Your Rating for Unreal: (214 votes, average: 95.61/100) Loading ...
Overview
You wake up, dazed and injured in the wreckage of the prison frigate that had been taking you on what for all intents and purposes was a one-way trip. As you try to make your way out of the twisted corridors, you fight your way through billowing steam venting from broken pipes, stumble to keep your balance as the settling wreckage groans and crumbles around you, and all the while desperately search for a weapon or even some bandages to bind up your wounds. Then, you hear voices from beyond a door that appears to have been welded shut in the crash. Unfortunately, the voices you hear are begging for mercy. Several flashes paint the floor orange and yellow, a scream echoes from beyond the door, and something thuds against the metallic wall on the other side. Eventually you find a way to pry the door open, only to find a scene of carnage, severed limbs, and blood everywhere, but no one left alive – no one except for the bent shape that howls and leaps away into the shadows as you enter. And it only gets worse from there.
Unreal, the excellent old first-person shooter from Epic, unleashed what, honestly, was a new level of gameplay and quality in this genre. The graphics are stunning – the first real mix of Tomb Raider style graphics with Quake 2 style gameplay, but in an environment that outclasses them both, plus adds in a masterful mix of puzzle elements, intriguing storyline, and an ambience of the best adventure games.
All of this is a pleasant surprise in a class of games that is so often over-hyped only to check in with another mediocre Doom update five years too late. Add to this the fact that this game was so ruthlessly slammed as vaporware on all the newsgroups when its ship slipped several times, and you have what amounts to a huge vindication of Epic’s commitment to putting out a quality game that breaks the mold of what has gone before.
This is a real-time strategy game like Age of Empires, Command & Conquer and some of the other titles, such as the Warcraft series, that Blizzard has produced. You play one of 3 races: the humanoid Terrans, the bug-like Zerg or the reptilian Protoss. Each race has its own advantages, with unique units, graphics and personality. There’s actually a fairly well-developed storyline for the game in the players’ guide, with histories of each race and run-downs of the characters you’ll encounter in the campaigns. The setting is 24th-Century futuristic, after Earth citizens have burned themselves out and have migrated to other parts of the galaxy. They run into the Zerg and the Protoss while fighting for planetary dominance on the Galactic Rim.
Your Rating for Snowmobile Racing: (179 votes, average: 82.68/100) Loading ...
Overview
Merry Christmas! Strap on your goggles and open the throttle — Snowmobile Racing brings high-speed snowmobile racing to the PC. This new release from Second South Studios lets you rev up one of five different high-performance sleds and go screaming across the frozen wilderness. While its straightforward approach may not come up to the demanding standards of fans of top-end racing games like Need For Speed III, Snowmobile Racing does provide simple, easy-to-use controls and fast, fun gameplay.
Gameplay, Controls, Interface
This is one of the easiest games to play that I’ve seen in a long time. The sled controls are simple enough for anyone to play, even younger kids. After selecting your sled and track, you take off for five laps around one of four tracks ranging from Iowa Farm Fields to a twisting race through Yellowstone Park. More tracks would have been nice, but the four available do provide a good balance of difficulty. There are five snowmobiles to choose from, including the ultimate snow racing machine — the GOAT Highmark. There’s also a hidden sixth vehicle to race — click on the small red ATV in the background of the sled selection screen to tear up the snow on four wheels. You can opt to race alone or race against four computer opponents. At the hardest setting, even experienced racers will find it challenging to beat the computer racers around the more difficult tracks.
Your Rating for X-Men: Mutant Academy: (218 votes, average: 76.61/100) Loading ...
Overview
The X-Men. From comic books to the big screen, these larger than life heroes have been a part of our popular culture for nearly 40 years. A band of mutants led by the pacifistic Charles Xavier (Professor X), the X-Men fight against anti-mutant hysteria and all other forms of racial prejudice.
Mutants, the next evolution of humanity, are appearing everywhere, as human beings express their latent genetic potential. These gifted beings have unique abilities, essentially superpowers, that allow them to perform astounding feats.
Although the X-Men fight prejudice and the trouble it causes, they are not alone among mutantkind. There is another team, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, who seek to raise mutants above humans and usher in a new age of mutant supremacy. The Brotherhood is led by the evil Magneto, a former associate of Professor X. Like all good comic book heroes, the X-Men oppose the Brotherhood and seek to integrate mutantkind and humanity, and prevent a war between them.
Thus is the story set for X-Men: Mutant Academy, where you can play many different heroes and villains from the X-Men comic series. From Cyclops, a mutant that can project energy beams from his eyes, to Magneto, the Master of Magnetism, there are twelve different characters to play. Graduate from the Academy and you might prove your skills as an X-Man. Defeat the Brotherhood and you’ll prove your skills as a hero.
Your Rating for SimCity 3000: (67 votes, average: 94.63/100) Loading ...
Overview
One of the best in the SimCity series, SimCity 3000 (SC3K) is a very grown-up version of the game with tons of features and a glossy look. One of the best improvements of the franchise is the huge library of actual landmarks included with the game (with more available for download.) It’s kind of cool to have a simple one-horse town with the Arc de Triomphe sitting in the middle of it.
Gameplay, Controls, Interface
The control panel has been completely revamped from the preceding version, with an RTS-style playing field surrounded by controls. You also now have a ticker across the bottom of your screen with news and advice from your various advisors, instead of having to monitor the newspaper as in SimCity 2000 (SC2K). Access to charts, maps and graphs is much easier, too. The game speed is easier to control, as each time you load a city you start out in pause mode, and the various speeds aren’t so hugely different from what they were before.
