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Close Combat Mac Review (1999)

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From the archive: this review first ran on the Mac Gaming Alliance (MGA), the Mac games site that lived here on DimensionZ in the late 1990s. It was published around 1999 and is reproduced as originally written. More in the Mac Gaming Alliance archive.

Publisher	Microsoft
Tested on	PowerMac 6500/200
Gameplay	5 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	4 / 5 apples
Interface	5 / 5 apples
Difficulty	5 / 5 apples
Bugs	3 / 5 apples
Overall	4.5 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	J. Driver

Close Combat is a World War II simulation. In this game, you control American Allied units who just landed in Normandy, or German troops attempting to hold their ground. Not everything can go according to plan, however, because your troops, and enemy troops, can become mentally unstable, either to your advantage or to the enemy’s advantage. Video coverage of the actual D-Day campaign shows you what you need to do, what you did, and what really happened.

Gameplay

Close Combat requires a Power Macintosh due to large amounts of information it has to process. Gameplay is typically very fast. You will really feel that you are really commanding troops in Normandy.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Close Combat are very good, for the most part. They can appear “grainy” during combat when you have magnified the battlefield 100%. Sound in Close Combat is also very good, and unlike graphics, it does not falter.

Interface

The interface in Close Combat is very simple: point and click. In the battlefield, there are also added conveniences in terms of buttons. Move out, Defend, and Pull Back lets you control all your troops without having to control each team.

Difficulty

Even on the Easy level, Close Combat is a very difficult game. Sometimes the only way to get past a particular battle is to do your best and refight it, that way the enemy is weakened.

Conclusion

Close Combat is a very good game. While the graphics could use a little work, the rest of the game is done very nicely and realistically.

Find a copy

Close Combat has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Close Combat on Amazon.

January 15, 1999

Civilization 2 Gold Mac Review (1999)

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Publisher	MacSoft
Tested on	Power Mac 8600/300 w/32mb RAM
Gameplay	4 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	3 / 5 apples
Interface	3 / 5 apples
Difficulty	3 / 5 apples
Bugs	2.5 / 5 apples
Overall	3 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	Jonathan Dreyer

Civilization II Gold is an upgraded version of the original Civilization II which now includes support for multiplayer and includes all of the Conflicts in Civilization and Fantastic Worlds scenarios. Other than those two items, nothing else has changed from Civilization II.

The extremely fun and addictive gameplay of Civilization II remains the same. Advance your civilization with an aspiration for worldwide domination. You can micro-manage each of your cities, or let your advisors handle the production. There are many units and buildings to construct for each of your hopefully many cities. There are treaties to be signed, and technologies to discover. Civilization II gives you a rich and complex world to dominate.

The fun of Civilization II Gold comes in the multiplayer additions. Playing your empire against another real person’s empire gives the game a lot more thrill. You can play over your Local-Area-Network, the Internet through TCP/IP, or on one computer through the “hotseat” method. Note, I would not recommend the hotseat method, unless you like getting up and sitting down a couple hundred times during a game (hence the name, hotseat).

The “Conflicts in Civilization” and “Fantastic Worlds” give you the fun of standard Civ II with the excitement of playing with all new units and lands. Defend Earth from Alien Invaders, take a side in the Civil War, these scenarios play out with a cast of characters and a plot to follow. A lot of the scenarios incorporate entirely new unit and structures for your use, greatly altering the usual gameplay.

It appears that when adding multiplayer support, they broke a couple things… There are more than a few bugs floating around in Civ II Gold, most noticeably for me is a bug with opening saved games while file sharing is active. Hopefully a bug-fix patch will be out soon.

Overall, the addition of multiplayer support, and the inclusion of the great scenario sets make Civilization II Gold a recommended buy from me, albeit a marginal one. The multiplayer aspects and the new graphics and units of some of the scenarios breathe just enough life into another otherwise tired old game to make it an enjoyable play. It did make me long for the upcoming Civilization III even more…

Find a copy

Civilization 2 Gold has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Civilization 2 Gold on Amazon.

