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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 January 1998 and is reproduced as originally written. More in the Mac Gaming Alliance archive.

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

X-Men: Ravages of the Apocalypse is the prefect add-on to Quake, it adds what Quake lacks, a PLOT! This is a TOTAL conversion for Quake, that means that everything is new, all-new weapons, sound effects, music, and enemies

Gameplay

As I mentioned, this game has a plot, a rather complex one at that. The Evil Apocalypse has cloned the X-Men into his own personal army for world domination. Where do you come into this? Magneto, while no friend of the X-Men, created you, an advanced cyborg to thwart Apocalypse’s evil plans. As a cyborg, your forearms morph into 7 all-new advanced weapons to be used against the sinister X-Clones. There are 12 different X-Men will be fighting, Archangel, Beast, Bishop, Cannonball, Cyclops, Gambit, Iceman, Phoenix, Psylocke, Rogue, Storm, and Wolverine. Of course all the X-Clones have their powerful mutant powers to use against you, i.e. when fighting Wolverine make sure that he is REALLY dead, otherwise his mutant healing factor will bring him back to surprise you.

There are 18 levels in Ravages, each one is unique with it’s own puzzles and setting. There’s a real plot to follow and goals to achieve in every level.

Without a doubt, multiplayer X-Men is WAY better than plain old multiplayer Quake. In Multiplayer X-Men you can play any of the 12 X-Men and use their unique mutant powers. You can have multiplayer games with players just using their mutant powers and no guns to find out which X-Man/Woman is really the most powerful.

Screen shots

320 by 240 Pixel Doubled

640 by 480

3Dfx Enhanced

Graphics & Sound

Coming into this, I had very high standards for the graphics in this game. I can honestly say that this surpassed even my highest expectations. In pixel doubled mode, the graphics were blocky but, in regular 640 by 480, the graphics were wonderful. The real beauty is in the 3Dfx accelerated edition, what can I say except “Absolutely Beautiful!”. For your own comparison, check out my screen shots to the left, they’re all of the same scene in the different resolutions.

The music on the X-Men CD is perfect for the game, it adds just the right amount of atmosphere in. For me, the game just doesn’t seem right without this music. Sound effects for all the weapons are majestic, I’ve been reading the X-Men comics for about 4 years and the sounds in this game were just as I had always imagined them.

Interface
To play X-Men: Ravages of the Apocalypse, you launch a front-end application from which you can start a new game, start a multiplayer game, load an old game, view a cool comic-book style animated intro, and even enter in some extra “command-line parameters”. This is the first official product by the powerhouse mac porting company, Westlake Interactive, programmers from Westlake are responsible for such great Mac ports as Duke Nukem 3D, and Shadow Warrior so they knew what they were doing.

Difficulty

I have no qualms about the difficulty of X-Men, in fact I found it to be just the right balance of difficulty, a much better balance than Duke Nukem or even Normal Quake.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I found X-Men: Ravages of the Apocalypse to be the perfect add-on to Quake, I think that every Quake player out there should rush and get a copy of this! This one of the very few games that if I had a chance to remake it it, I would NOT change a thing! This is a must buy! I can not recommend this enough…

Find a copy

X-Men: Ravages of the Apocalypse 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 X-Men: Ravages of the Apocalypse on Amazon.

Ratings use the MGA’s original 1–5 apple scale. Prices, system requirements and web links in this review are from the time it was written.

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 around 1998 and is reproduced as originally written. More in the Mac Gaming Alliance archive.

Publisher	MacSoft
Tested on	Performa 5260/100 Mhz
Gameplay	5 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	4 / 5 apples
Interface	5 / 5 apples
Difficulty	4 / 5 apples
Bugs	3 / 5 apples
Overall	4 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	Jonathan Dreyer

Lo Wang. Master ninja assassin for 20 years. A shadow warrior. Shadow warriors are the best of the best, and Lo Wang was the best of the shadow warriors. Every top company in Japan had a shadow warrior… a protector, a negotiator, a cleaner.

Lo Wang worked for Zilla Enterprises, a conglomerate with control in every major industry. Too much control. Power corrupts, and Master Zilla’s corporation was corrupted to the core.

