each character has different levels of trust and fear, which in theory goes from soldiers refusing orders to turning their guns on you to vomiting in the presence of a partic- ularly grisly scene or committing suicide. But it’s practically a binary system: hand a

teamwork are at a premium.

For a free game it’s hard to say anything bad about Operations. The graphics and sounds are very sharp and aid the overall feeling of realism. The engine is smooth and responsive, though movement is slow to the point of being restrictive. The maps are varied and extremely detailed, and are all carefully designed to emphasize the techniques required for real world success, which basically boils down to killing the other guy without giving him a good opportunity to kill you. If you’re looking for a tactical online shooter, you certainly can’t beat the price. —Adam Fleet

distrustful guy a weapon and some ammo and he’s your friend; accidentally shoot him and he gets (justifiably) angry and distrustful. However, the interface for directing your teammates is simple and effective, and the soldier AI, particularly in the combat sequences, is excellent.

Though the storyline is faithful to the movie, there are occasional gaps in the narra- tive. You often go from Point A to B without knowing exactly how or why, and your teammates are constantly coming and going with little to no explanations about why you’re leaving them behind. This lack of camaraderie also makes the moments your teammates turn into “Things” particularly anticlimactic. The conversions are all canned; your engineer never changes over when you need him to open a door down the road.

Few games successfully pull off horror and tension, and The Thing is no excep- tion. Though certainly better than most movie adaptations, it’s something of a minor disappointment. You can see the potential in its individual parts, but the whole lacks flair. —Steve Bauman

“True Ally!

Aide De Camp 2 - p. АУ t Panzer Campa Tobruk 4 i

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Amoral 2002

HPS Simulations

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REVIEWS »

94

Leave me ^ — |

no time for ЇШӨ Gonvers

So, um, Fritz... where's the girls camp?

Prisoner of War

EKEN x< xx

GENRE Sneaky Action DEVELOPER Wide Games PUBLISHER Codemasters REQUIREMENTS Pentium 500, 128MB RAM MULTIPLAYER None ESRB Teen

Prisoner of War has one foot planted in the camaraderie of The Great Escape and the other in the “wacky Nazi” hilarity of Hogan's Heroes. The gameplay isn't Medal of Honor action; it's more akin to the care- ful and methodic sneakiness of Thief. Your foes are barbed wire, bad timing, machine gun towers, time, and Nazis who tote dan- gerous flashlights. Getting caught is bad, but it's more frustrating than deadly.

You portray the intrepid and gung-ho Captain Lewis Stone, who's shot down over German POW camps. He lands safely but gets caught right away and placed in a holding camp. Can he get out in time? The two AI controlled prisoners he meets also tried to escape, but they quit in frustration, and you may share their fate. This is a demanding, methodic, and puzzle-oriented game. Failing means starting over from a save point or losing a valuable day. Success keeps you going, because each task feels new and fresh, and the pacing is excellent.

The problem lies with the perspective; the camera system constantly gets in the way.

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

The AI is above average and well suited for the game, but sometimes it's just plain dumb. Guards get stuck on corners or forget about you entirely after a prolonged chase, and fellow prisoners just sort of stand around doing nothing most of the time. It gives the game a feeling of lifelessness that screams, "this is a puzzle" rather than "this is a POW camp." At least the overall puzzles are good, but a little more ambiance would have sold the setting better.

Prisoner of War can be a frustrating game, but those that stick with it will find it more rewarding than flawed. Given all the shooting games coming down the pike, it's a refreshingly different take on WWII. —Andrew S. Bub

Celtic Kings: Rage of War

EXIM « «x

GENRE Real-time Strategy DEVELOPER Haemimont Games PUBLISHER Strategy First REQUIREMENTS Pentium II 400, 64MB RAM MULTIPLAYER 2-8 players; Internet, LAN ESRB Everyone

Like the legendary hero of the Gauls so prominently featured in the game’s premise, Celtic Kings is a sort of digital Vercingetorix. Aggressive in ambition and technically strong, it falters under its own lack of refine- ment and Roman-heeled polish.