January 15, 1999

Carmageddon 2 Mac Review (1999)

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Publisher	Interplay
Tested on	G3 233 MHz 96 MB RAM (total: 131.1 MB) MacOS 8.5.1 (US)
Gameplay	4 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	4 / 5 apples
Interface	4 / 5 apples
Difficulty	3 / 5 apples
Bugs	5 / 5 apples
Overall	4 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	Marty Dodge

Most images in this review can be enlarged by clicking on them

Over three months after being released on the PC, Carmageddon II is finally out for the Mac here in the US. In a bizarre gaming industry snafu, Carma II, the game is still not out in the Europe as SCI (UK) has just made an agreement with GT Interactive to handle distribution. SCI claims that the Interplay version is tamer than the European release. I doubt whether this will mollify the irate MacCarma fans in the UK and beyond.

SCI made a great effort to make Carma II different from its predecessor. In some areas such as graphics and physics it is greatly improved over the first one, in others it is much worse. Someone at SCI decided that missions were the thing to set Carma II apart from its predecessor. This person should be hit very hard in the head as missions in Carma II go along way to ruin the entire game. Being stuck on the same mission for days on end in neither fun nor useful. All missions are time limited with no opponents and no way of extending the time. These missions become tedious on about the third attempt. SCI has admitted that the mission part of Carma II has been less than popular. An SCI PR rep claimed that emails to SCI are 50/50 pro/anti missions, I doubt this to be entirely accurate if the C3 Wish List message board is anything to go by. I trawled through over 100 messages and found 1 pro-mission post and a great number against.

The second major problem with Carma II is the official system requirements. In my opinion and that off several major Carma II fan sites, (is a good place to start as they have an extensive piece on requirements.) for the Mac at the stats are way too low. My advice is that the minimum requirements to make the game playable are G3 233 with at least 4 MB VRAM and at least 64 built in RAM. I had to purchase 4 MB of VRAM for my RagePro card so that Carma II was not choppy and unplayable on the higher levels. I hear reports that those with slower machines and video cards are performing well but then again your card must have at least 4 MB VRAM to make it worth playing at all. Another annoyance when one has less than 4MB VRAM is that one cannot use the map feature, this is especially a problem in the mission levels.

Carma II does have some good points however, hence the 4 rating. If you have a fast enough machine with the right bell and whistles, Carma II really shines. The visuals are amazing. Windows break, signs break, cars break in half and bits of your car fall off. There are a whole new array of power ups, some of which are anti-pedestrian weaponry, like a flame-thrower and morning star tail. There are of course new cars ranging from a Bus to a WWII German airplane. There are 30 new tracks, ranging from an aircraft carrier (USS Lewinsky) to an airport with active airplanes. Unfortunately you cannot blow them up, and they are merely obstacles. A greater variety (150 different types) of pedestrians and animals provide hours of gory fun. Oh yes and for some of us the soundtrack is a bonus, Iron Maiden and Carmageddon, quite a combo.

I have not been able to test this version of Carmageddon on a LAN, but I suspect that it will be as much fun as it predecessor. As with the first edition of the game, up to 8 can play on a LAN at one time and only the host machine needs to have a CD in it. Full installs must be done on all other machines. It surprised many that there is no Internet or Modem to Modem play with Carma II. I suspect the reason is that there is so much action taking place on the screen that only Cable/ADSL players would be able to play at any sort of reasonable level.

Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now is a great disappointment, but still a great deal of fun to play. As with the first game, expect to see lots of custom cars, pedestrians and tracks popping up all over the internet. I would approach CarmaII with caution if you have either a slow computer or never played Carmageddon. There are no plans for a Mac demo, so you have no way of trying it before you buy. It is best that I finish this review now, before I change my mind and lower my rating. I seem to change my mind hourly, missions in a racing game! Bah!

Find a copy

Carmageddon 2 has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Carmageddon 2 on Amazon.

