Grand Theft Auto - PC

"See what that bitch is up to."

You are a criminal. Don't deny it, you know it is true. Every time you break the speed limit, drive after a couple beers, copy a movie, steal cable, rip that little tag off the furniture, or lie to the credit card company (I swear I sent the check), you are committing crimes. Face it, we're all criminals to some degree or another. Anyone who says they've never committed a crime is lying. Grand Theft Auto allows us to nurture that criminal instinct and to have a lot of fun along the way.

The plot of Grand Theft Auto is simple. You are a minor player in a criminal syndicate. You answer pay phones and check your beeper to get jobs from your mob boss. He can order you to steal cars, kill cops, kill other gangs, do drug delivery runs, have you tail his girlfriend, and much more. Essentially, when anything illegal needs to be done, it gets handed to you. How you complete the job determines how much money you get, and gives you access to other, hidden, missions. If you thought Postal was bad, you ain't seen nothing. This game has no morals whatsoever. You even get bonus points for running someone over with their own car! Sounds good to me!

The controls are fairly basic. Since you are in a car most of the time, the controls are geared toward that setup. This means that when you are walking around, the arrow keys are relative movement, not absolute movement. Though this can be annoying at the beginning, you quickly get used to it. Grand Theft Auto is the first game, however, to have a hijack key. By pressing this key next to a car, you open the driver's side door, slug the driver, pull him onto the pavement, and hop into your new vehicle. Not bad, eh?

The graphics in Grand Theft Auto were obviously not the focus of the developers attention. The cities are remarkably huge, however, and they really make you feel as though you are driving in New York, San Francisco, or Miami (they have different names in the game, but it is obvious what cities they're supposed to be). The manual claims that there are over 6,000 city miles in the game, and, frankly, I believe it. Some of the cars, however, need a lot of work. There are cars that, to this day, I have not figured out what they're supposed to be. Also, they couldn't use the real names of the vehicles, so they made up names that were close enough, like Porka instead of Porsche.

Unfortunately, in order to run the game in the best graphics mode, you have to do something not seen for awhile . . . run the game in DOS. *gasp* Though the game says it's Win95 compatible, no one in their right mind would play the Win95 version. I had to call tech support in order to discover that if you want any sort of resolution, you have to run the game through DOS. Also, 3Dfx only works through DOS. While this might have been acceptable six years ago when people were using Win3.1 and routinely had to exit to DOS, nowadays most new computer owners have never even seen the DOS screen. Happily, Grand Theft Auto installed all the needed drivers in DOS, and I only had to change the sound card setup. Why they did this, I will never know, but you can bet that it messes with Internet play.

Since I connect to the Internet through Win95, I lack the DOS drivers for my modem. So, if I want to play online, I have to play with the dumpy graphics. Needless to say, I don't play online very much.

Another drawback is the repetitive nature of the game. First off, you can't save in the middle of the game. You have to either complete the level or die to end a game in the middle. This leads to gamers playing the first missions over and over and over again when they are first getting used to the game. Needless to say, this gets a bit frustrating. Also, a lot of the missions are remarkably similar.(i.e. drive to point B, meet someone, drive to point C, kill someone, drive to point D, and get rid of the car.) While the immoral aspects of the plot are entertaining and fun, they don't mask the fact that you have to do almost the same thing for every mission.

In the end, we have a game that is a great idea, but not very well executed. With mediocre graphics and repetitive gameplay, some gamers might be disappointed. Like Postal, Grand Theft Auto is depending a lot on controversy to sell the game, not gameplay. While this works for sales, it tends to upset many hard-core gamers. However, if you're looking for a fun, goofy, immoral game, than Grand Theft Auto should definitely be on your list.

Final Fantasy VIII - PC

Squall Leonhart--victim of trauma inducing parents

What's in a name? Well, take Squall Leonhart. What the hell were his parents thinking? I mean, what kind of gonzo book of names did they use when they named their son after a weather condition? You might argue, "But Johnny - it's symbolic of the inner torment and struggles he faces." Shaddap and go back to your English class. Stop and think how much less moody he'd have been if only he were named Milhouse.

