Unreal

Wrote this review a few years back but you can still try this game if you can lay your hands upon it.

As far as gaming is concerned, junta seem to conform to a flock mentality. They confine themselves to the same set of ubiquitous games instead of trying out new ones. I have come across gamers who give arguments like “Playing Quake III improves your reflexes” and “AOE has more strats than chess da” to justify their enslavement to these games. Other games on this list are Unreal Tournament (UT), FIFA etc. The gaming universe is huge and the variety of games available is prodigious. To confine oneself to a handful of games is, in my view, nothing short of criminal. To make sure that the guilty don’t plead ignorance, I dusted my stockpile and found a game which has been acknowledged as a classic everywhere but is largely unheard of here. I hope that this article will help remove the blinkers and the gaming scene will become much more diverse.

The game belongs to the popular first person shooter (FPS) genre. Admittedly this genre is overcrowded with below par games but this game stands above the rest. It is called Unreal and no, it is not the same as UT. It was after the stupendous success of Unreal that its multiplayer version was released as UT. The game is more than four years old, so it runs peacefully on low end systems ( like mine which is a PII, 350 MHz, 64 MB, 4 MB AGP). But that doesn’t reflect on its graphics which are comparable to the more recent pseud P4 level games. But the real pseudness lies not there but in the overall excellence of the game.

To start with the storyline is simple but not linear and forms the basis of the game. The game starts as you find yourself in the prison cell of a spaceship wrecked on an alien planet. As you explore the ship you find out how the crew was killed by aliens who are taking over the planet. You hear shouts and screams of people being killed but are helpless as you have no weapon. As you get out of the spaceship you get weapons and the real action starts.

There is only one word to describe the weapons – sexy. My favourite is the eight ball heat seeking rocket launcher which is very useful against fast moving enemies as the rockets follow them. The primary weapon, which is self energizing and upgradeable, is also novel. All weapons have a pseud secondary fire mode activated by a right click (this funda has since been cogged by many games) which gives more punch at the cost of extra ammo.

All the enemies/monsters/aliens have good AI and are difficult to kill. Even at the easiest level you will have to put strats to kill just the basic grunt. Unlike other FPS all aliens are not bad here. Some aliens called Nali priests help you and lead you to treasures if you save them from the bad aliens. The enemies are varied and different strats are needed for different creatures. Some of the ‘boss’ aliens are really good. The one I remember clearly is a huge Titan which chases you across a vast field throwing rocks at you. The strat there was to run between its legs and shoot it from behind. Of course it was not as easy at it sounds but it was fun none the less.

The art in this game is exemplary. The stage designs are complex and colourful. Underwater tunnels, concealed chambers, levers, push buttons etc have been extensively used to add to the complexity. The indoor lighting is eerie and adds to the feeling of impending danger. Each stage has a distinct feel to it and the outdoors are just out of this world (pun intended). Creatures resembling rabbit, mice, birds, fish and plants swarm over the alien landscape. Not all of them are there just for the effect. Some birds attack you and some fish can bite you to death while the berries of a certain plant have healing properties. The landscapes themselves are beautifully sculpted and are diverse with hills, valleys, streams and waterfalls.

But if I had to point one thing which makes this game stand out, it would be the music. The music is not arbit and changes with the situation. For example if you are just exploring a vast open area the music would be slow and soothing, but suddenly as an alien appears and attacks you the music will become loud and pacy adding to the shock. In fact there are a number of such ‘shocks’ in the game, where the lighting and the music give an effect which can scare the wits out of the most hardcore of gamers.

Most of what I’ve written above would be inconsequential for the casual gamer. The most important thing for him would be the gameplay (the way or method to play the game). Unreal was among the first games to use the keyboard and mouse combination for movement and shooting control. This interface is now universally accepted as the best for FPS games. Weapon reloading is automatic and other actions such as jumping and crouching can be performed using the keyboard. Although combat is the basic element in the game but exploration, path finding and puzzle solving also form a large chunk. There are some stages without any enemies where you will need logic and navigational skills to get through.

Viewed in comparison with today’s games Unreal lags behind a little in graphics and detail and the multiplayer mode is grossly inadequate. But it more than makes up for it in the pure enjoyment you get out of playing it. No other game in its genre, other than Half Life, comes close to it in overall gaming satisfaction. The game is not easy and you will need to save often, but it is this difficulty that is half the fun. If you can keep yourself from using cheats, I have no doubt that you will have great fun plotting the death of each enemy, exploring alien landscape and saving a planet from destruction.

Civilization III

‘Will the real strat game please stand up?’ The gaming world stands divided into those who consider turn based strategy (TBS) games to be the real thing and those who take the side of real time strategy (RTS) games. I firmly belong to the TBS camp but if you are one of those who never care to look beyond AoE, then you are not qualified enough to have an opinion. Well, it’s never too late to start and what better a game to get initiated into the TBS genre than the third edition of the classic Civilization series.