January 15, 1999

Assault Vehicles Mac Review (1999)

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Publisher	XYZ Entertainment
Tested on	PowerMac G3 233 130 RAM (VM on)
Gameplay	5 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	4 / 5 apples
Interface	5 / 5 apples
Difficulty	4 / 5 apples
Bugs	5 / 5 apples
Overall	5 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	Marty Dodge

Assault Vehicles is one of the those exceptions to the rule, it is not made by Ambrosia and it is a great game. AV has come along at the perfect time for all Carmageddon fans. Just when reliable sources inform us that Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now looks like it will be out in the new year at best, up pops AV to fill the gap. It is simple car combat game where you pummel your opponents with guns, rockets, mines and a few special attacks.

(Click on Picture to Expand)

Gameplay

The game runs smoothly and rapidly on my machine in all modes. There is no screen jump or pauses. I am sure that the game is even better in Multiplayer LAN suffering none of the long loading time problems so often experienced with Carma and other games. Basically there are five zones in which one can play. These arenas (think Car Wars arenas with natural instead of cement borders.) are located in Egypt (complete with Pyramids), Himalayas, the Midwest, Siberia and South America. In the Trophy game one faces one more opponent at each level (1,2,3,4,5 max) which one has to kill to advance to the next level of play. After completing all areas one moves onto the Gold Trophy contest where one gets awards as one advances. (Options and two vehicles are amoung some of the goodies available.)

There are two other modes, both can involve team play with other cars. These are Elimination and Kill Count, last man stranding and a pre-set kill amount respectively. Both of these ways are a great way to learn how to play the game and develop skills needed in the Trophy chase. It would also pay to try this a few times before facing human opponents in the multiplayer mode.

(Click on Picture to Expand)

Graphics/Sound

They are not basic but not the latest either, but then again this is shareware after all. Graphics are clean and uncomplicated. There is day/night modes and even the occasional rain shower. There is no graphical object overlap that there is many games of this type. The sounds are basic cars noises, nothing special but nothing too annoying either.

(Click on Picture to Expand)

Interface/Difficulty

The interface is mostly on the keyboard, although the mouse can be used for movement. Keys are customisable so both lefties and righties will be happy. I recommend the standard layout for movement (numeric keypad) while using the defaults for the action keys. The controls do not take too long to get used to, what takes a while is learning how to survive and avoiding sucking missiles from all sides. One sits in the car and looks out the front, below this is a basic dashboard with information about location of enemies & allies, damage and armament.

The Trophy chase in single player is not at all easy and it takes some skill and tactics to survive past the third or fourth area. One must learn to conserve ones’ cars in the early stages so it will be possible to survive when facing 5 other opponents. Fortunately the baddies do have a habit of pummeling each other as well as you. Your allies take offence when you hit them as well, and are prone to nailing you with a missle or a shot if you hit them by mistake.

(Click on Picture to Expand)

Bugs

None that I could find. There may have been some, as there is an update on the site for those who have earlier versions of the game.

Conclusion

This is a great little game that does what it does well. The only criticism I can think of is that one needs a copy of the CD is each machine on a LAN. Of course the fact that the game costs all of $15 from their website does make up for this problem. This is the perfect game for a 30 min session of flatten your co-worker. Assault Vehicles will fill the crevass in my life until Carma II comes out. If you like offensive driving games then this is the game for you.

Find a copy

Assault Vehicles has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Assault Vehicles on Amazon.

January 15, 1999

Future Cop: L.A.P.D. Mac Review (1998)

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From the archive: this review first ran on the Mac Gaming Alliance (MGA), the Mac games site that lived here on DimensionZ in the late 1990s. It was published around late 1998 and is reproduced as originally written, with the original screenshots (click to enlarge). More in the Mac Gaming Alliance archive.

Publisher	Electronic Arts
Tested on	PowerMac 8600/300 w/ Power3D (Voodoo1 4mb)
Gameplay	5 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	5 / 5 apples
Interface	5 / 5 apples
Difficulty	5 / 5 apples
Bugs	5 / 5 apples
Overall	5 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	Jonathan Dreyer

Future Cop is when of those rare simultaneous releases for both Mac and PC. The reason being that it is a hybrid CD. I for one am very glad that the Mac version of Future Cop found it’s way onto the CD. Future Cop is one of the best games I have played in a very long time. You see the scores above, that’s not a mistake, Future Cop is the first title I have ever reviewed to score perfect on our ratings system. We’ll have to come up with some sort of award for it.

