I'm now off to try some other stuff, even though it is 2:30am.

Later the next day...
Further info:

With Win98, my 3D card no longer works.

Also, Win98 does not fix the most infuriating feature of Win95 - the losing of window settings for each directory. The effect of this problem is even more exaggerated in Win98, because there are more settings for each window (such as View as Web Page).

Friday 19th June 1998...
Edge arrives, and much news therein.

Sega have announced their new console, the Dreamcast. The machine uses Second Generation PowerVR technology, has a built-in modem, will use specialised 1Gb CDs, and has a design which is 'inspired' by the N64. The joypad looks pretty uncomfortable, being of Jaguar-esque proportions. Oh, and the thing that holds it all together? Windows CE and DirectX 6. Yes, the schemic devious evil megalomanic insane professor robot zombie that is Bill Gates has got his nine feet wedged firmly in the door of the console market.

Dreamcast will be released in November, although probably not in the UK until a long time after, so I'll forget about it for now and talk about something else.

Less than a week to go until the big two: Windows 98 and X-COM: Interceptor.

That was fun. Now more hardware news. First, Project X, which has also been officially announced. It turns out that it will be sold to the masses as a versatile DVD player. Little will they know that they have also purchased a games system! Using this tactic, VM Labs hopes to introduce a whole new audience to games. A bit like 3DO. :(. Mind you, it might work. Maybe. Psygnosis (who Sony may be selling, incidentally), are one of the signed up developers, so if there's a Wipeout game for X then maybe I'll get one.

Final thing: PVRSG. Better known as PowerVR Second Generation. I've been looking around for details on this new chipset, and although the developers are mostly keeping their mouths shut, the few things I have heard are very encouraging. If everything goes right, PVRSG should be significantly less crap than PowerVR PCX2. And it will have a FULL OpenGL library. As Camp Monkey would put it, Rapture unbound! And it should cost much less than Voodoo2. I will definately be upgrading when it is released.

Tuesday 16th June 1998...

SHOCK NEWS!

Quote from John Carmack, on his plans for Quake III:

The new product is going to be called "Quake Arena", and will consist
exclusively of deathmatch style gaming (including CTF and other
derivatives). The single player game will just be a progression through
a ranking ladder against bot AIs. We think that can still be made an
enjoyable game, but it is definately a gamble. 

In the past, we have always been designing two games at once, the
single player game and the multi player game, and they often had
conflicting goals. For instance, the client-server communications
channel discouraged massive quantities of moving entities that would
have been interesting in single player, while the maps and weapons
designed for single player were not ideal for multiplayer. The largest
conflict was just raw development time. Time spent on monsters is
time not spent on player movement. Time spent on unit goals is time
not spent on game rules. 

There are many wonderful gaming experiences in single player FPS, but
we are choosing to leave them behind to give us a purity of focus that
will let us make significant advances in the multiplayer experience.

News from PlanetQuake.

Well, well, well. What can I say? If this is just a one-off, then OK, I can deal with it. I might be a tad pissed off, but I can deal with it.
If this is the end of id Software making single player games, then that has to be one of the worst events of all time...

Thursday 11th June 1998...
I downloaded Gamespy 2.0, the new shareware version.
I installed it.
It decided to throw the old server list out of the window, thus losing my Favorites. So now I've got to go through all over again and pick out the servers I want.

Wednesday 10th June 1998...
Courtesy of the new PC Gamer, I have some more news:

Quake II is the new Number One in the 1998 PC Gamer Top 100. Civ 2 is number three, behind F22-ADF. The X-COM series was at an appalling number 17. Unforgivable.

Duke Nukem Forever has been delayed until 1999. Star Trek: First Contact has been cancelled. But I don't really care about these two games.

An Ultima Online-style game called 'Middle Earth' has been announced. This sounds great. I like the idea of Ultima Online, but I have never played any Ultima game before, so I don't know anything about the Ultima universe. Whereas I know a lot about Middle Earth, having read The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit many times.

But thankfully, Half-Life is still scheduled for June. And, hey presto, which month is it right now?

More news: X-COM INTERCEPTOR IS HERE! And apparently it is great. So I will be buying it as soon as possible.

Sunday 7th June 1998...
I played QuakeWorld for the first time yesterday. And it was a disaster.
Lag is an unpleasant business at the best of times, but in Quake 1 it seems to be even worse. I could run around normally, but whenever I pressed fire, the weapon didn't fire until half a second later. Okay, so that's lag for you. Quake 2 handles it better. Fair enough.
But whenever I died - which was a lot - the screen was full of text! And talking of dying - I could not get one single frag! This was in The House of Chthon, where it is impossible to hide. There was just two guys with rocket launchers fragging everyone who respawned. So it was impossible to get anywhere. Even though I am the best Quake player I know.

Friday 5th June 1998...
Okay. I will have to eat my words. Delicious words, yum yum. At first I called Quake II a disappointment, but after six months of playing, I can now definitively say that it beats Quake. Oh, but it has a lot more bugs.

Monday 1st June 1998...
X-COM: Alliance.

A game using the Unreal engine.

And that's all I can tell you about it, reason being, that's all I know.

I think it'd be pretty cool to have a first person shoot 'em up combined with X-COM style strategy. Then again, maybe the Unreal engine is just being used as a replacement for the old-style isometric viewpoint used in the previous games.

Other stuff: I was talking about acts of valour a few days ago. Well, that's what I've been doing with Quake II. Friday night, ActivisionUK DM server, Arganoid kicks the serious butt of someone with a very low ping. He also called me a 'rail wanker' when I railgunned him and another person with the same shot. So he deserved it ;)

Sunday 31st May 1998...
From looking at various sites (such as http://www.planetquake.com/Trinity/), I have read some confusing and contradictory reports about the truth of Trinity. Some say that Quake 3 = Trinity. Some say that Trinity is merely the name of a graphics engine, and the game it is used with will not be called Trinity.
According to PC Gamer, Quake III will use an evolution of the Quake II engine. This makes me think that Trinity does not equal Quake III, as Trinity should be a completely new engine. If it isn't, that would be crap.
Still, despite my previous comments, I am looking forward to Quake III as well as 'Trinity'. Let's face it, this time last year, I had been playing Red Alert constantly for six months. And this time this year, the same has been happening with Quake II. Incidentally, if you want to kill me online, take a look at the ActivisionUK DM server on Friday, Saturday and sometimes Sunday nights after midnight. British time, of course. Chances are I'll probably be there.

Half-Life. I downloaded an MPEG preview of this, my most eagerly awaited game. At least, it used to be, until I actually saw the aforementioned preview. In fact it looked a bit weedy. It looked a lot like Goldeneye (which has a kind of 'flimsy' look to it). The movie only showed one weapon, which was a very pathetic machine gun. The sounds were weedy, the monsters were un-scary, the deaths were so bland they were barely noticable......... Oh dear.

Quake II 3.15 is out. This is another big improvement to the game, and it seems to run faster (even though timedemo still gives the same results)...

Oh, and earlier today I completed Quake II on Hard+ difficulty. This is similar to Quake's Nightmare skill level. To select this difficulty, you must go to the console, type 'skill 3', and start a new game by typing 'map base1'.
The most noticable difference on this level is that when you shoot a monster, it will continue moving and firing (i.e. it will not stagger or be temporarily stunned).