It does offer a formidable force of tech- nical accomplishments: battles that poten- tially feature thousands of units; hero development and unit leveling; a thought- ful unit management interface; and an expansive story-based campaign that plays a lot like a real-time version of Heroes of Might and Magic. In all these aspects, it is devastatingly effective—with two clicks, 50 units can be bound to a hero. Heroes gain levels and obtain magical devices, confer- ring their strength to allied units. And the adventure mode, which chronicles the story of the vengeful Gaul warrior Larax, makes up for its barely functional plot with an empire’s worth of events, sub- quests, and surprises.

Despite a fairly limited selection of sides and units, the scope of the play renders variety a non-issue. When you have an army of 100 or more units, the scope tends to extend beyond the largely tactical con- sideration of unit type and more into the

strategic movement of entire forces (again, facilitated by the elegant system of binding troops to heroes).

However, all is not well in what will become the state of France. Celtic Kings manages to tarnish its crown with a slough of irritating design oversights, the most prominent being the ease in which a unit or item can become obscured by a tree or structure, leading to arbitrary selecting and clicking. Unit feedback isn’t exactly as friendly as it should be, either. And sieges? Caesar may be able to calculate the range of a catapult by sight alone, but lesser mor- tals would rather have an indicator than make blind guesses when attempting to pound Stonehenge into so much gravel. The engagement AI is weak, with serious clumping and poor match-ups wounding potentially elegant maneuvers. Lastly, the art direction, while stunning in its basic illustration quality, lacks any impact due to the heavy saturation of a color palette best described as “Quake-like.“

This mass of shifting brown and grey is actually а bunch of angry “woman warriors," apparently unafraid of Joan Rivers’ barbs about their unfashionable steel attire.

Celtic Kings has a solid game hiding under its dun-colored kilt, and one that real-time aficionados might find a pleasant alternative to the micromanagement antics of WarCraft II or the generic fantasy uni- verse of Warlords Battlecry 2. Fierce and rough around the edges, developer Haemimont's heroic effort is diminished not because it lacks in innovation or mechanics, but because people expect bar- barian antics to be a bit more civilized.

— Douglas L. Erickson

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First tactical strategy game to cover the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1968, recreating actual US Army missions.

PLATOON Interactive Game (all object code, all other software components and certain audio visual components only). © 2002 Monte Cristo Multimedia. Monte Cristo and its logo are registered trademarks of Monte Cristo Multimedia. PLATOON Interactive Game (certain audiovisual components). © 2002 Orion Pictures Corporation. PLATOON TM & © 1986 Orion Pictures Corporation. CONTENT RATED &Y All rights reserved. All other trademarks and logos are property of their respective owners. Developed by Digital Reality. ESRB

REVIEWS »

96

Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest

СШ x x

GENRE Strategy DEVELOPER Mad Doc PUBLISHER Sierra REQUIREMENTS Empire Earth MULTIPLAYER 2-8 Players; Internet, LAN ESRB Teen

When designer Rick Goodman (Age of Empires) set out to make the ultimate eon- spanning real-time strategy game, he came up with Empire Earth. The result was a polished yet overwhelming mishmash of old, borrowed, and brand new ideas, many of them good enough to develop

quite a following amongst the hardest hardcore fans. Now, Art of Conquest, the first expansion pack, asks the question: how do you expand a game so expansive it turned off all but the most hardcore?

It answers that question by adding new bonuses or units to existing civilizations, a whole new epoch (bringing the total num- ber of time frames to a daunting fifteen), and three single-player campaigns. The campaigns are interesting, if poorly writ- ten and horribly voice acted, taking you from the ancient world with the Romans to WWII's Pacific Theater to the vast reaches of space. It's a decent amount of content, but the quality is suspect. Each civilization gets a new bonus. The French can camouflage, the Russians mine better, and the US gets a marketplace. These are nice and clever, and add a bit to the game overall, forcing players to deal with the new situations they create.

The campaigns begin in Rome where you go from invasion to Cleopatra. It's largely successful. The WWII campaign is not. These missions are often too hard- coded to let you innovate. Lastly, you get to play a futuristic Asiatic super-power

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

Mechs stand tall in the swamps of the future. >>> [lower tef] Roman conquest in progress, up close.

dealing with a rebellion. The exposition is tiresome, and lines like, "They're just ter- rorists!" and, "Look out! A suicide bomber!" scream poor taste. Things get more interesting when the campaign actu- ally takes you into space but it never really takes advantage of its setting. It essentially replaces water textures with black starry ones and makes island landmasses round so it can call them "planets." Its best fea- ture is a toggle that prevents rivals from invading your little “island Earth" until they reach the Space Epoch, which finally gives you a way to play the game at a more leisurely pace.