From the Future Cop box: In the 21st Century, gangs have taken over L.A. Mutant crooks packin’ thermo nukes, bio-agents, and other bad mojo are laying siege to the City of Angels. Hit the streets in a revolutionary hovercraft, walker, and all purpose justice dispenser. With ceramite armor, the latest plasma technology, and an awesome array of high-tech weapons, it’s like playing “good cop/bad cop” only without the good cop.

Gameplay

Future Cop is your standard above 3rd person perspective shoot’em up with some interesting twists that make for exciting gameplay. The coolest part of the gameplay I found to be the ability to change from a mech-like walker to a hovercraft and back. There are some situations where you have no choice but to only use one or the other (such as the hovercraft over water), but in most cases you can use the form of vehicle you feel most comfortable with. With either vehicle you have access to three different weapons out of a total of 15. One “Gun” weapon (such as a mini-gun or flamethrower), one “Heavy” weapon (such as missiles), and one “Special” weapon (such as mortars). Each of these weapons also has special weapon upgrades that you will find throughout the game.

Future Cop is really 2 games in one. Crime War and Precinct Assault. Crime War is really your standard shoot’em up setting, you go through 8 stages in L.A., each stage with it’s own bosses, sub-bosses, and puzzles to go through. 8 stages may not seem like a lot, but the stages are very long and no two look the same. In Crime War you can fight alone, or through split-screen, you and a friend can work cooperatively. Precinct Assault is a rather unique concept. Two teams go at it in a battle to invade each other’s bases. During the battle, each side can create automated weaponry (such as tanks and helicopters) and fight for control of the limited number of strategically placed turrets. You can play Precinct Assault with two players, or alone against the “Sky Captain”, an artificial intelligence.

Multiplayer is support in Future Cop as I already stated through split screen play, and also by Appletalk and TCP/IP. While network games are playable over a LAN, TCP/IP games require both players to have high speed Internet connection (sorry modem users).

Graphics and Sound

Future Cop supports 3D accelerators using 3Dfx or Rage chipsets. Although Future Cop also supports software rendering, I found the software mode (although it looks almost as good as 3D accelerated mode) to be a bit slow and chunky. With my Power3D card the graphics in Future Cop look marvelous, the enemies, and especially the smoke effects are very well done. But the best looking effects were the explosions. Future Cop is one of the few titles, if not the only title, that supports 800 by 600 resolution with the 4 megabyte Power3D card. Future Cop should look just as stunning if not more so on an iMac.

The ambient background music seemed to have struck just the right chord in me. I found the music to have the perfect balance of not leaving an empty void, without becoming totally annoying. On the sound effects side of the coin, I began to grow a little impatient with the sounds of crying civilians, maybe that was EA’s idea, make the civilians so annoying you have to kill them?

Interface/Difficulty

Future Cop has a nice mac friendly interface complete with all the standard dialogue boxes.

There are the three standard difficulty levels in FC, Easy, Medium, and Hard. The differences between the difficulty levels are very hard to notice without really trying to find them. In other words, on first glance all the difficulty levels seemed the same to me.

Bugs

I found Future Cop to be bug free.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Future Cop is one of the best games I’ve played in a long time. It’s definitely one of the best games of 98, if not the best! It’s low system requirements (compared to other recent 3D fare) and excellent price (19.95 at most outlets, I’ve seem it as low as 14.99 in some stores) make Future Cop a very attractive title. I strongly reccomend this game.

More Info

Minimum System Requirements

120 MHz or faster PowerMac
24 mb RAM

Recommended System

180 MHz or faster PowerMac
32 mb RAM
3D hardware acceleration

More information is avaliable at the official Future Cop web site at http://www.FutureCop.com/

Find a copy

Future Cop: L.A.P.D. has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Future Cop: L.A.P.D. on Amazon.