Thursday 28th May 1998...
From reading the Civ2 newsgroup (alt.binaries.games.civ2, or something like that), I have found that in fact 281% is a rubbish score... Apparently some people have got over 1000%. So I must now go back and prove my valour.

Monday 25th May 1998...
Great news! There are new versions of EITtris (1.30) and Kyodai Mahjongg (4.34).

The new version of Kyodai is just fantastic. It now includes the long awaited 'Winnable' feature. This means that all boards are technically winnable without reshuffling. This is great, because it takes a lot of the pot luck out of the game. The new version also includes a whole ton of new layouts, a new music, and highscores on Mahjongg Rivers. Great stuff.

The new version of EITtris attempts to remove the problem of hackers getting into the online high score chart. Apart from that, it does nothing. All the niggles in 1.22 (some of which weren't there in 1.00) are still there. Alas, poor EITtris, I knew it too well. I probably won't play it again.

Friday 22nd May 1998...
Courtesy of PC Zone, I just got hold of the Quake 2 64 player deathmatch levels. To say they are amazing is an understatement. There are three levels:

• base64: This level is simply the whole of Unit 1 fused into one huge continuous level. To run from one zone to the next, totally seamlessly, is an amazing thing. Unfortunately there is a big disappointment - the secret level is not there... Maybe in the 128-player version...
• sewer64: A massive network of gargantuan sewage tunnels. With some bits of water that don't flow down the slopes...
• city64: Based on parts of Unit 9, this contains labyrinths, COLOSSAL outdoor areas, and massive drops. And a massive gurt-oid underwater cavern.

In fact, these levels are so impressive that I have taken some screenshots. In fact I've created a whole new page just so you can see them. Click here.

I also installed QuakeWorld. And the newsgroup alt.tv.red-dwarf now has it's own Q2 server. So I will be very busy tonight...

Last week I played my first online game of Red Alert, via Westwood Online. The verdict? Red Alert seems to lack something in multiplayer compared to the original C&C. And the Westwood Chat software gave me quite a few problems, one of which being that there seems to be no documentation for some of it, so you never know what all the little symbols mean.

Friday 15th May 1998...
Played the demo of Motorhead, by Digital Illusions (those great people who brought us Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies, then some dull sequels).

The intro was very impressive, with some cool music. It was also based totally on Wipeout 2097.

The 3D engine was very impressive, running fast in software SVGA with high resolution textures and some nice lighting effects.

The car handling was shite. Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Uninstall Motorhead Demo.

What these people should really be doing is making a decent conversion of Pinball Fantasies for the PC. The current version is a very shoddy conversion.

Thursday 14th May 1998...
I got hold of the Direct3D patch for Dungeon Keeper. Under PowerVR, the frame rate is terrible (MUCH slower than SVGA software), the mouse sensitivity is fucked, and the graphics are garish and glitchy. In some places, the sprites stop displaying, or are visible through walls.
Also, it runs in 2D mode always. That's what I normally use anyway, because it's much faster and looks cleaner, but it's strange that it can't do the 3D mode.
Possessing a creature is the only thing that might possibly look better, although that zooming effect that you normally get when you do it is gone.

Friday 8th May 1998...
I saw on Hotgames yesterday that the demo of X-COM: Interceptor has been released. But it was 24 megs, so I didn't download it for some reason...

Saturday 2nd May 1998...
I just started Soviet Mission 13 on Red Alert. The location: South west coast of Spain. The terrain: Snow.
Dear Westwood. Spain is a very hot place. The mountains are just the same as the deserts, only taller.

Ah, I remember the time when I went on holiday to Spain. The view from the plane before it landed was incredible. I really should go on more plane journeys... The take off is a laugh as well... The only bad thing was that I was sitting next to the wing, and I watched it shake around, as if it was about to fall off...

Thursday 23rd April 1998...
I found something very interesting on Red Alert. I was playing the mission where the Soviets have to get two supply trucks across the map to another island. The Allies wiped out my base almost instantaneously. I used my remaining units to attack their base, and soon I was left with nothing but the two supply trucks. I decided to see what would happen if I just told them to go straight through the enemy forces, over the bridge (which was surrounded by Cruisers), and across to the other island.
They made it. 'Mission Accomplished'. It turns out that I didn't need to build a base at all. It could actually be done with just one click of the mouse...

Wednesday 22nd April 1998...
I just tried once again to complete Grand Theft Auto, to no avail. Thanks to the infuriating flaws which constantly show up. Such as the bit where I found a very hard-to-find secret, which yielded an extra life. This was on top of a building, but it wasn't a high building. There were no stairs or anything, so the only way down was to jump off the edge. I jumped off the edge. It turns out the building was MUCH taller than I thought it was. But there was no way at all of finding this out before I jumped off the edge. Thus, I gained a life, and then lost it immediately. (It took about three months to find this secret, by the way). I kept going, but later the game crashed. AGAIN. EVERY TIME I GET A GOOD SCORE ON CHAPTER 6, THE GAME CRASHES... EVERY TIME. Merci beaucoup, DMA.

Thursday 16th April 1998...
Well, I went back on-line yesterday, and ARGnet might even be online by tonight. All the stuff on this page which was written while I was off-line is in italics, just for fun.

What gibberish am I speaking? Let's talk about PC games instead. I got PC Gamer a few minutes ago. And the news is shocking:

id Software's next game will be Quake III.

And to this I say:

"No, no, no, no, no!"

Don't do it, you fools! I don't want any more Quake games! I don't want to see another Quake II-style mini-evolution, I want to see the next generation, and all the incredible joy and wonder that we experienced with the first incarnations of Doom and Quake! In other words, I WANT TRINITY. I DON'T want Quake III. Quake II has been a much smaller event than we thought it was going to be, with the original still beating it in places. One more is too much.
The first screenshots of Quake III have been released. And, hey presto, THEY LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME AS QUAKE II...

If that error wasn't enough, Laughing Lord Carmack (or one of his insane servants) has decided that level designer American McGee - who was part of the original team that brought us Doom - should be banished from id's fortress, out into the cold night. Apparently, his work 'was not of a high enough standard'. Well, I don't know which levels he made in Quake II, but I know that he was responsible for some of the best levels in Quake. Such as Ziggurat Vertigo, The Door to Cthon, and Claustrophobopolis...

Is this the end of id Software as we know them? Has it all finally gone to their heads? Will Carmack not rest until he is the only member of id, and has all the levels designed by androids he programmed himself?

I think they are making a BIG mistake...

On a different subject - I downloaded the latest Apocalypse 5D drivers (4.11), installed them, and they worked! And there is absolutely no difference in image quality or frame rates whatsoever! Fantastic!

Tuesday 14th April 1998...
Incredible!

I was listening to the sounds in Dungeon Keeper's SPEECH.DAT file. The voice-over bloke was going through all the sayings in the game, such as 'You need a bigger treasure room'. Then, suddenly, he started going mad. "My god. It's full of pies. Something surreal is happening. Your creatures are developing a strange accent (said with a French accent). Your pants are definitely too tight. Your minions have a craving for chocolate. There's that smell again. Hello. Yeugh. (Various sneezing sounds). You cannot give your imps any more jobs." (Although that last one might be a proper bit of speech - I've just never heard it before).