Squall is an angst-ridden student of Garden, a military school that trains soldiers of the highest ability. The few that make it that far are known as SeeD. Squall's entry into this elite force embroils him in a conflict against the evil witch, Edea. Long thought to be the stuff of legends, witches are powerful sorceresses who seek to control the world. Can you stop her? When the Playstation version came out back in September of '99, I said that eventually the PC version would come out with cleaned up, sharpened graphics. Well, I take it all back. The Playstation was better. The PC conversion hacks blew it big time. While the characters are sharper, polygonal errors are everywhere. Just look at the triangle that pops up on Seifer's head or the broken seams that show up far, far too often. The font, the menu screens, the save system, backgrounds... just name it, and you'll find a sloppy mess. Even the card game is jacked up. This port shows a complete lack of effort. There are times you can even see gray lines outlining areas of the background. Do these people even know Photoshop? Thankfully, the gameplay stays intact. Magic is still operated through a "junction" system. Different traits of your character can be affected by how much magic you have. Magic is found in the different enemies you face. By "drawing" magic from an opponent, you can stock up on as many units of magic as you want... or have the patience for. The blatant flaw of this system is that in order to truly "strengthen" your character, you must endlessly draw those important spells to the max (100). Let me spell it out for you: B-O-R-I-N-G. With no armor upgrades, and weapon upgrades as a more minor aspect, the need to draw magic becomes far too important. The last area in the game is really nothing more than an easy chance to max out all your spells. It would've been better if spells were harder to accumulate and enemies didn't have unlimited spells to draw. In order to draw magic, you must first equip a Guardian Force (GF) to your characters, thereby inheriting the GF's traits and abilities. The GF's gain experience points, developing more abilities as you fight with them equipped. Sure, people bitch about how long the animations take and how boring it gets (all true), but you can eliminate that by just choosing to use the GF's less. If only there was programmed limit to using the GF's... It wouldn't be a Square game without overblown, glorified videos. And thankfully, the video has survived the port; sharper and brighter than before. But who cares if the main graphics can't back the FMV up anymore. Musically, there are a few tracks that really stand out. Most of the other songs have a looped, emptiness to them. Compared to past Final Fantasies, the music of FF8 is rather mediocre. And the MIDI of the PC version sounds even more mechanical and lifeless. Yet again, I must complain: Why aren't there any voices? If you really want to read, go buy a book. Text-only dialogue should be an option, not the standard. This had better be the last "silent" Final Fantasy.

There are still some great moments in the plot and some fun aspects to the gameplay, but it's all overshadowed by the disappointing, shabby port. Final Fantasy 8 was a great game turned crappy by lazy programmers who don't know the meanings of conversion or quality. Go replay the PSX version instead.

FIFA 2000 - PC

Atomic Bomberman - PC

Definitely Not The Bomb

Those of us who remember the original Bomberman (1 and 2) on the NES recall it as one of the best multiplayer games of its time. It incorporated simplistic controls, simple graphics and game play that just kept the players wanting more. It proved that a game didn't have to be the most technologically advanced to be great, it just had to be fun. Unfortunately, Atomic Bomberman, Interplay's PC version of the original Bomberman, offers minimal advancements since the original came out 7 years ago. While diehard classic arcade fans may appreciate this, they also still have all their Atari 2600 carts. For most of us it looks incredibly basic when compared to many hits out today.

You would think that with the high-end machines they had to work with, Atomic Bomberman's graphics would have had new "twists", cool little scenes or camera angles that don't take away from the basic game design but add a little spice. However, it fails to live up to this. All graphics are 2D bitmaps, while levels are the same 2D tiles. All graphics including player sprites, power-ups and level tiles look absurdly large. The game would have been better with larger levels (this means smaller objects). The only noticeable graphical improvement since its predecessor would be the fact that Atomic Bomberman has better death-sequence animations. Other than that, I would be much happier playing my old Super Bomberman II on the SNES.