December 15, 1998

Starfleet Academy Mac Review (1998)

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From the archive: this review first ran on the Mac Gaming Alliance (MGA), the Mac games site that lived here on DimensionZ in the late 1990s. It was published October 1998 and is reproduced as originally written. More in the Mac Gaming Alliance archive.

Publisher	MacPlay
Tested on	Performa 5260/100 Mhz and a PowerMac 8600/300
Gameplay	5 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	5 / 5 apples
Interface	4 / 5 apples
Difficulty	4 / 5 apples
Bugs	4 / 5 apples
Overall	4 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	Jonathan Dreyer

Note:(Feb 2/98)

On my new PowerMac 8600/300 I can play SFA with all options and sounds on (i had to have VM on as I only have 32 megs of RAM) and it played great! Smooth as can be!

“Take a seat in the captain’s chair as the USS Enterprise warps into space. Starfleet Academy allows the player to command 4 Federation class ships in combat against thirty 3-D rendered space ships from a cloaked Klingon™ Bird of Prey™ to a Romulan™ heavy cruiser. Reprising their original STAR TREK roles, William Shatner as Captain Kirk, Walter Koenig as Commander Chekov and special appearance by George Takei as Captain Sulu appear in full-motion video and interact with the player as never before. A original music score by Ron Jones and the script-writing talents of Dan Greenberg, Andrew Greenberg, Bill Bridge, Sandy Fries, and Star Trek novelist Diane Carey make Starfleet Academy a truly galactic experience.” — Interplay PR

Gameplay

Starfleet Academy has an unusual interface. It successfully combines an adventure game with an action simulation. Before each mission you are usually presented with a video where at certain points you have to choose what your character says, these segments will greatly affect the outcome of the game so you must be very careful when you select. Following the the video segment is your mission, in each mission you will be given a list of objectives to complete before you head back to the Starbase. Sounds simple, yes? No, not only do you have to be a great combat pilot to complete the mission, you have to think like a Starfleet captain, starfleet’s orders are not always right, to complete the mission you have to find the right way to complete the objectives, you may have to take the mission a few times.

I suggest that you use a joystick for the combat simulation segments. The combat segments are usually very fast paced, you must react very quickly to defeat your foes. The key to winning in battles is setting your damage and energy levels for combat before you actually get into combat, to end your battles quickly give your phasers as much power as possible.

Interface

Although Starfleet Academy’s interface is very intuitive, I have one complaint: I can’t find one Mac-like dialog box anywhere in the game, it uses completely graphical buttons. Other than that, I loved the Interface.

Difficulty

SFA allows you to select from the standard 3 different difficulty settings. On the first difficulty setting, “Plebe”, you shouldn’t have any trouble completing the game, that’s why I strongly suggest that you play on the medium difficulty setting.

Bugs

I have only encountered one bug: in the second mission with you have voices turned off the game would crash. I promptly sent in e-mail to MacPlay’s tech support and received a reply 2 days later. To get around this bug they told me to turn on voices for just that level, and viola…

Conclusion

In conclusion, Starfleet Academy is a great game that will give you hours of enjoyment. I must note one caveat, the system requirements: they’re pretty hefty:

80 Mhz PowerPC or better
25 megabytes of RAM FREE

First of all, 80 Mhz doesn’t cut it. Anything less than about 180 Mhz will require you to turn down the graphic option. As for the RAM, the game will run with Virtual Memory or RAM Doubler activated but the video segments will be VERY choppy.

So I say, if your machine can run this game, you will love it even if you don’t like Star Trek.

Find a copy

Starfleet Academy has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Starfleet Academy on Amazon.

October 19, 1998

Starcraft Mac Review (1998)

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Publisher	Blizzard
Tested on	Power Mac 8600/300 w/32mb RAM
Gameplay	4 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	3 / 5 apples
Interface	4.5 / 5 apples
Difficulty	2.5 / 5 apples
Bugs	5 / 5 apples
Overall	3.5 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	Jonathan Dreyer

The Mac version of Starcraft suffered a great many set-backs during it’s port from the PC. It is a full year late from it’s originally scheduled release. Starcraft was plagued with bad luck and just as it looked like it was going to make the 98 holiday season, it was delayed again, bringing it to it’s March 99 final release. Starcraft, like it’s predecessors Warcraft, features stunning between level film sequences and challenging 2D gameplay.