I don't know if these sounds are ever used in the game. Maybe the sole purpose of them is so that people like me who try and directly access the game sounds will have something to be amazed and interested about.

Thursday 9th April 1998...
Okay, that's it. The end. It took two years, but I did it. I won Civ II on Deity level. And thus, the game is now finished. I have seen everything.
When I say Won, I mean I got over 1000 points. I didn't actually conquer the world (although I possibly might have been able to do that) or build a spaceship. In fact, by the 21st Century, I hadn't even discovered the Automobile. The one major war happened with Cavalry, Marines, Riflemen and shitloads of espionage. I managed to get all the wonders except two - one of which was in an enemy city I couldn't capture, the other was the Apollo Program - I didn't have time to discover Space Flight. And I had a population of nearly 50 million - pretty good for such a high difficulty level.

This final victory means that I have now filled the high score chart (all five places) with ratings over 100%. This is what the scores look like:

1. Population: 110,290,000; Score: 2813; Difficulty: Emperor; Rating: 281%; Game ended in AD2003.
2. Population: 47,260,000; Score: 1335; Difficulty: Deity; Rating: 173%; Game ended AD2020. (This is the one I did just now)
3. Population: 105,120,000; Score: 1930; Difficulty: King; Rating: 154%; Game ended AD2017.
4. Population: 55,570,000; Score: 2054; Difficulty: Prince; Rating: 123%; Game ended AD2003.
5. Population: 33,770,000; Score: 1107; Difficulty: Emperor; Rating: 100%; Game ended AD2020.

And then there's Alpha Centuari.
The good news is that it's being developed by Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds, the former the creator of the best game (albeit a conversion) on the ST, and the latter the creator of the best game on the PC. I'm talking about the Civ duo here, by the way.
The bad news: Sid Meier always said he'd never do a 'Civ in Space', because there would be no historical background for the player to relate to. Leaving Microprose left him with no choice but to write this game - but his old point is still one hundred percent true. Part of Civ's greatness is that it makes you feel like an authentic part of history. Or something. With Alpha Centuari, they're going to have to think up a massive number of new technologies - but how could anyone ever hope to predict how future technologies will affect our lives? My main fear with Alpha Centuari is that it might have the look and feel of a third-rate sci-fi thing...
That said, I know which game my money's on... Or at least the one which I will be spending my money on.

Friday 3rd April 1998...
281% on Civ II. Spin on that.

Saturday 21st March 1998...
It's PC Gamer time again... And some nice surprises.

First screenshots of C&C: Tiberian Sun look very nice.

And there's this thing called 'Battlezone'...

Sometimes, when you're just sitting there, very bored, having not played a particularly original or innovative game for ages, you start wondering whether there are any new ideas left at all. Then, you install a demo of a game, and it instantly entralls you. So it was with Battlezone. It's best described as Mechwarrior 2, except with the following advantages:

• Your vehicle can actually MOVE.
• It's got lots of missions which are very challenging, but fun.
• It's got a supremely good set of tutorial missions.
• The plot makes sense.
• You know that bit in Red Dwarf (the novel) where the Cat does stunts in his lunar ore carrier? Well, you can sort of do that.
• It's like C&C from a first-person perspective. And it works.
• It's a good game.

Will I buy Battlezone? Er, probably not. FiSH of Pilsbry returns from Uni tomorrow, and thus the multiplayer mayhem will commence...

Tuesday 17th March 1998...
I got a lot further into First Encounters. I am now in possession of the Argent's Quest - the most powerful ship in the galaxy. But, just as before, this game's infuriatingly stupid faults continue to ruin it, every time it starts getting good.

Take my first mission with the Argent's Quest. I was told to go to the 'Hidden System at 32, 32'. "What hidden system?" I thought. Also, I was told that I would need a Transmission Jammer and a Nuclear Missile, which could be given to me by the Federal Military. I tried to get one from the Federal Military. The game crashed every time when I tried to do this.
I took a look at 32,32. There were a few systems there, including Atlas. Which one was I supposed to go to? I went to many of these systems. Could I find anything? No.

I returned to the Alliance. After a short stay in Gateway, I set off for Tecusemah in the system of Miandin. From what I had read in the journals, I thought I might find some information there. I hyperspaced to Miandin. I set the autopilot. Shortly afterwards, I was attacked. By twenty ships. But they were all moving way too fast, and they overshot me and INSTANTLY vanished into the distance. I put up the Time Control again. The same thing happened again. And again. And again. At no point was it even possible to shoot any of these ships - they vanished too fast.
I finally sorted this out by coming to a full stop. The ships were then free to attack me properly. All twenty of them.
After destroying this batch of ships, another lot came along.
Just before arriving at Tecusemah, another bunch attacked.
Two hours after I set off, I arrived at Tecusemah. My ship was totally destroyed. Even with its twenty shields, Hull Auto-Repair System and Large Plasma Accelerator. The repairs cost about c60,000. (Note - normally crippling damage costs around very roughly c8,000 to repair)
I had gone there with the intention of getting information. In fact, there was none. But all the journals were suddenly saying that the Argent's Quest had been stolen and was being used for illegal smuggling. True, I had some illegal goods in my hold. But the only reason they were there was that my Tractor Beam Cargo Scoop had sucked them in from the ships I destroyed, against my will. And I couldn't jetisson them, because by this time I was right next to the planet, and I would be fined. And if I was fined, I wouldn't have enough money to land, because I had spent the rest on Luxury Goods, which I had been hoping to trade there.
I had had enough. I quit the game, and reloaded way back long ago, in the Gateway system.

I decided to take a little trip to Liaethfa. According to the journals, there was a secret INRA base there. I went there, and my trip was a lot easier than before, but I found nothing. I returned to Alioth.
Immediately on entering the system, I was greeted by a message: "Congratulations on completing your maiden flight, Commander. Please return to New Rossyth for debriefing."
On arrival at New Rossyth, they checked my hold and found that I had failed to carry out my first mission. They gave me a second mission. I had to go to Liaethfa (where I had just come back from), and pick up one of their agents. This I did, successfully.

My employers at New Rossyth gave me a third mission. Their agent had detected the existence of a Thargoid shuttle in the very distant Polaris system. I had to go there and find it.
They gave me the Nuclear Missile and Transmission Jammer that I had needed before, although exactly what I was supposed to do with them I didn't know.
I took off. I prepared to hyperspace in the direction of Polaris.
I clicked on the Hyperspace button.
The PC crashed.
I reset, reloaded First Encounters, and tried again.
It crashed again.
I tried a third time. It crashed.

Does that mean it's the end of the game? What am I supposed to do now?