One of the best aspects about the original Bomberman series on the NES and SNES would be the fact that it didn't take a game guru to master the controls and basic idea of the game. With only 2 non-directional keys, one of which drops a bomb and other takes care of every other action (punch bomb and detonate timer bomb), any idiot could quickly pick up and play any of the Bomberman series without any prior knowledge of the game. The game itself is self-explanatory. Players control one person, or bomberman, each. The goal is blow the other people up with bombs that you drop, without blowing yourself up. As you blow away different pieces of the level to open up more playing space, different power-ups will appear. These power-ups give players different abilities such as bigger bombs, more bombs (to drop at once), punch (to punch a bomb away from you), kick (kicks the bomb away from you), timer-bomb, roller skate (for more speed), and poison. If you pick up a poison item (box with skull on it) you can become infected with such ailments as Molasses, Constipation, or the inability to drop bombs, or the inability to stop dropping bombs. This poison can be given to other players by touching them.

Allowing up to ten players, the multiplayer support is one of the most important features. AI and human player can be mixed and matched to create what can only be described as fun chaos: ten people in one small arena. Thus the enhanced multiplayer support is one of the factors that keeps Atomic Bomberman from totally dying out.

Sounds are probably the most improved aspect since the earlier versions. A number of sounds arise when the player gets power-ups. A bomberman might cry out, "That's mine" when grabbing that extra bomb. Fast-beat techno jams are played constantly in the background.

Unfortunately, Atomic Bomberman just didn't live up to what it was I hoped for. Graphics were disappointingly simple. The game play stayed nearly the same to its predecessors, which basically involved walking around and dropping bombs. The level editing and animation-editing programs aren't even worth mentioning. They are the most non-user-friendly tools I have ever seen shipped with a game. Those who know little about graphics, animations or game design will find these utilities extremely difficult if not impossible to use due to the lack of documentation or support. Another horrible aspect about the game is its size, at full install you are looking at 500+ Megs being taken on your hard drive. My only question is how. How can such a simple game take up so much damn room? Most people would be better off grabbing an emulation of one of the Super Bomberman series that appeared on the SNES a couple years back. Unless you are a huge Bomberman fan, you should save your money for a better game.

NBA Street Homecourt - Xbox360

How to miss a slam dunk.

NBA Street Homecourt is called NBA Street Homecourt because we already have a video game franchise called “Monkey Ball.”

NBA Street Monkey Ball, however, would better describe the most apparent difference between this game and the games of NBA Street past. Whereas super over-the-top dunks have always been Street staples, the dunks in Homecourt up the ante by adding simian-like acrobatics and aggressive hoop-rape that could only be motion-captured in a spider monkey cage.

For those new to NBA Street, the EA Big version of basketball opts for three-on-three basketball with the emphasis on ridiculous dribbling tricks and absurd dunks. The quick paced arcade feel of the original NBA Streets is preserved in Homecourt, and at first the only observable difference between this and its ancestors is the enhanced resolution of the next generation graphics.

Back again is the “game breaker” feature which allows teams to unleash high scoring super moves by building up the game breaker meter. Jukes and trick moves, as well as dunks and steals, increase points towards the gamebreaker. Once used, the game breaking team must again perform tricks to increase the number of points their gamebreaker is worth.

However, in Homecourt, the gamebreaker controls have replaced the right-stick contortions of last year’s installment with . . . nothing. Instead of messing around with the right stick while in the air, in Homecourt, you simply charge up your gamebreaker with more dribbling tricks. While the right-stick wasn’t always intuitive, the removal of it without any new mechanic seems a step backwards.

Not that walking ever happens in the game. Dribbling might be closer. Insane breakdance dribbling is probably the best description. By spamming on the two trick dribble buttons and “modifying” them by holding down either or both of the bumpers, your player will spin and flip around like a gerbil on PCP.

But that’s nothing compared to the new “double-dunk” feature. You charge up a dunk by holding down the dunk button while in the air, and if you release it at the last possible moment, your player will perform a spectacular “double-dunk.” In these, your player catches the ball after the dunk, usually with his feet, and then dunks the ball again while in the air. During double dunks, the players climb all over the backboard and the hoop with chimpanzee-like agility, thrusting the ball through the hoop repeatedly. Of course, for these rule- and rim-bending feats, you are awarded two points.