Lo Wang discovered Master Zilla’s demonic scheme to rule Japan, using creatures summoned from the dark side. A man of honor, Lo Wang quit. But one as powerful as Wang either must be on your side, or no one’s side. Master Zilla unleashes his creatures for their first test: to kill a single man, a shadow warrior… Lo Wang.

Gameplay

I am completely sure that everyone knows how a 3D first-person shooter works so… Shadow Warrior is by the creators of Duke Nukem and was ported to the Macintosh by the same man who ported Duke, the infamous Mark Adams. Shadow Warrior is based on the Duke Nukem engine but with many more graphics. The increased number of graphics is why Shadow Warrior will run slower than Duke on the same machine.

Let’s go over Lo Wangs arrsenal, which includes his Fists of Fury, his Katana sword, shuriken throwing stars, riot gun (quad-barrel shotgun), an UZI or two, a triple mode rocket launcher, grenade launcher, mines that will stick to absolutly anything, a really cool rail gun, and 2 mystery weapons; a “Gaurdian Head” and “Ripper Heart”. Items at Lo Wang’s disposal include gas bombs, smoke bombs, flash bombs, caltrops (small razors that sit on the floor), night vision goggles, and a tool kit which allows you to repair damaged vehicles like tanks, forklifts or other broken machinery.

The settings in Shadow Warrior are much more interesting than Duke’s, whether it be on a boat, train, or controling a a mechanical gun…

Interface

I give kudos to Mark Adams for, as usual, adding all Mac interface preferences control boxes. Most ports will usually leave the PC-like internal graphical control boxes.

Difficulty

Shadow Warrior is no more difficult than any other first-person shooter, it’s mostly just shoot everyone and keep going. As in most games Shadow Warrior includes the required 4 difficulty settings.

Bugs

I’m sad to say that I found Shadow Warrior unusually troublesome. A few times the game would freeze up just after launching, or every time I tried to change the sound and music setting and restart the game would crash. I eventually worked around those problems and was able to play the game.

Conclusion

In my opinion Shadow Warrior is a very decent first-person shooter although it’s nothing to get really excited about, also consider that there have been 3 first-person shooters released in the last while just by MacSoft.

If you can’t get enough first-person shooters to please you, go for this game, but if you’re becoming tired of these sorts of games maybe you should keep browsing when you’re in your favorite Mac store.

Find a copy

Shadow Warrior 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 Shadow Warrior on Amazon.

Ratings use the MGA’s original 1–5 apple scale. Prices, system requirements and web links in this review are from the time it was written.

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 around 1998 and is reproduced as originally written. More in the Mac Gaming Alliance archive.

Publisher	MacSoft
Tested on	Power Macintosh 6100/66
Gameplay	5 / 5 apples
Graphics & Sound	5 / 5 apples
Interface	5 / 5 apples
Difficulty	3 / 5 apples
Bugs	3 / 5 apples
Overall	4 / 5 apples
Reviewed by	Jon Ostenson

You, an ex-Secret Service agent, are called one night by a close friend, Cathryn Mayfield, a U.S. Senator. She tells you about some mysterious goings-on in her office building and asks you to come. When you arrive, you find her brutally murdered, and the building where she worked crawling with suspicious and hostile men. Finding her murderers and exposing their vile plan will thrust you headlong into a world of political intrigue, backstabbing, and mystery.

Gameplay & Interface
While Prime Target employs Bungie’s Marathon engine to provide a 3D first-person shoot-em-up, this game has evolved into something different. Prime Target is meant to be as much a murder mystery as it is a kill fest (although there’s enough killing in this game to satisfy anybody). While, as in other games of this like, you will gather new weapons and ammo along the way, you’ll also pick up clues (mainly in the form of emails and memos) that truly will guide you through your exploration and will ultimately lead you to the game’s resolution. I felt this to be an interesting twist to this genre, and liked it quite a bit. MacSoft has created a pretty interesting plot that seems disturbingly similar to many thrown at us from the page’s of today’s newspapers, but if you’re not interested in it you can still complete the game using simple, brute force.