The moral of this story is:

• When writing a game, don't have bits where the player is totally massacred all the time. It's just not fun.
• Make it intuitive and user-friendly. It's not much help when you click to get instructions on a mission, and the top part of the briefing instantly scrolls out of view...
• Again, make it intuitive and user-friendly. It's not just the bugs - even if they weren't there, First Encounters would fail dismally in this area. All the time, the player has to deal with baffling situations where he has no idea what he is supposed to be doing.
• Make it intuitive and user-friendly. I can't stress this enough. Obviously this game wasn't playtested AT ALL.
• And finally: DEBUG THE FUCKING THING! This is always a useful step when creating games. For example, take a hit game such as Quake II. Good old John Carmack decided to remove the bugs before he released it. This was a good thing to do, because it meant that people liked it, as opposed to, for example, loathing it and despising it with every bone in their body.

Wednesday 11th March 1998...
I've really gone and done it now. 154% on Civilization 2. 154%. That's nearly twice my previous attempts, not counting one more recent rating. And, get this, the population was 105 million. Twice as much as my previous best. So, you want to know how to get such an incredible rating? Just follow these guidelines...

1. Play on the Large map size - this gives much more space to expand in.
2. And only have three civilisations. The less competition, the better.
3. Populate every island you see. Settlers should be one of the first things you build at each new city.
4. Don't keep Settlers for too long - use them to build new cities, and build some more later to do the rest of your improvements. Rapid expansionism is the only way to get a good rating. Unlike Civ 1, perfectionism doesn't work.
5. Use all the land to the full. Don't leave big unused gaps between your cities - even if there is a small gap, you might be able to build a small city.
6. Trading technologies is essential, but there are a few which you should not give your enemies unless it's essential. I'm not just talking about Gunpower or Conscription - but also, and more importantly, Map Making and Navigation. Lack of these two can seriously hinder an opponent on a world with many seas. Railroad and Industrialisation are also things you shouldn't share.
7. The computer AI considers the space race to be of epic importance. Thus, any enemy, even one which is stuck in the Stone Age, will try to steal the technology of Space Flight. It doesn't mean they're hostile to you, it's just something they have to do. If you don't want enemy spies sneaking in, you could actually GIVE them the technology instead.
8. You cannot get a great score without conquering at least one large powerful civilisation. You should aim to at least conquer their main continent, and take all their Wonders. Of course, the more cities you take, the better - but you should know when to stop, and instead focus on peaceful expansion, science and trade.
9. War is a very tricky process. At the end of the day, the only way to guarantee success is to have a big technological advantage over your opponent. If using slow-moving attacking units, such as Cannons or Artillery, make sure there is a Railroad which leads to the city you are attacking. Howitzers (which come with the technology of Robotics) are a massive advantage, because they are the only attacking units against which it is impossible to totally guard against.
10. Wealth is more important than education. Build marketplaces before Libraries - you can use the income from the Marketplace to buy the Library and a whole load of other stuff.
11. Espionage, espionage, espionage. It's the most important word in the game. Build at least one spy for every city. When attacking a city with City Walls, send in hordes of spies to sabotage installations. DON'T tell them to directly target anything - a random attack has much more chance of working, and you'll hit the Walls by chance after a while. Also, you'll end up with a whole ton of Veteran spies. Remember - under Communism, all new spies are Veterans. And under Fundamentalism, International Incidents do not directly cause war, although your enemy might get rather seriously annoyed with you. (I stole loads of advances off the enemy. He seemed to sit there and take it for a long time. Then, without warning, he nuked my capital city. Ouch.)
12. Mastery of the seas is essential for worlds made up of islands or small continents. You should obviously have as many Battleships as possible - their large cost is outweighed by their massive power. You should also have a few Destroyers and Cruisers around, in order to find enemy Submarines. You should build a fair number of submarines, because they are fairly cheap. Battleships become fairly useless after your enemies start building Cruise Missiles (with the technology of Rocketry), so they should be replaced with the less powerful but still superb AEGIS Cruisers. Also, remember that you can carry missiles in Submarines, although it's generally safer to keep Nukes in a well-defended city.
13. If you're close to conquering the world, don't, unless the conquering bonus is likely to be big. You can get much more points by making peace with all your enemies, then expanding your population (by changing to Democracy and increasing the luxury rate). This also allows you to build a spaceship and any remaining Wonders.
14. Fighters are essential - and not just for fortified defence. In fact, that is their rarest use for me. You can use them to destroy many weaker units, such as Engineers, Artillery, etc. They are VERY useful against enemy ships such as Destroyers, Submarines and Transports. You can even use them for bombing against a less advanced enemy. If you are fortunate enough to have the technology of Stealth, the Stealth Fighter is possibly the best unit in the game. It has a massive range, and is very powerful. Bombers and Stealth Bombers are more powerful, but much more expensive and vunerable than Fighters.
15. Gradually increase the luxury rate as the end of the game approaches. Happy people increase your score. And 'We Love the President' days boost your population.
16. The most important Wonders are: Hoover Dam, JS Bach's Cathedral, Leonardo's Workshop, Mallegan's Expedition, Pyramids, Darwin's Voyage. Cure for Cancer is also useful. In the early stages of the game, on Emperor or Deity level, Hanging Gardens and the Oracle are vital.
17. Start off at Prince difficulty, and go up a level when you think you've mastered it on that difficulty. A totally overwhelming victory is possible on Emperor level, but don't play on Deity level unless you are a total grandmaster, like me... It's just stupid. The level of civil disorder takes all the fun out of it. And barbarians are actually capable of seriously hurting you (on other difficulties, they are mostly harmless). When I got 173% on this level, I had only just discovered Automobile by the 21st century... And the space race was way out of reach.

Sunday 8th March 1998...
Is there no stopping me? Not content with vandalising Quake, Quake II and Super Stardust '96, I've now gone and named the (few) tracks on the Dungeon Keeper CD...

• Track 2: Hour 200
• Track 3: They Are Here
• Track 4: Troma
• Track 5: Radio Death
• Track 6: Second Thoughts
• Track 7: The Lord of the Land Approaches

Monday 2nd March 1998...
I don't believe it! I actually completed Wipeout 2097. It was very hard, but I finally won the Piranha challenge.
(I think I'll go and increase my rating for this game...)

Saturday 28th February 1998...
Just completed Monkey Island 2 for the second time. From this, I can definitively say: Monkey Island 2 is a better game, with bigger and better puzzles, but Monkey Island 3 is more entertaining, with better graphics and jokes. And Moneky Island 3 is very unoriginal, stealing almost all its ideas from its predecessors.

Oh, and another thing: When Monkey Island 3 was first announced, everyone said - 'How can they make a sequel? How could they continue from the ending of Monkey 2?'. But now that I have completed it again, I have found that in fact, they DID leave room for a sequel at the end of Monkey 2, thanks to a little scene after the end. Halfway through the end credits, the scene cuts back to Elaine, standing at the top of the pit, and she says something along the lines of: "What's keeping Guybrush? I hope LeChuck hasn't cast some kind of SPELL over him...". So there you go! It turns out that we could have predicted Monkey 3 after all!

Friday 27th February 1998...
Now that I have got a whole ton more memory (in the form of 64Mb and 500Mb virtual memory), I decided to try and compile my Quake 2 levels with lighting. I had never been able to do this before, because when QRAD3 (the bit that processes the lighting on the level) ran, it just sat there eating virtual memory until the hard drive was full - all 100Mb of it. And guess what? Even with 500Mb hard disk space, it still used ALL of it. A 500Mb swap file. So exactly what do I need to do to compile my levels with lighting? The only level where I have been able to do this was a really TINY one, which was just one very small cube room with three lights in it.