First let me explain the jargon. RTS is the genre of games which includes your regular strat games like the AoE series, Warcraft, C&C etc. Here time is a crucial factor and your success in these games is determined by how quickly you gather resources, erect buildings or mobilize your units. A TBS game, on the other hand, takes time out of the equation and your success depends on how you plan and strategise rather than how fast you move your fingers. Civ III is one of the flagships of this genre along with Age of Wonders II.

In Civ III, as in most turn based games, players take turns to move their units on a map which is essentially a grid of a huge number of squares. It may sound like there are similarities between Civ III and a primitive game called Chess. But in comparison with Civ III that is what Chess is, primitive. Not convinced? Read on.

You are the leader of one of the many (16 if I remember correctly) civilizations, such as Gandhi for India and Lincoln for America, and your task is to lead your people to form a great civilization which dominates the world (much like the U.S. today). This is done by building and managing cities, building military units, expanding your culture, capturing territories, forging diplomatic ties, conducting trade and even by exploring space. Getting the picture?

Of the various aspects of the game the most important and interesting is city management. You start the game with a settler and a worker. The settler is used to build a city (the cities have the names of actual cities of those civilizations) and the worker is used to improve the terrain around the city to increase the yield of the three main resources - food, shields and commerce. Food results in the addition of new citizens to the city. Shields are used to build military units or city improvements. The more the number of shields produced the less number of turns it will take to build an improvement. The improvements range from temples and granaries in the starting age to SAM sites and research labs in the modern age. Commerce yields gold which is spent on research, entertainment and imports and is also lost through corruption. As the number of cities grows you can turn over management of the less important cities to the respective governors (i.e. the computer) thus eliminating the need for micromanagement.

The universal parameter used to rate a strategy game is the number of military units it has and Civ III has a whole cornucopia of them. In the starting age you have the standard warriors, archers and the like. But the party really hots up in the modern age with fighter jets, nuclear submarines, tanks, ICBMs and yes, tactical nukes. There are four main parameters of a unit – its attack strength, defense strength, number of moves it can make in one turn and its experience which directly reflects upon the hit points. Each civilization has its own special unit like the War Elephant for India and the F-15 for America. As with everything else in this game the combat has various strats and fundaes like defensive artillery fire, amphibious combat, retreats, air superiority, bombing raids, cutting off transport links, espionage etc. I can’t explain all of them here but I can tell you that it is a lot of fun.

In the game you have six advisers to help you with your domestic, trade, foreign, culture, military and research work respectively. As cities grow they accumulate culture due to the presence of colosseums, cathedrals etc. Culture is important because if a neighbouring foreign city has much less culture then its citizens may decide to oust their governor and join your civilization. Unlike most strat games the research in Civ III does not meander but has choke points which give you the option to linger on in one age to explore all possible advances or to move on to the next of the four ages. Other than the three basic ones, there are numerous other resources scattered on the map. These include industrial resources such as iron, oil etc which can be used for military purposes and luxuries like ivory, spices etc. which increase the happiness level of your citizens. These resources can be traded with other countries by road, rail or sea. Trade and diplomacy are closely linked in the game and you can trade maps and diplomatic treaties along with resources, technologies and of course, gold.

For me the highlight of the game is how it mimics the real world. As you advance through the ages and newer resources like iron, coal, oil and then uranium are discovered the geopolitical shape of the world changes accordingly. For example, you have researched the technology for tanks but to make them you need oil which does not occur in your territory. So you either set up a trade agreement with a country which has oil or you go ahead (a la Dubya) and capture a city which has oil (for this, of course, you will have to declare war on that country). The diplomacy is very realistic and agreements like free passage and mutual protection have to be negotiated thoughtfully. One of the modes of victory is a diplomatic victory where you are elected the president of the U.N. if you have good relations with most countries. Another mode of victory is the Space Race victory where you win if you manage to assemble and launch a spaceship to colonize Alpha Centauri. Another funda which I discovered while playing the game was that if you start using nuclear weapons the rest of the world will group up against you. So nukes are of more use as deterrents than as actual weapons.

I confess to being a sucker for games with hazaar fundaes and if you are on the same boat then Civ III is the game for you. The number of fundaes in this game is so huge that there is an in-game help file called the Civilopaedia where you can look up info. I’ll put down some of my favourite ones here.

As you advance through the ages and build more industrial improvements your cities start being struck by pollution which stops all yield from the affected square and has to be cleared out by workers.

You can research and implement various types of governments like democracy, communism etc each having its own benefits and losses and each change in government being preceded by a period of anarchy where all production and research stops.