Starcraft allows you to choose from three races, Human, Zerg, and Protoss. Each race has it’s own set of units and abilities. Starcraft utilizes the same gameplay style that Blizzard defined years earlier with the original Warcraft, you control everything. You have to tell the barracks to train more troops, and then you have to give those troops their orders. Like all strategy games of this type, it becomes difficulty to keep track of all your units when you have a particularly large base.

Starcraft also sports a more complete and complex storyline than the Warcraft series. It is set as a series of campaigns where you start as Human and end up as Protoss. You can’t move on to the Zerg campaign until you have completed the Human one. The Starcraft campaigns feature challenging missions too, not the usual “build up your base and annihilate the enemy” type mission common to most strategy games. There are complex missions when certain individual units must survive or you must steal computer files by sneaking in an enemy’s base. Those type of missions are certainly the most enjoyable.

Of course, the best part of Starcraft is the multiplayer system over Blizzard’s free Battle.Net servers. There are numerous Blizzard made and third-party maps available. Some maps are complex games within a game involving scoring points over a limited time period. Beating our PC brethren who have been playing for more than a year now is fun too. The Battle.net servers keep track of your wins and loses and there are also ladder events and tournaments in which you can win real prizes.

Graphics is an area where Starcraft suffers greatly. Sadly, in the time that it took them to port Starcraft, the 2D graphics have become almost antiquated in a market where most new strategy games are using 3D. Still, Starcraft’s graphics are for the most part bright well done. Had it been released on time last year, Starcraft would have scored 4 apples.

Starcraft’s interface is not lacking. It uses Apple’s inputsprockets to control two-button mice and gamepads, allowing iMac users to use their fancy USB muli-button mice. SC features all the important options boxes allowing the user to adjust things like sound effects volume, brightness, and even network options to prevent lag and slowdowns in muliplayer games.

You would expect from all the delays that when Starcraft finally did ship that it would be absolutly bug-free, and you would be right. Starcraft is, as far as I can tell, completly bug-free. I did not run across any problems over the many hours of reviewing.

In conclusion, Starcraft is an excellent strategy games that suffers unfairly because of it’s long delayed release. While no longer on the cutting edge, Starcraft is still a strong recommendation to buy. It offers great replayability throught the multiplayer aspect, and has challenging single-player campaigns to work your way through.

For even more screenshots, visit our earlier Starcraft Preview

Find a copy

Starcraft has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Starcraft on Amazon.

October 12, 1998

Flying Circus Mac Review (1998)

This post has affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more.

From the archive: this review first ran on the Mac Gaming Alliance (MGA), the Mac games site that lived here on DimensionZ in the late 1990s. It was published September 1998 and is reproduced as originally written, with the original screenshots (click to enlarge). More in the Mac Gaming Alliance archive.

Publisher	Bullseye Software
Tested on	PowerMac w/ Power3D card
Gameplay	3 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	4 / 5 apples
Interface	5 / 5 apples
Difficulty	3 / 5 apples
Bugs	5 / 5 apples
Overall	3.5 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	David Leinbach

Flying Circus is one of only two flight simulators available for the Macintosh that supports 3D hardware acceleration. Flying Circus is described as “Seat of the pants flying” with “no huge manual to get through” and “no weapons systems to memorize”.

Gameplay

Flying Circus lives up to it’s hype with fly by the seat of your pants gameplay style and simplistic controls. Unlike most modern flightsims which require the memorization of countless commands, FC is simply a fun flying game. With input sprocket you can use almost any joystick out there. It is basically point and shoot mindless flying.

There are four different aircraft to fly in FC: Sopwith Camel, S.E. 5a, Fokker Triplane, and Fokker D-VII. Each has it’s own cockpit graphics and flying style. One thing I did find annoying is the completely unrealistic physics, I was able to do a complete loop in each plane and also fly inverted for extended periods of time. The world in FC I found to be rather sparse, containing almost no civilian structures or background objects.