I also installed and played Terracide for the first time. This is a quite dull game with very awkward controls, so I will uninstall it soon. Talking of installing - I have now reinstalled almost every game I own, including Civ 2, GP2, Red Alert, Quake, Ultimate Race, Dungeon Keeper... And still 400Mb free.

Thursday 26th February 1998...
Well, well, well. It's upgrade time once again. I am the very proud owner of:

Off now to play with my new toys...

Tuesday 24th February 1998...
My joypad continues to have two shoulder buttons, and as ever, they continue to be unusable. Such stupidity. The shoulder buttons work in a weird way, but you would have thought Windows 95 would be able to sort something out...
Thanks to these shoulder buttons, this joypad is also useless when I try to use two of them for a two player game, because they interfere with each other.
Of course, it now falls to Microsoft to set things right, but apparently their Sidewinder gamepad is uncomfortable. So the PC is totally without a decent gamepad that actually works.

Monday 23rd February 1998...
New demos:
Ultimate Race Pro: Didn't work, because it was expecting a 3Dfx card. (This was after I zipped up pretty much my entire hard drive to make space for it)
Sir Meier's Gettysburg: On starting, switched my monitor rate into a refresh rate it couldn't display, thus rendering the game inoperable.

How incredibly bollock-eatingly useful.

Friday 20th February 1998...
Well, this is the end of the road for ARGnet, for the moment at least.
And you know what I find a little annoying?
Guess which section I have spent the most time on in the last six months.
Now guess which section has had NO feedback whatsoever...

Emulation and nostalgia are all very nice, guys, but I don't agree with the notion that all modern games are a shallow waste of time. Sure, a lot of them are, but that's ALWAYS been the case. It's still the same today. Graphics are important, but gameplay is more important. Thus, Super Sprint is better than Ultimate Race, but not as good as Wipeout 2097.

Yesterday I reviewed Grand Theft Auto. But if no-one reads this review, why bother? If I continue to get no feedback for this page, I will spend a lot less time on it. All new reviews would be mini-reviews. No detailed analysis.

Feedback line contacted, waiting for reply...

N E way, I've got to go now. Mumgugue blasch illab. Nowgue rip mumgugue. Mumgugue blash. Nowge, dorgun augen...

Later the same day...
The final thing on ARGnet for now: I have named all the tracks on the Super Stardust '96 CD... This was a pretty difficult thing to do, because there are a lot of tracks on this CD, but I managed it.

• Track 2: Intro
• Track 3: Don't Walk on the Grass
• Track 4: The House of Cthon
• Track 5: Alone
• Track 6: Red Letter Day
• Track 7: Behind the Comet
• Track 8: Attack of the Seven Dwarfs
• Track 9: Track Nine
• Track 10: Virgin Trains
• Track 11: Santa's Descent
• Track 12: Voyage Down the Chimney
• Track 13: Grab the Mince Pies and Run
• Track 14: Host Contacted
• Track 15: Quad Damage
• Track 16: Decontamination
• Track 17: A New Hope
• Track 18: Platform One
• Track 19: Two Minutes to Impact
• Track 20: Laser Guided
• Track 21: Light at the End of the Tunnel
• Track 22: The Iron Fence
• Track 23: Ten, Nine, Eight

Tuesday 17th February 1998...
First Encounters. I don't know whether I should love or hate this game. Judging by the experiences I've had with it today, I think I'm going to choose to hate it. Take, for example, the bit where I assassinated the leader of one of the factions in a civil war. This event instantly became the number one story in all the journals, and I there was soon a reward of c50,000 for Me, dead or alive. This is cool, I thought. Then I looked at the bulletin board. A message there said: Wanted - Pilsbry, dead or alive. I clicked on it to see what would happen (having saved the game first, of course). Hey presto, it's GAME OVER. Now that is just incredible stupidity. Realistic: yes. Gameplay value: Zero. Negative, in fact. Why not simply click on 'Quit to DOS'?

This game will almost certainly not enter into the chart. Of course, there is still a lot of plot left to go (the Thargoids haven't turned up yet), but I doubt that any of the problems I have encountered so far will suddenly vanish...

Monday 16th February 1998...
I finally got hold of Frontier: First Encounters, about three years too late. This game is very daunting and awkward to get to grips with at first. I very much doubt that it will ever be as good as Frontier was. There are many new features, but it will be a long time before I can give this game a rating. Oh, and why is Earth brown?

Later the same day...
Just a few hours after getting this game, I am totally infuriated by it. Even with the patch installed, there are far too many bugs. Enemies always attack with overwhelming force, and buying extra shields makes virtually no difference. For example, I've got a game saved just before being attacked by an Imperial Explorer with a 20MW Beam Laser (capable of destroying my Constrictor, 3 shields, in one hit). EVERY TIME I meet this craft, it is in a position just in front of me, where its laser is facing me, and it can thus always destroy me within two seconds. If I try and avoid it, by flying past it, the two ships collide, even though they didn't actually touch, and I am destroyed. I have reloaded this game literally a hundred times, and each time, the outcome is EXACTLY the same. Hate to say it, but: DaViD bRaBeN mUsT dIe!!!!!!!

Tuesday 10th February 1998...
I want to play a game, I'm looking at all the games in my collection, and I don't want to play any of them. Quake 2, Wipeout 2097, GTA, Kyodai Mahjongg... None of them have lasted me very long. Disgusting, really. Take a look at Red Alert and X-COM Apocalypse. Each of those lasted me about three months. Now THAT'S what I call long-term interest...

Wednesday 4th February 1998...
I won the second Phantom track on Wipeout 2097. I had thought that this would be the end of the game, but...
Now there is the Phantom Challenge. You have to win all eight races, in sequence, at Phantom class.
This is not actually possible. I say this because it took about a month to win the two Phantom tracks in Arcade mode - that means as many replays as I like. Also, I couldn't even win the first track on Phantom class.

On Quake 2, I changed my video mode from 640x480x24bit to 512x384x16bit. The difference? 10fps with timerefresh, 2fps with timedemo...

Friday 30th January 1998...
Completed Monkey 3. The end sequence was about ten seconds long.

How about a nice review?

I think I should buy Day of the Tentacle.

I've now added the mini-reviews section.

Thursday 29th January 1998...
I just played GTA for two hours. Except, after getting a big score, and possibly even qualify for the next level, I was in a limosine, on my way to a warehouse. To complete the (big) mission, I had to drive the car into the warehouse (without getting killed on the way). I got to the warehouse, started driving in, then the car got stuck in the wall... I couldn't move it at all, not even by ramming it with another car, so I had to destroy it and thus fail the mission, losing myself huge numbers of points. Flaws like this are ever-present in GTA.
THEN, five minutes later, I was in the middle of another mission, and the game just quit back to Windows for no reason, thus dumping my score (10 times higher than my previous best on that level) into the void... Grrrr... These flaws will take a vital 3 or 4 percent off the final review score...