You can even load in cities from SC2K, though there are some things that have been changed that will make them rather different in this version. Otherwise, the basic gameplay is the same as always and most of the strategies you’re familiar with for building cities before will work here. The biggest problem in SC3K was dealing with traffic congestion…
Your Rating for Star Wars Rebellion: (157 votes, average: 82.17/100) Loading ...
Overview
Discover a planet, send a reconnaissance Y-wing to check it out, send in the troops to take it over, then build some construction facilities, mines, refineries, training facilities, and orbital shipyards that will cater to your every whim to increase the forces in your army. Star Wars Rebellion (which was billed as Star Wars Supremacy in the United Kingdom) is a real-time grand strategy game that will have you managing everything from mining resources to recruiting missions to launching full scale assaults on enemy planets in an attempt to take control of the galaxy!
Gameplay, Controls, Interface
The game starts with some wonderful cinematic sequences in the tradition of all Star Wars movies to date. It then puts you in the cockpit of a shuttle where you must make the decision to command either the Rebel Alliance or the Empire. Once a side is chosen, you will be taken to your Command Center where you will be briefed by your protocol droid (C3P0 if you are commanding the Alliance or IMP-22 if commanding the Empire) about the current situation and, more importantly, about the Galactic Information Display (GID). This old real-time game is divided into two modes: strategy and tactical. It begins with the strategy mode.
Your Rating for Psygnosis’ Formula 1: (15 votes, average: 94.67/100) Loading ...
Overview
Formula 1 is Psygnosis’ entry into Grand Prix simulation racing on the PC. How does it fare compared to the likes of Grand Prix II and Indy Car Racing II? Despite one major annoyance and one major omission, it’s not all that bad. You get 17 tracks fully modeled after real world circuits, 35 drivers, and 13 teams also modeled after the real thing. Among the 17 circuits you will find enough variety, including track layouts for racing, and different surroundings for scenery, to keep you from getting bored of this title any time soon. You also get to choose between Arcade mode and Grand Prix mode with various levels of reality (difficulty) to choose from. You can go for a quick race, a full-blown Season of 17 races, or a "Ladder" option which puts you up against one other car for a series of 12 rounds. For a single race, you can select whether you race against one car or the full set. The one major omission in Formula 1 is multiplayer support. The odd thing is that when you are selecting your options for your race, the screen titles state "Single Player Race" as if there is a multiplayer option.
Your Rating for Duke Nukem Zero Hour: (22 votes, average: 80.00/100) Loading ...
Overview
This day has been a long time in coming. I have been sitting by waiting for the arrival of my all-time hero and his latest N64 exclusive adventure. It seems like it has been an eternity, but my wait is finally over. I now have the chance to control the world’s biggest badass to save humanity in the past, present and future. What a great day this is.
Duke Nukem Zero Hour sends our hero on a mission back in time, through the present day and into the future in an attempt to save humanity and, more importantly, babes. There is plenty of pig blasting, lizard splattering and smart-ass commentary to put this game up there with the best of the past Duke efforts. Unfortunately, there are some issues that will keep this game from reaching the heights that it should have reached. Most of the pieces were in place, but the missing pieces may keep anyone but die-hard Duke lovers from ever making it through this game.
Your Rating for Amerzone: (44 votes, average: 78.18/100) Loading ...
Overview
Comic author Benoît Sokal is revered in his native France and throughout Europe, but is not well known in the United States. Amerzone: The Explorer’s Legacy hopes to change that. A new game billed as a graphic adventure and distributed by Ubi Soft, Amerzone is almost totally Sokal’s brainchild. It begins on the cold, gray Brittany coast and ends in the fictitious South American country of Amerzone, a lush tropical paradise ruled by a tin-pot dictator.
You play the game as a journalist (is it just me, or is the journalist character becoming ubiquitous in adventure games?) who has come to interview Professor Alexandre Valembois. In the 1930s, Prof. Valembois made a journey to Amerzone and discovered the existence of some white birds, once thought to be mythological, which spend their entire lives in flight. While there, he stole the only egg of the white birds and returned with it to France, only to be mocked and discredited by his peers. When you find him, Prof. Valembois is a broken man, sick, feeble and near death. He begs you to take the egg and return to Amerzone in his stead, to right the wrong he feels he has caused.
Your Bug’s Life Rating: (10 votes, average: 68.00/100) Loading ...
Overview
Hit movies always lead to hit games. Wouldn’t it be great if that were the rule? Usually the opposite is true. Having an existing intellectual property that sells is usually a license to throw a pile of dung inside the wrapper. A Bug’s Life is actually only a few marks shy of a very good game.
Gameplay
A Bug’s Life is a comic action game with different goals in each of 15 levels. Most of the goals deal with getting Flik to do events that match the storyline of the movie. When you finish a level, you earn the right to go to the next level. Each new level starts with a new short animation from the movie. If you collect all of the bonus items in a level you get a bonus movie. Bonus items include 50 pieces of grain, four letters that spell F-L-I-K and permanently finishing off each enemy bug. To guide you through levels there are little floating telescopes that will show you areas you want to make it to.
(214 votes, average: 95.61/100)
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( 72/100 ) 
(179 votes, average: 82.68/100)