FC comes with only 20 missions, but also includes a mission editor to create countless more of your own, giving you almost unlimited replayability. The 20 included missions offer a wide variety of play.

Graphics and Sound

Being a 3D accelerated title, I was expecting graphics to rival that of at least Quake. I was sorely disappointed in the graphics in FC. Although when run with a 3D card the graphics are somewhat smooth, there are many jaggies and are no where near the quality of even Quake. The objects in the game seemed to lack color, most being only one shade. Balloons being the most annoying, they look like clouds when you see them in the distance. I would have hoped for a wider variety of color in FC.

There were very few sounds in FC, a lot of the sounds are recycled over and over again in different parts. There seemed to only be two or three different engine sounds, and all the guns sounded exactly alike. It also would have added a much needed atmosphere had there been more background music.

Interface and Difficulty

Donald A. Hill, the force behind FC, is a long-time Mac programmer and knows his stuff. All the expected Mac interface and dialogue boxes are present and the mini-manual built in to the game is a great feature.

The level of difficulty in FC seems very unbalanced in favor of the computer AI planes. Shots fired by me seem to do very little damage compared to when the AI planes hit me. Some of the later missions I found extraordinarily difficult.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Flying Circus is game with many faults, but it is still a fun game. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone looking for knock out graphics or the most in realism. The game is more suited to the novice flight enthusiast. Flying Circus has really wetted my appetite to see what Donald A. Hill and Bullseye Software bring out next!

Find a copy

Flying Circus has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Flying Circus on Amazon.

September 28, 1998

Unreal Mac Review (1998)

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Publisher	MacSoft
Tested on	Powermac G3 233 96 RAM
Gameplay	4.5 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	5 / 5 apples
Interface	5 / 5 apples
Difficulty	4 / 5 apples
Bugs	3 / 5 apples
Overall	4 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	Marty Dodge

Unreal, it came out on the PC months ago, set the PC world afire. Now it is out on the Mac, will it do the same? Easy this, of course it will, Unreal is simply the best 1st person shooter ever to appear on any platform. Sure it has some faults. This is the first and only game I have ever made a point to explore everything possible on my first time through. Even without a 3D card the game is stunning, absolutely stunning. It is the best looking game ever.

(Click on Picture to Expand)

Gameplay

The gameplay is linear and gets fairly repetitive after a while. Kill and hunt for buttons/levers/switches, but then again every game of this type basically boils down to these elements. The AI for the monsters is the best I have seen, they run around, hide and retreat when being pummelled in a one on one. Some of are even bright enough to engage in pretty impressive ambushes and pincer movements. The weaponry on the other hand, looks good but is a bit underpowered. Unreal has a candidate for most useless weapon in a game, the ASMD. Never depend on it, it is pretty useless. There also no, huge nasty weapon, pocket nuke variety. The RezorJack and the Eightball are the most useful and my favourites.

Unreal seems to me to have more replay value that most games of this ilk. There is suppose to be a Marathon TC for it soon, so the engine will be going for a long time methinks. Another reason that the game will be played over and over again is the fly cheat, this function allows you to fly around the level and see it in all its finery. Well worth it.

I am unable to play multiplayer because of a rubbish internet connection and few people I know have computers able to handle the monster that is Unreal.

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Graphics and Sound/Interface/Difficulty

Well there is not much one can say about either, other than wow. Nothing I have ever seen in any genre of game comes close to this. Nothing. There are places where things bleed into each other but that is rare. The music and visuals combine for an amazing ambience with is really apt to drag you in and leave you there. The interface is incredibly good and allows an amazing amount of feedback. While the mouse/keyboard combination is tricky to get used to, once it is mastered it provides incredible game play. Unreal will be a major time suck, even as a solo game.

The game is not hard to play once you master the controls and know what to look for. The lighting even on the brightest of settings can be hard to deal with at first. Underwater and dark areas are also hard on the eyes. The biggest frustration is jumping up on ledges and the like. One has to perfectly aligned is some cases, this can be a tad annoying. The fly function solves this when you get really bogged down. A two button mouse or joystick would help when it comes to secondary fire, which is control on the keyboard. I have actually been too lazy to find a better more suitable key.