The new offensive gameplay features, like the double-dunk and a new “jump-off” mechanic which propels your player into the air by using a crouching teammate as a ladder, are more exciting but less game changing than the subtle defensive “shove” move. Big players now have an advantage over small dribblers, and can throw them on the ground with a single shove. Maybe this feature was in the earlier versions, but it didn’t play as much of a role as it does now.

However, for the new slick graphics and the few new additions, this NBA Street is too much like the previous ones in its initial promise and then quick disappointment. The gameplay is quick and easy, but it is also repetitive and frequently boring. Once my baller, Phurry Crocket, was labeled a “steals” master, the opposing teams would rarely be able to get the ball past half court. Phurry would steal and then jack up threes until the game was over, declining even to bother with the time-consuming gamebreakers.

It doesn’t help that the game’s main mode, the Homecourt Challenge, is uninspired. The idea is that Phurry Crocket has to travel to actual NBA stars’s homecourts, win a series of games with different rules, and finally get to defeat the game’s poster boy—Carmelo Anthony—at the fictitious and opportunistic “Jordan Brand Court.” The challenges start repeating themselves after just fifteen minutes of play, and the rewards—some new shoes and outfits—are pretty lame.

The game’s serious and nostalgic A&E Biography-style presentation jars with the absurd on-court antics. These clips are narrated by over-serious voice-over, and visually just show still pictures of the austere, player-free, courts. Their slowness and seriousness seems the exact opposite of the gameplay they frame: which is fast and whimsical.

Other game “modes” are just versions of the basic pick-up game with different rules. Play a game with no gamebreakers! Play a game with only gamebreakers! These aren’t modes, just basic options, and seem disingenuous when marketed as such.

The NBA franchise is marketed well, and most of the league’s best players are well-represented by their onscreen avatars. Unfortunately, you can’t change their attire, and it’s common to have each of your three players wearing three different colors of jersey.

You also can’t do much with your created character. Your baller’s facial appearance is the amalgamation of two actual NBA stars faces. Phurry Crocket was the child of Yao Ming and Steve Nash, and he didn’t look half as bad as that sounds. Beyond that, though, customization options are lacking. Even earlier NBA Streets allowed you to customize your palette of dunks; here you just choose a real NBA player to “play like,” and you’ve got all of that player’s attributes.

Finally, the online game doesn’t survive the test of interest. Control is often laggy, and the game often devolves into the double dunk-a-thon that one would expect. You can’t bring your own player into the game, and ranked matches often feature the same familiar all-star players.

Worst of all, though, is actual physical pain induced by an extraneous button. The turbo button is mapped to the right trigger. Since there is an unlimited supply of turbo, it’s frequently easy to go whole matches with the right trigger depressed. However, by way of anatomical physics too difficult to go into, the combination of holding down the right trigger and furiously mashing the facepad buttons with your right thumb causes some troubling carpal tunnel effects. Right now I’m dictating this review to the trained monkey we keep in the office.

But that monkey is only trained to like good original games, so even though he sees a future for more monkey-like sports simulations, he is going to pan NBA Street Homecourt. The gameplay becomes repetitive quickly and the campaign is over without much fuss. In the end, this fast-paced game falls victim to its own velocity.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - Spearhead - PC

Back to the trenches.

Sergeant! Sergeant! Wake your ass up, soldier! If you don't wake up right now, we're all gonna get dead real soon! You sure picked a fine time to go and get knocked on the head. What's that? You don't know what's going on? Aw hell, not again...

Here's some water, son. Drink up and pay attention. You are Sergeant Jack Barnes and we are the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, currently in France. We just dropped into Jerry's backyard to lead the Spearhead for the Allied Assault. The Nazis are out to get us and we've got a quick nine missions to complete before this damn war will end.