Tuesday 27th January 1998...
I have just got to Chapter 2 of San Andreas on GTA. This is one of the most unforgiving games I have ever played. It is best described as a continuous cycle. Three hours of mild frustration followed by half an hour of marvelling at the inventiveness of the game.

Sunday 25th January 1998...
I have bought Grand Theft Auto. It is bloody difficult. But addictive.

Five hours later...
FUCK. GTA just crashed, over an hour into a game.
It's not as if I was doing well. But it was my first time at San Andreas, and I wanted to at least put a score on the board.

My down arrow key has started to break...

Thursday 22nd January 1998...

THERE IS A THIRD GAME IN THE CAPTAIN BLOOD/COMMANDER BLOOD SERIES...

Noooooooooooooooooooooo!

(Click here for the Captain Blood worship page. There's a new link on there to another Captain Blood worship page which I found out about just a few hours ago.)

Wednesday 21st January 1998...
I completed Dungeon Keeper. Review here.

Sunday 18th January 1998...
I just played Super Sprint for the first time since I was ten years old... And I was totally amazed - underneath the pathetic graphics and sound is a sort of okayish game... I mean, it's not exactly Civilization 2, but I was expecting it to be really bad, and it wasn't. In fact in terms of excitement and fun it is comparable to Ultim@te Race...

I also loaded up 'The Joke Game', something I did on the ST by copying the Frontier Elite II program file, and using a hex editor to change all the text in the copy - with hilarious results... Since the ST version was running very badly, I decided to try this with the PC version. Unfortunately I don't have a hex editor for the PC, so I had to use MS-DOS Edit. I wrote some very funny stuff in there, but did it work? Of course not - Edit must have messed it up. But I just thought - maybe I could use an ST hex editor...

Later...
Damn! I do not have a disk image containing a hex editor!

Saturday 17th January 1998...
I got the updated Quake II FAQ. Much of it is still wrong... I completed Quake II using PowerVR OpenGL mode for the first time. And I actually have something good to report! Units 8, 9 and 10, which are normally very boring, actually run superbly now, and look great. Of course, the speed increase is only because of the levels which have lower polygon counts...

On Dungeon Keeper, I got to the last level, played for hours without encountering a single enemy, then an infinite number of heroes appeared and I was slaughtered. Thanks for that. And the previous levels had been totally great.

Thursday 15th January 1998...
I just read the Quake II FAQ - a lot of the information (particularly regarding the 3D engine and the sound system) seems to be incorrect...

Tuesday 13th January 1998...
The time is 12:22am. I am watching 'The Midnight Hour' on BBC2, on which there is a discussion on videogames, particularly Carmageddon. The participants are as follows:

The discussion has just finished, I was surprised that they didn't all cast the idea of videogaming into the pits of hell... The Christian Democracy bloke was the most opposed member of the group; he reckons if teenagers play Tomb Raider they will get a stereotyped view of women...

Well, I suppose all these teenage boys will be in for a big disappointment when they discover that real girls aren't as... big... as Lara Croft...

Talking of controversial games, it now looks very unlikely that I will get the superb Grand Theft Auto. It still costs a ridiculous £34.99. Dungeon Keeper was £25, which is a much better deal. Mind you, I've almost finished DKeeper, so there is a small chance I will buy GTA. But not at that high price.

Friday 9th January 1998...
I got a working PowerVR OpenGL driver for Quake 2. And it is terrible. I'm sure the 3Dfx version looked better than this. And the use of coloured lighting is MASSIVELY EXCESSIVE to say the least. Also, the visuals are very choppy, partly due to constant swapping (it now uses a 50Mb swapfile), but even when it isn't swapping, it is very hard to play. Oh, and another visual thing: the changes in mip-mapping as walls recede into the distance are clearly visible. This makes it look cack. And so does the fact that the walls appear to be made out of bathroom tiles, each one lit separately. Even a simple button can clearly be seen to be made of four parts. Yes, PowerVR OpenGL, get this, almost looks WORSE than the software version...

So now I'm going to play Dungeon Keeper instead.

Late night update...
Well, I've just been playing Quake 2 for the last three hours, I am about halfway through Unit 2.
I have started to like the new look of the graphics, but I have definitely NOT started to like the appalling frame rate. So PowerVR is one of the most technically advanced cards out there? I have had one for about two weeks, and I have yet to be blown away by anything it can do. In fact I have barely been impressed. If PowerVR is one of the most technically advanced chipsets available, then all 3D cards are shite and not anywhere near as good as they were hyped to be...

Most of the slowdown on Quake 2 occurs when there are lots of things on-screen - but I thought the main strength of a 3D card was that it could display millions of polygons? Frame rate is by far the most important thing in any game, even more important than bilinear filtering or resolution. Or even texture mapping. If it wasn't, we'd all be playing Quake on 486s at 800x600. And the frame rate on Q2 with PowerVR OpenGL is in places much worse than in software at the same resolution.

Thursday 8th January 1998...
Bought Dungeon Keeper, it had been reduced to £25. Nice.

Wednesday 7th January 1998...
I found out how to do lots of cool things on Quake II, courtesy of the command list at Planetquake.

To do a timedemo, enter 'timedemo 1', then 'demomap demo1.dm2' (or demo2.dm2). In 512x384 fullscreen software I got 10fps...

For slow-motion mode, enter 'fixedtime 1'. (Although on really fast systems, the motion won't be as slow). This is totally brilliant - running around and killing guards with your blaster before they even get the chance to move. And watching the death animations in slow motion. Amazing.

Tuesday 6th January 1998...
I have just written the initial design of something which, if successful, could be one of the most amusing games of all time:

game on Quake

game on Quake will take the form of a Quake II unit, consisting of three levels. It will have a proper mission-based structure. The plot of the game is based on the final episode of the second series - the one where Matthew inadvertantly brings a woman to the brink of suicide, and then had to sort it out by going into the dreaded Outside... (For those who don't know - Matthew has a phobia of going outside, and has only been outside twice in the history of the show).

The only problem is: I don't actually know if this is possible. I have tons of great ideas for things which could happen in the game, but I don't yet know how Quake 2 actually works. In other words - to implement the mission-based structure, do I need to use Quake C, or can I just use a standard level editor? (Not that I actually have either of these for Quake 2 yet). Ah well, even if it isn't possible, I hope I got you sufficiently intrigued. If it turns out that it isn't possible, I will put the design on this page, so you can see what could have been.

Sunday 4th January 1998...
I've just been playing the demo of Moto Racer. This is a superb game - probably the best racing game ever made on the PC - but it doesn't work properly with my PowerVR card. Apparently this is because my card does not support transparent textures through Direct3D. I forced Direct3D on using a command line parameter, and the game looked superb, except all the aforesaid transparent textures (such as dirt off the tyres, and trees) messed it up slightly.

Now let me briefly tell you about the circumstances in which I bought my 3D card. A few days ago, I went into GAME in Bournemouth, picked up an Apocalypse 5D box and slapped it on the counter. I paid them a lot of money for it. Later, I opened the box, and found that the card inside was not an Apocalypse 5D, it was an Apocalypse 3Dx - worth £70 less. So I took it back, and after half an hour of them looking in their stores, they told me that they didn't actually have any Apocalypse 5Ds, and gave me a refund. So I went to GAME in Poole, which took about half an hour, and when I arrived there, I picked up an Apocalypse 5D box and slapped it on the counter. And this time they actually gave me an Apocalypse 5D. How incredibly useful of them.