Prime Target takes place in Washington, D.C., and MacSoft has done a wonderful job of working popular historical buildings into the game. You’ll fight through the Senate office buildings, the Capitol, various National Musems, and even the subways and tunnels between buildings. Because of MacSoft’s attention to realism and detail in designing the maps to accurately portray these famous buildings, you won’t find the same types of puzzles in this game as you would in a Marathon or Doom game; there are no rising platforms or hidden switches here (in fact, you won’t even have to find any secret doors to solve this game, even though they do exist). To compensate for this, Prime Target has the mystery and clues already mentioned, but that alone wouldn’t be enough to replace challenging puzzles–there’s much more to this game. The level layout is such that you really feel a realistic sense of place, and that adds a lot more than you might think. In addition, MacSoft has cunningly placed enemies so that ambushes are a constant threat. There are also some very wide-open areas in these buildings that can make you just as nervous and wary as the crowded exhibition halls of a musem; it’s hard to find a place to hide from hostile fire when you standing in the middle of a rotunda.

Prime Target also features a non-linear game play; just because you finish scouring the Senate office buildings, for example, doesn’t mean you’ll come back for more later. In fact, in order to complete the game you’ll have to traverse a few levels more than once. Progression from level to levle (or building to building) takes place via an old standby–access cards. You’ll usually need at least two access cards to move on to the next level, and there’s plenty of badguys to slaughter along the way. On at least one occasion, though, I thought for sure that the level designers had made a critical mistake in placing these access cards that was preventing me from finishing the game. All I needed, though, was a bit of creative thinking (you’ll understand what I mean when you get there).

The interface is almost exactly like Bungie’s, except that you are allowed to crouch and jump in Prime Target. The on-screen stats are also different and take a bit of getting used to (I was never sure which figure represented my health and which my armor), but it isn’t difficult.

Difficulty & Replayability
I played Prime Target all the way through on the “Fish in a Barrel” difficulty level (the easiest–yeah, I know, but I had to finish it quickly!). Prime Target, like the Marathon games, offers various levels of difficulty, and easiest isn’t necessarily all that easy. There are some pretty tough thugs in this game, and it’ll take a lot of time and experimentation to figure out how to go about eliminating the worst of them. For the most part, the levels were pretty straightforward and not difficult to solve. There are a few areas, though, where you’re required to use some ingenuity to move beyond what appears to be a stopping point. It didn’t take me as long to finish Prime Target as it did the first Marathon game, but I was just as addicted and obsessed with finishing it.

Prime Target allows for network play and includes some network maps (an Ethernet network is recommended). MacSoft even has a net-only version of the game that’s freely downloadable from their web site. All you need is one registered, full-version CD to gather a network game. But those of you without access to an Ethernet network are pretty much out of luck. And, unfortunately, there’s no map editor or anything like that available for Prime Target, so there won’t be any other solo levels out there to play. And as far as replaying the game on different skill levels goes, I’m not sure that it would hold that much for the player that’s already been through the gauntlet of levels.

Graphics & Sound
Prime Target’s graphics are very nice. The textures used to depict the building’s are realistic and believable. It’s a pretty neat feeling to step into the room where the House meets and slaughter a few badguys, then push the congressmen’s chairs all over the place. Even the museums include realistic textures that, although they do repeat themselves, add a lot to the feel of the game.

Usually I turn the soundtrack off on games, since it becomes annoying after a while. Prime Target was the exception, though; this soundtrack sounds straight off a movie, and playing it while your cruising through the tunnels linking buildings makes you feel like you really are in a movie.

Bugs
This was a dissapointing area of the game for me. First of all, if you play Prime Target, make sure you’ve updated the game to version 1.2 (updaters are available from MacSoft’s web site); you won’t get far at all in the game without this update. Even so, there were a few areas where textures were not completely erased, and my movements left ugly trails that usually then crashed my machine (there’s one area like this right towards the very end of the game!). There was also one point in particular where, no matter what I tried, I couldn’t go in a certain direction without crashing. I’ve emailed MacSoft’s techinical support about these bugs but have received no answer. Nonetheless, the game can still be completed despite these bugs, although it does detract a bit from gameplay.

Conclusion
All things considered, Prime Target is an excellent game. MacSoft has made some much-needed improvements to Bungie’s engine that make this an enjoyable game to play. The attention to detail and realism evident in the game is also wonderful, and truly adds a lot to gameplay. Unfortunately, once you play the game I think you’ll find that’s about all there is to it. That one play, though, is definitely worth it.

Find a copy

Prime Target 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 Prime Target on Amazon.

Ratings use the MGA’s original 1–5 apple scale. Prices, system requirements and web links in this review are from the time it was written.