What are our mission goals? Why, to shoot every guy that's shootin' back at us, of course! You still remember how to fire that weapon, don't you? We've also got average artillery to blow up, a few supply lines to raid and the usual hit to put on some high ranking Nazi officers. Got all that, Sarge? Well then, let's get to it.

I hope you still remember our first mission, because it sure was a doozy. Damn near lost half the squad. Do you remember the gunfire, Sarge? It was like some kind of crazy space light show. A few of the boys got blasted before we got ground side and I think poor Jenkins' chute never opened.

Now that you seem to be getting your memory back, let me brief you on what's new since the last Assault. HQ sent us a bunch of fresh arms for our mission, but none of the guns are really all that different from what we're used to using. There are some grenades, a Brit Webley pistol and a Lee Entfield rifle, plus a handful of new machine guns. It's nice that HQ was thinking about us, but the new toys operate just like the old ones. As long as they still kill the bad guys, it's all the same to me.

The brass has also changed the rules of engagement by allowing us to play with a little melee combat. When using those less fragile weapons (i.e. the ones without an alternate fire), we are now authorized to beat any enemy soldiers we encounter into submission. I personally would have preferred a nice combat knife, but I guess this is war, not hunting...or is it?

We've picked up some new Intel indicating that some strange things have happened to the German army. The word going around says that they're not as quick as they used to be - something in the water, maybe. This has made it a little easier for our boys to go up and whack 'em without getting filled with lead. Their snipers have also been caught drinking on duty, which has made them a lot less lethal then before. I guess they've found out that you've come to play, eh Sarge? Hehe...

As in previous engagements, the brass wants us to stick to the straight and narrow path, which doesn't leave a whole lot of room for exploration on our missions. They say as long as we keep going the way we're supposed to, things will just happen like it's some kind of movie script. Bah, does this look like Hollywood to you? I don't think so.

Besides, all I see are fields, trees and burnt out buildings. It's no vacation spot, but these places don't look half-bad, considering how tragic war can be. That shouldn't come as a surprise since this battle is built on the same engine as the last one.

It also sounds about the same, so remember the golden rule - DO NOT REMOVE YOUR HELMET TO HEAR THE GREAT SOUNDS. You don't want to take a stray slug to the temple and wind up like old Ferguson, eating your next meal out of a straw.

Now son, you know that I hate war. You know I want to be back with the wife and kids just as bad as you do. But boy, this conflict seems too short. Word has it that the fighting was practically over by the time we started and all we're really left with is a three-hour mop-up tour. I was hoping to see more action than that. I can't help feeling that we should have gotten a little more out of this latest battle.

Oh, and one more thing. HQ just sent down 12 new maps for the next engagement, Codename: Multiplayer, whatever that means. There's also some info on a new type of warfare they're calling 'Tug of War'. Basically, the two armies battle each other in order to complete up to five objectives all at once. I hear it's kind of like what's happening over on the Battlefield, but with the ability to knock out an enemy's reinforcement center (or as the Krauts call it, "Spawn Point.")

Crap! Look at the time. Sarge, it's time to move out and get this Spearhead going. It's gonna be a short battle, so let's try to have a little fun before it's over. This Assault isn't much different from the other one, so just keep your finger on the trigger and we'll all get out of this mess alive. Move out!

Supreme Commander - PC

He's got the whole world...in his sights.

I have very little patience for stupidity. For that reason I was never really able to get into The Sims. I grew frustrated by how constantly idiotic they were, and I always wanted the game to operate more like a fishtank. I wanted to be able to wander away and let my Sims have their heads just to see what they’d be up to when I got back. Would Steve get a promotion and buy a fancy new computer? Would he cheat on his wife? What’s up with their slacker kid?

Unfortunately, if you leave your Sims alone for the day, invariably you’ll find they’ve all lost their jobs and are just standing in the corner peeing their pants. Your average Sim neighborhood makes the Special Olympics look like a Mensa Convention.

Real time strategy games generally fare little better. I find it infuriating in Warcraft III that my peasants just stand there, watching their own hut burn and not doing anything about it unless I smack them upside the head and order them to fix the hut, dammit!