Later the same day...
I just managed to get Quake II playing fullscreen. Unfortunately the minimum resolution for this is 512x384, which is too slow. The PowerVR OpenGL option still doesn't work.

Wednesday 31st December 1997...
Okay, the year is over. It's time for me to reveal, for those of you who didn't stay in enough, what happened, gaming-wise, in 1997:

The best games of 1997:

• X-COM Apocalypse: A year late - but the extra development time was obviously worthwhile. X-COM Apocalypse invented a whole new genre, sending its predecessors to an early grave. It also lasted me twice as long as Civilisation 2 - a pretty incredible feat. Yet, if you go into any games shop, you'll probably only find one copy in a concealed corner. The most underrated game of the year. BUY IT NOW.
• Quake II: Initially mindblowing, then crushingly disappointing, then once again great. Just as Doom II could never be Doom, Quake II can never be Quake, but it's still superb.
• Grand Theft Auto: I almost never recommend games that I don't own. Hopefully this one will be in my collection very soon.
• Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo: Forget Puzzle Bobble, this drops Counter Gems on it from a great height...
• Dungeon Keeper: Didn't interest me enough to make me want to buy it, but still a great game.
  (UPDATE - I bought it, and it is of course great...)

The most overrated games of 1997:

• MDK: 'The most revolutionary 3D game ever', said PC Gamer. No, I think you'll find that Quake and Doom win that category hands down. Still a thousand times better than Tomb Raider, though.
• Carmageddon: Took up a criminal (at the time) 80Mb hard disk space, which might have been okay, had this not been mostly FMV. The actual game ran like a slug on my P100. And something repeatedly rammed me into the wall, meaning I couldn't actually go anywhere. I immediately quit in disgust and deleted it. It only took five minutes to get rid of...
• Joint Strike Fighter: Not only was the gameplay poor, but the 'revolutionary' graphics engine turned out to be a bit cack as well. It looked awful on my P200. Give me A-10 Cuba! any day.
• Tomb Raider 2: More of the same tedious running and jumping around. The only game where running and jumping around is good is Super Mario 64.

Much later the same day...
I've just been playing Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (the Direct3D version, although apparently it detects my PowerVR card and uses it natively). This features the following things:

• The best graphics in any game, ever. If you ignore the bloody stupid amount of clipping. Yes, this even looked better than Sega's Model 3 arcade game 'The Lost World', which I played today for the first time. Maybe I was too far from the screen to see the detail properly...
• An awkward control system. I probably would have been able to improve this, but the configuration screen was a total nightmare, so I decided to leave the controls as they were.
• Cool weapons.
• Cool death animations.
• MASSIVE levels. Totally humungous. Even bigger than the huge level on the Jedi Knight demo.

Tuesday 30th December 1997...
Here's a list showing how all my games run with my new Apocalypse 5D video card.

• Ultimate Race: Nice, but underwhelming. Although the graphics are nice, in the tunnels you can see thousands of white pixels, which looks a bit crap. The gameplay is good, but VERY short-lived.
• Wipeout 2097: It says PowerVR EXTREME on the CD, but in fact this is just the standard Direct3D version. And it is crap. This is mostly due to the frame rate. In most places the frame rate is very low (just low enough to make it infuriating), but in some places where there is nothing happening on screen, it suddenly speeds up and becomes unplayably fast. Whoopee. Nice music, though - I'm listening to it now.
• Tomb Raider: Runs very well, apart from the fact that it won't run in Windows or with EMM386 installed. Oh, and out of the five or six times I have run it, it has crashed three or four times, mostly before the title screen is even reached. And the actual game is incredibly boring.
• Mechwarrior 2/Terracide: Not enough hard disk space to install them. What a shame.
• GLQuake: Now we're getting closer to the reason why I bought this card in the first place. GLQuake crashes with a very unpleasant error message (see yesterday's entry).
• Quake II: Not only does the PowerVR OpenGL option not work, but it also doesn't work in software any more - it is now unable to run in fullscreen mode. So, earlier today, I played a whole level in a tiny window. Thank you for that, Videologic.
• DX-Ball: The best shareware Breakout clone (if you don't include Biprolex), and a showcase for DirectDraw. At first hung the machine when tried with my new card. I then installed DirectX 2 (aiieeeeee....), and it worked, except for some very annoying graphical corruption.
• DEATH: Performance rating of 10 - four better than the previous video card, but three worse than the old video card with 2Mb.
• Jedi Knight: Aha, now we're getting somewhere. Runs like a dream in 640x480x16bit. Still playable in 800x600, but I prefer the higher frame rate of the lower resolution.
• Monster Truck Madness: One of the first Direct3D games. Seems to run no better than before.

(But Jedi Knight shows that there is hope yet. I blame most of the problems on DirectDraw, not Direct3D.)

Monday 29th December 1997...
I am now the owner of one Videologic Apocalypse 5D video card. I don't have time now to tell you about the terrible events that occurred before I was able to get it, I'll reveal this later.

Performance is generally worse than expected... But the terrible thing is that: PowerVR native things work. Direct3D works. But the VITAL thing, OpenGL, does not work. In fact, Quake II does not even work properly in software mode - it messes up if I run it fullscreen, so it now spends all of its time in a tiny window. If I select 'PowerVR OpenGL' as the video driver, it just says 'Can't load pvrgl' or something, and returns to software mode. The original GLQuake gives the unpleasant message: 'The OPENGL32.DLL file is linked to missing export SGL.DLL:sgl_get_ini_int.' Lovely.

Friday 26th December 1997...
I started yet another game of Quake II, and wrote the review.

Thursday 25th December 1997...
I have completed Quake II for the second time, this time on Hard difficulty. Now I am wondering if id will include a Nightmare mode with the next version.

I found a great secret on the last level. Totally superb. Check it out. I'm now off to play SPF2T (one player, this time)

Wednesday 24th December 1997...
I played SPF2T two player yesterday. And it was every bit as good as I had imagined it would be. It was especially good playing on Original Mode as Dan. I played as him to give my opponent a decent chance of winning. In fact, this made it so easy for him, that he won every game. But it was still brilliant fun. This is undoubtedly the best two player, one computer PC game ever made.
(Of course, when not playing as Dan, I totally thrashed my opponent, ten matches to nil...)

Quake II seems to be a lot better the second time around. I have found some more bugs, though. I won't be able to review it properly until I get my 3D card.

Later the same day...
Now that I'm up to Unit 6 on Quake II (hard difficulty), things have suddenly got depressing again. For me, the game rapidly goes downhill after Unit 3.

Sunday 21st December 1997...
I have just completed Quake II on Medium difficulty.

I can't say when a full review will be here, but I can tell you this: I did not have as much fun playing Quake II as I did playing Quake. Or even Doom II. Maybe something to do with my lack of 3D card? Who can say? I will get one soon, and then I will have the full picture.

Basically, Quake II didn't live up to the hype. Admittedly that would have been an impossible feat, but the fact is that I spent a whole month in a solid state of salivation. Now, two days after getting it, I have been left totally underwhelmed. I am depressed...