If the number of unhappy citizens in any city is higher than happy ones then the city descends into civil disorder stopping all work in the city. Citizens’ happiness is determined by the number of entertainers in the city and the number of luxury goods available.

If the people are happy with your governance they will build a palace for you which you can then expand using a mixture of five different architectural styles.

And yes, there are scores of Wonders which can be built in cities. Each Wonder has its own advantages and as only one of each kind can be built there is a race between civilizations to build each one first. For example building the Pyramids provides all your cities with a granary and building the U.N. allows you to hold the elections. Well, I can go on and on like this but I’ll let you discover the other for yourself.

The A.I. in the game is pseud and it takes you some time to master all the fundaes and take on the higher difficulty levels. The interface is simple and intuitive and the graphics are above average. The view is the traditional isometric one and although a ‘zoom to city’ option is provided, it looses its novelty after some time. The animations of the leaders, the advisors and the troops are good and occasionally funny. The only drawback of the game is the aimless patrolling and unit movement done by the computer which takes up a lot of time. The multiplayer mode is good and only if the game had a campaign to go along with the normal mode it would have been miles ahead of the nearest competition. Nevertheless, Civ III is the best strategy game I have ever played (and I have played quite a number of them) and would recommend it with the warning – highly addictive.

Are you game?

You will probably know that Age of empires is not a chapter in a history text book and Quake is not what struck Bhuj. For the new generation playing chess or carom as indoor games is passé. CG’s (computer games) are the “in” thing. CG fever is spreading like wild fire. Let’s explore the fascinating world of CG’s which have become a passion, an addiction for Gen X.

Computer games have their roots in arcade and video games (remember Pacman and Mario). With the emergence of the PC, computers found their way into people’s homes. The first CG’s were extremely simple games like Ping Pong and Nibbles (quite similar to the snake game found on cell phones). As the number crunching power and video quality of computers increased the games advanced to the next level along with the introduction of the color monitor. The faster the processors that the manufacturers unleashed the better the quality and complexity of the games became. Game design and production has now become a massive industry in itself churning out one game after another to keep the millions of gamers across the globe glued to their monitors.

Games can be classified into a number of different categories.

FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS (FPS): As the name suggests, these are games in which you are given guns and ammunition and enemies/monsters to shoot at, which of course results in devastating action and carnage. The earliest games in this category were Wolfenstein, Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem etc. The new ones which are popular here are Half Life, Quake III, Unreal Tournament … the list is hajaar long.

ROLE PLAYING GAMES (RPG): If you’ve ever seen a voluptuous, heavily armed female running about inside a computer screen, in all probability she is Lara Croft whose role you get to play in world’s most popular series of RPG’s – Tomb Raider(I-V). You get to control her movements and actions. You can make her run, jump, climb, duck, shoot etc. (I only wish they had included ‘strip’… alas!). Other RPG’s are Diablo I &II, the Final Fantasy series etc.

RACING GAMES: If there is any one category of games which can be played successfully by a complete beginner, it is racing. If you like to have pure fun without disturbing any of your ‘little grey cells’ then these are the games for you. Road Rash, Moto Racer I &II, Need for Speed (NFS I-V), Test Drive (1-6) are some of the popular racing games.

SPORTS SIMULATIONS: Many computer games seek to simulate actual sports on your PC’s. Be it cricket (ICC cricket), footer (FIFA), baski (NBA), ice hockey (NHL) or even wrestling (WWF smackdown, WCW nitro) they’ve got it all. It’s rumored that the VHP plans to launch ‘Kabaddi 2003’ next.

FLIGHT SIMULATIONS: These games use the computer’s processing power to simulate the flight of air planes and helicopters by putting you in the pilot’s seat.

Some games like Microsoft Flight Simulator come very close to the real thing while others like F22, Israeli Air Force and Apache are pure combat fun with cannons, missiles and bombs.

STRATEGY: Finally we come to the category which is my favorite (and believe me, I am not alone). This category of games does not require you to just press the right key at the right time but to think and plan. Strategy games enclose within themselves a wide variety of games. They are basically of two types –Turn based strategy (TBS) like Civilization (I-III) and the more popular Real time strategy (RTS) games. The hugely popular Age of Empires comes into the RTS category .Strategy games range from building cities (Simcity series, Caeser (I-III)), theme parks (Simtheme park, Rollercoaster Tycoon),controlling empires (Empire Earth, Age of Empires/Kings/Mythology), colonizing planets( Starcraft ,Homeworld I –II) to playing God(Black And White) and controlling people’s lives (The Sims Series).

We’ve also got some pseud games which are hybrids between two or more categories like Hitman I&II, C&C Renegade, Carmageddon I&II, Die Hard Trilogy etc.

Now that you’ve got the jargon and the fundaes you can check out the latest on gaming at sites like gamespot.com and cgonline.com. HAPPY GAMING!!!