Half-life aims to kill other first person shooters

Valve Software’s Half-Life has been hyped for the past three years, claiming that it has the most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) found on any first person shooter. It was supposed to be the AI that would surpass Half-Life form its competition. Fortunately, I am able to say that as far as the main game goes, that hype is proven to be true, as the final release provides the most challenging, involving single player action there is to offer. Half-Life, published by Sierra, centers on Gordon Freeman, doctor of Nanotechnology and Charlie Sheen look-a-like. What appears to start off as a … Continue reading Half-life aims to kill other first person shooters

Backyard Soccer scores with young gamers

Humongous Entertainment has developed a game that will surely give young soccer enthusiasts a kick. Backyard Soccer takes players into realistic neighborhood soccer competitions with a variety of great features that any sports fanatic (young or old) will enjoy. This game is marketed for kids from ages five to ten years old. This game has a number of clever player-controlled, customized features. The game allows players to choose from a group of thirty neighborhood children to build their teams. The designers of this game made sure to give the neighborhood children a touch of realism by making the children each … Continue reading Backyard Soccer scores with young gamers

Don’t Fear the Reaper

Lucas Arts’ Grim Fandango already earned some lauds from other gaming publications and I hate to be the one to tarnish what may become another Myst. Grim Fandango does contain a captivating atmosphere with a certain film noir meets Antonio Banderas quality. My primary complaint stems not from the remarkable interface or the ambiance or even the general plot. Believe me, the music, a jazz soundtrack, is nearly enough to warrant buying this title. It’s just that someone forgot the basics of an adventure game. You may consider me a purist, but adventure and strategy games contain a kind of … Continue reading Don’t Fear the Reaper

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil uses N64 memory expansion to fullest

Acclaim’s Iguana team has pulled off yet another great blood-chilling, action-packed, first-person shooter as the sequel to last year’s highly praised Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. This one will leave you nothing less than impressed. Turok 2 is the first of many games designed to work with Nintendo’s new 4 megabyte expansion pak, a hardware add-on used to enhance graphics, sound and gameplay of titles designed for its use. This new expansion pack takes Turok 2 to a higher plateau of gaming as it increases resolution, enables smoother animation, heightens artificial intelligence and tweaks the sound of the game. Though Turok 2 … Continue reading Turok 2: Seeds of Evil uses N64 memory expansion to fullest

Roberta Williams does it again

As far as I am concerned, this is the best King’s Quest yet, as well as one of the best adventure games ever created. The puzzles in King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity are tough, yet solvable. The interface is easy to use, the plot is well thought-out and the graphics are very good. In fact, this game gets my highest rating yet. The part that I most enjoyed is that even though the gameplay takes place on different worlds, I never found it necessary to go back through and get something I missed on the first run. Given, I was … Continue reading Roberta Williams does it again

Rogue Squadron will woo Star Wars fans

A few years ago LucasArts released Shadows of the Empire as one of the flagship Nintendo 64 titles. It was a mixed bag, consisting mostly of mundane corridor shooters. However, there was one stage which stood out among the rest: the snowspeeder battle at Hoth. Critics such as myself wished that Shadows could have been more like the first stage, nothing but exciting ground-level flight sequences. LucasArts took our ideas to heart, and incorporated German based developers Factor 5 (known primarily for the Turrican series on the 16-bit systems) to create Rogue Squadron. Rogue Squadron takes place right after the … Continue reading Rogue Squadron will woo Star Wars fans

Settlers III will grow on you.

Settlers III is not a game that will leap out at players as the most fascinating thing they have ever played. In fact, looking at the online help book can be quite daunting. But once you start to understand how to build your settlements into thriving colonies, Settlers can become quite addictive. The premise in this latest installment of the Settlers series finds your tiny hamlet on a vast unexplored world. This is not unlike the hundreds of other resource gathering and conquest games out there, but the beauty of Settlers is in the details. Settlers III has the most … Continue reading Settlers III will grow on you.

In the Valley of the Giants…

Music and art make Cydonia a memorable experience. Mars. Exciting and new. (I would continue substituting lyrics to the "Love Boat" theme, but none of us really needs that, do we?) Mars has been a lofty, and sometimes thought of as an unattainable goal for us meager humans for decades and decades now. And now, with Pathfinder still in our thoughts and the International Space Station actually underway, an adventure game that takes place on Mars seems only logical. Cydonia more than fits this bill. Cydonia is set in a somewhat-far-ahead-but-it-could-happen-to-us-if-we-don’t-watch-out sort of future. The Terran League [the governing body … Continue reading In the Valley of the Giants…

Thief: The Dark Project will steal your heart

It is so refreshing to find a 3D shooter that offers something different. Sure, Unreal and Half-Life are great games that have collectively sucked a lot of time away from my busy schedule. But at their core, they are all about getting to the biggest gun first and then blowing away anything that moves. Looking Glass Studios’ newest offering Thief: The Dark Project is different. If you try to play Thief the way you normally play Unreal, you are going to die quicky and painfully. After all, you are playing a thief in this game, so you better act like … Continue reading Thief: The Dark Project will steal your heart

Fallout 2 serves up a mess of nukes and kooks

When I reviewed the original Fallout, I said that 80 years after a global nuclear war, the old neighborhood had changed a bit. Now Fallout 2 takes place a generation after the first, but things in the wasteland haven’t changed that much. Your character still has to face all the greed, crime, corruption, murder and mayhem that a degenerating society can throw at them, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun. When the original Fallout came out, people were amazed that such a quality role-playing game could take place without an elf, magic-user or dragon in sight. Many … Continue reading Fallout 2 serves up a mess of nukes and kooks