Which is part of the reason I love Supreme Commander. Your army of robots can actually do smart things - repair each other when injured, support other units in combat, stage coordinated attacks, automatically airlift whole groups one by one, and even fix the damn robo-hut without waiting to be told. Which, true to the title, leaves you free to focus on being the Commander without having to run around making sure everyone is wiping their metal butts.

The distant future, it seems, is smart. It’s also an unfortunately fractured intergalactic civilization. The UEF rose from the remains of the Earth government, and seeks to reunite all of mankind…by any means necessary. The Cybrans are cybernetically enhanced humans that were originally programmed to be mindlessly loyal to the UEF. Now, their creator and his android army seek to free their still enslaved brothers. Finally, the Aeon see themselves as the disciples of an extinct alien race and fanatically seek to spread their religion of peace, or “The Way”, across the galaxy like armed Scientologists.

There are three separate campaigns, one for each faction, and interestingly, each one paints themselves as the good guy. There is no “good” or “evil” side. Each campaign consists of about a half-dozen missions, but don’t let that fool you. Each map doubles in size when you reach certain goals, exposing new enemies and new objectives. Then it doubles a second time. So a single map will actually take you several hours to complete. Don’t forget to save your game because restarting can be a bitch.

Managing your resources is easy however, as long as you keep an eye on the supply and demand. Thanks to nanotechnology, mass and energy can build anything you need. Energy is easy enough with power plants, but mass must be harvested from the planet’s core which can only be done from specific locations, leading to some local power struggles among the three races.

All three sides are well balanced because, other than graphically speaking, there aren’t very many differences. Every unit essentially has a near-identical analog for every race. There are, however, a huge number of land, air and sea robots and structures in three “tech levels”. It can take a long time to upgrade and produce those more powerful units which lends another strategic element – deciding where to focus. Leaving your base more loosely defended can get you to tech 3 more quickly, but at what risk? Alternatively, you could spend massive resources to build just one experimental behemoth. These giant robots, flying saucers and others have special abilities more unique to each race, but they all share one thing in common – they are juggernauts of destruction.

You can also upgrade your own personal giant robot ACU with more powerful weapons, teleporting abilities and other bling, but this is so inordinately expensive it seems like more of an endgame gambit, and not particularly useful even then.

The huge scope of the battles, as well as the ability to pull out the camera to take in the entire eighty kilometer square battlefield, is the other hallmark of Supreme Commander. You need that tactical view to really hone your strategy, because on maps this huge you might need fully twenty minutes just to move troops into position. This makes the intelligence provided by radar or sonar much more important than in most strategy games.

In spite of this, the path to defeating the A.I. is fairly straightforward. You build a self-repairing (remember those smart units?) porcupine base for the computer to suicide itself on, then build up a monster army in safety and unleash it at your leisure. Skirmish mode features some much more interesting Commander A.I. and you won’t find yourself winning so easily. But as usual, it’s the eight-player online play where you’ll get the most challenging and interesting opponents.

That’s if they don’t lag out. With enormous maps and colossal battles featuring hundreds of combatants, flying debris, explosions, missiles, and other robot detritus, Supreme Commander can defeat just about any PC you play it on. I was lucky enough to have just built a monster rig for this very purpose, and thanks to all that raw power, the chaotic battles are simply beautiful. However, most people are going to find themselves with plenty of slowdown when the hot robot-on-robot action gets intense.

The sound, on the other hand, seems strangely muted until you realize that’s because you’re normally surveying the scene from a kilometer high in the sky. If you zoom down into a less helpful, but more intense altitude, the sounds of gunfire, missiles, rumbling motors and clanking metal feet come to life. The music is pretty smart and actually changes tempo when exciting events are unfolding. Smart yet again.

While heavy on the system requirements, Supreme Commander is simply a terrific, well designed game, and no wonder. Chris Taylor, the lead designer also made the awesome predecessor to this game years ago when it was called Total Annihilation. It may have a different name under a different publisher, but make no mistake fans, this is the T.A. sequel you’ve been waiting for. If you’ve got the horsepower to run it, you’d be stupid not to go pick it up.