Overall, though, The Art of Conquest is an artless expansion. Aside from some of the new bonuses and the Space map/Epoch, it really doesn’t add anything worth its price tag. —Andrew S. Bub

Links 2003

EXC x xxx

GENRE Golf DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER Microsoft REQUIREMENTS Pentium 500, 64 MB RAM MULTIPLAYER 2-4 players; Internet, LAN

ESRB Everyone

The hottest trend in computer golf over the last few years is the ability to swing with the mouse—the tired tri- click method is dying a slow and deserving death. The venerable Links franchise needed a more contemporary swing method in order to attract new fans, and with Links 2003, it's here, and it's good. Microsoft calls its new swing interface, oddly

Golfers are now fully animated; they'll even show a little waggle.

enough, “Real Time Swing” (RTS). It’s unforgiving on the harder levels of difficul- ty and makes for a more challenging, rewarding, and exciting game of golf.

RTS comes at a price. If you decide to use this swing method—Powerstroke and Tri-Click are still options—you cannot use the game’s Dynamic Camera that follows the ball in flight. You’re forced to watch from the golfer’s perspective.

At least the golfers look good. As polyg- onal ones replace the previous year’s digi- tized bitmap golfers, this allows you to view the player close up rather than from a distance and also looks more realistic—the golfer looks like part of the scenery rather than a pasted image. The courses, all six of them, also look fantastic and feature a lot more detail than in previous versions. The only issue is that the environments remain static; unlike EA’s Tiger Woods, the trees are motionless and the oceans frozen.

Multiplayer is decent enough, and play- ing a tournament through e-mail is a remarkable addition, but playing online takes a lot of time. Once you’re used to Headgate’s revolutionary ReadyGolf multi- player format, first seen in Sierra’s PGA 2000, the old format just takes too long when you have a complete foursome.

After a few years of treading water, Links is finally back where it belongs, at the upper level of PC golf simulations. While RTS breathes needed life into the series, the additions of a wonderful sea- son/career mode complete with Q-School, Semi-Pro, and Pro Tours, the ability to con- vert old courses, a more user-friendly course designer, and arguably the best physics model in the genre help make Links 2003 the most complete golf title on the market. —William Abner

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THE

98

GENRE Dirty Racing DEVELOPER Ratbag PU ER Infogrames Entertainment MENTS Pentium Il 450, 128МВ RAM MULTIPLAYER 2-10 players; Internet, LAN ESRB Everyone

REQU

Virtual Resort: Spring Break

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GENRE Location-sim DEVELOPER Deep Red PUBLISHER Eidos REQUIREMENTS Pentium Il 450MHz, 128MB RAM MULTIPLAYER None ESRB Teen

Spring Break has a lot in common with Tropico. You manage a little tropical island by plopping down buildings and adjusting wages, all in the hopes of making every- one happy while inflating your bank account. The developer, Deep Red, turned in a surprisingly sophisticated mass-market game with Monopoly Tycoon, and at first glance it appears they've succeeded at recreating that success.

There's a lot to like about this little envi- ronment-management game, known as Beach Life in the U.K. The graphics are sharp and the stars, your vacationers, are exceptionally well treated. They have lots of funny thoughts, scores of fantastic ani- mations, and a few silly sound effects. It's really a treat to watch them running

CGM | DECEMBER 2002

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's an accurate description of Dirt Track Racing 2. Each game in the series from Ratbag (which includes Sprint Cars and some Australian-only games) has added different cars to the mix but left the gameplay engine alone, offering a satisfying blend of arcade and simulation style play.

You find yourself behind the wheel of Pro Stocks, Late Models and the newly added Modifieds in this iteration. All the basics are here including convenient quick races and the long term career mode. Added from Sprint Cars is the ability to cre- ate and save your own replays. Given the game- friendly real-life event schedules of heat, conso- lation and feature races which take only about fifteen minutes to com- plete, you can quickly enjoy an entire event.

The AI infuses all

It's sideways or the highway