Bugs

There are a few annoying ones. Two of the levels I have played, so far, have areas where loading/saving causes the game to crash. Oddly enough this is only an isolated problem. There is some lagging in some of the more crowded rooms as well. This still occurs despite the fact that I am giving the game 96 RAM to run with.

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Conclusion

Unreal is, well, unreal. It is an amazing game that has no competitors on the Mac. Its big problem is the fact that it requires so much powerful hardware. You cannot play this game is an reasonable fashion on anything less than a G3 with more than 96 RAM. The requirements are almost obscene. Saying that, Mark Adams and company have done a cracking job with this port. It was done quickly and well.

So basically if you really want to enjoy this game here is what you do: 1. Buy a G3 2. Get as much RAM as you can afford (96+) 3. Get a 3d Card 4. Get a cable modem or a ISDN line 5. get some rich friends who can get all of the above as well.

Find a copy

Unreal has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Unreal on Amazon.

September 21, 1998

Fallout Mac Review (1998)

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Publisher	MacPlay
Tested on	Performa 5260/100
Gameplay	5 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	5 / 5 apples
Interface	4 / 5 apples
Difficulty	5 / 5 apples
Bugs	4 / 5 apples
Overall	4.5 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	Jonathan Dreyer

You are a vault dweller, your vault is in trouble, their water chip is damaged and it’s up to you to go out into the post-nuclear wasteland and find a new one. Although Fallout is advertised a Role Playing Game, I found it to be more like a hybrid cross between an RPG and an Adventure game, not quite either…

Gameplay

Fallout is a very detailed and complex game. Your main quest is to find a new Water Chip for your vault but, in order to accomplish that there are numerous other mini-quests to accomplish. As you travel the wasteland you will come across many different towns or villages, each filled with different types of people, be it Merchants, Police Forces, Gangs, Ghouls, or maybe even some Super-Mutants. One of my favourite parts of the game is all the different weapons you can find, using a flame thrower and watching your enemies be incinerated, or use the laser rifle to slice your enemies in half. I also liked the turn-based combat, so for people like me whose reflexes aren’t the greatest still have a chance to kick some ass in combat!

Fallout is still mainly a RPG, you can create your own character or use one of the pre-made ones. As you advance in the game your character gains experience points and advances levels by destroying your enemies or completing mini-quests. As you advance your character’s level you are presented with choices of perks that allow your character to for example carry more weight or attack first in combat.

Graphics & Sound

The graphics in Fallout are good, not award winning good but still pretty good. I noticed that there were only a few actual “different” character graphics, like you see a guy with a red baseball hat in just about every town. Also, there were only a few different “town” graphic settings, just about all of the walls of just about all of the buildings were the same, I found it a little confusing to remember which building is which.

The sound effects in Fallout are great! It seemed to me that almost every different gun had a different sound effect. To get the best out of the game I recommend that you use stereo headphones or a good pair of stereo speakers, heck you should do that for EVERY game.

Interface

Fallout has a interesting interface, it does not use any of the “Mac” dialog boxes that we are all used to, instead Fallout seems to be completely Operating System independent. I read that Fallout was programed using a platform OS independent programming library. I really hope that more and more game companies will begin to follow Interplay’s example

Difficulty

Fallout isn’t that difficult, there are no really complex puzzles or anything but, there are a lot of quests to go through to complete the game. I played about 4 hours a day for just over 2 weeks to complete the game. So I’d estimate that this game would take the average person about 40 to 70 hours to complete but, believe me it’s time well spent.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I am glad to see such a high quality game make it to the Mac. I found Fallout to be one of the best games I’ve played all year. It has a complex and rich plot that should provide any normal person with hours of enjoyment.

Find a copy

Fallout has been out of print for years, but used copies of the original Mac release still turn up, and some classics have been re-released for modern systems. Search for Fallout on Amazon.

September 21, 1998