(As if to contradict myself - the first time I played it, last Monday, on a system with a 3Dfx card, I was totally blown away by its brilliance...)

Later the same day...
I have now named all of the Quake II CD tracks. Here they are:

• Track 2: Spread 'Em
• Track 3: Security Breach
• Track 4: Eat My Shotgun
• Track 5: Drilling Platform
• Track 6: The Makron's Palace
• Track 7: Splat
• Track 8: I'm Scared
• Track 9: Reinforcements Have Arrived
• Track 10: Be Afraid
• Track 11: Cold Blood

Friday 19th December 1997...
Quake II is here.

Yes, here... At last.

The time is 00:36 (so technically it is Saturday), and I have been playing it since 9:00 this morning.

I have been playing on Medium difficulty, and in a full day of playing, I have reached the middle of Unit 8. In other words, I am quite close to the end.

Because I have yet to get my 3D card, I have been playing it in 320x240 software mode. I cannot emphasise how bad this is. Imagine playing Doom, on a 386, on low detail mode, at the minimum screen size. Yes, it's a bit like that. It makes everything - especially enemies - very hard to make out.

So far, I have to say that I am disappointed. I don't know whether this situation will improve with time. As with most eagerly awaited games, things will probably get better.
The biggest disappointment of the game is the size of Unit 7. Or lack of it. All through Unit 6, I could see in the distance, the MASSIVE structure that was the Big Gun. I was relishing the prospect of actually getting up close to this thing. In Unit 7, my task was to destroy it. I was hoping for yet another big set of challenges, like the ones in all the previous units. I was also cautiously hoping that the Gun would be present in full 3D glory, as opposed to a 2D texture map on the sky.
As it turned out, Unit 7 consisted of one tiny map, with less than 20 monsters, and no sign of the Gun (presumably I was inside it). It took less than five minutes of playing time to finish. This is just infuriating. Okay, so maybe the engine wouldn't have been able to cope with drawing such an enormous object (it must have been at least two miles high), but they should at least have done SOMETHING. Imagine a different version of Star Wars - made in a parallel universe - where, instead of attacking it externally, the Rebels had teleported inside the Death Star, set some explosives, and then teleported out, without even having seen it. That would have been crap, right? And it is here as well.

On a lighter note, one thing which is definitely a step forward is the ability to crouch - not just you but also your enemies. In Hexen 2, the crouch key was rarely needed, and it had very little importance to the gameplay. In Quake II, it is a vital part of the game, which also adds to the sense of immersion. Instead of tedious shoot, strafe into cover, strafe back, shoot again tactics, you can now employ Time Crisis style techniques, ducking behind bits of the scenery while your enemies are shooting. This is cool.

I have just started naming the tracks on the Quake II CD. The ones I have come up with so far are even more ingenious than my original Quake track names. Full list coming very soon.

Anyway, I am now avidly awaiting 'Trinity', id's next game. Probably not due for at least one and a half years, but there is no doubt about it - it WILL be worth the wait. Trinity (it is not known if this will be the actual release title - it doesn't quite have the same ring to it as 'Quake' or 'Doom') will use IFS technology - the same technique that the disappointing Joint Strike Fighter used to create its landscapes. I cannot find words adequate to describe how optimistic I am about this game...

Wednesday 17th December 1997...
Quake II is still not here. And I am totally stuck on Monkey Island 3. So I booted up PC Gamer's Ocean CD, which I got a few months ago. Oh, what fun...

I decided to play the demo of I-War. This game got 90% in PC Gamer, and was said to be 'a credible alternative to TIE Fighter'. Cool.
So I ran the demo, and was plunged straight into the game without even being told what the keys were. I then proceeded to fly around a bit, shooting things but not knowing whether they were on my side or not. And I was totally baffled by the rows and rows of strange numbers - what were they for? Also, I got a pretty poor frame rate. When the mission finally timed out, it turned out that I had completed two of the three objectives - yet I had just been randomly shooting - and it hadn't even seemed like I had done any damage. All in all a pretty bad way to spend five minutes. For all I know, this could be an incredible game - but how am I supposed to find out if I don't know what to do?

I looked around at some of the other stuff on the CD, and found a rolling demo of 'Outcast', a game which uses voxel graphics. Which means that it won't be helped at all by that lovely new 3D card. I was very surprised, however, to see that the game's environment actually looked pretty stunning. The level of detail was mugh higher than in any game I had seen before. For the first time, the great outdoors actually looked like the great outdoors. Impressive stuff. No idea what the actual game is like, though...

Elsewhere on the CD, I came across something called... well, I can't remember what it was called, it's that forgettable. There was a screenshot, and it looked very pre-rendered, which made me suspect that this game was a Myst clone. I decided to take a risk, however - I ran the playable demo. When I started the game, it turned out that I had been right - it was a Myst clone. I quit the demo in disgust, and returned to the main menu of the demo CD.
For some reason, though, something was accessing the CD. A few seconds later, I was again at the main menu of the game I had just run. And the menu I had used to run this game had come back, even though I had only just closed it. Very annoyed, I closed both of them again. And whaddaya know? They both inexplicably ran themselves again.
What is going on here?, I thought. Have they installed a virus or something? A virus that will not rest until I actually play their shitty little game?
By this point I was totally infuriated, and quit the whole lot using Control-Alt-Delete. Then I once again loaded up the menu to look at the rest of the CD. My anger factor increased further when I wasn't allowed to skip the 'Ocean' animation - even though I had already seen it. Grrrr....

Finally, I decided to re-install 'Wetrix'. This is quite an interesting looking game, but the last time I installed it, it had run really badly. I reckoned that it might be better with my new P200, although I wasn't very confident. And was I right? Of course.
Once again, even the menu was sluggish - it was like running Quake on a 486 with an ISA video card. Except worse. I started a new game, and tried to make head or tail of it, but this was pretty difficult seeing how I hadn't been told what the aim of the game was. So, about thirty seconds later, I got the message 'Game Over'. And it was at this point that the game hung.
You know when Ren (of Ren and Stimpy) gets angry, and his veins bulge, and his eyeballs almost burst out in fury, and his whole body is ravaged by insane rage? Need I say more?

Monday 15th December 1997...
The Curse of Monkey Island has arrived. But Quake II has not. And, having got stuck on Monkey Island, I am now incredibly bored again.

So, what is the sequel to the best graphic adventure ever made like?

I'll reveal all in the review (which may be some time, depending on how long it takes for me to complete it), but here are some first (and second) impressions.
It borrows a whole ton of ideas from Monkey Island 1.
Hmm, I can't think of anything else to say about it. Some of the jokes are superb. As ever in graphic adventures, it is frequently annoying, particularly when you are trying to solve a puzzle, but are unable to because Guybrush says "I can't use the thingy with that!" - when it would almost certainly work in real life...
As with any Monkey Island game, there are those fun occasions when you get to cause total mayhem with people. (For example, those times in Monkey 2 when you sawed off the pirate's wooden leg, and the time when you framed that woman pirate).
The graphics are probably the best 2D graphics ever seen, although this doesn't do anything to prevent those infuriating occasions when you can't progress due to not noticing a vital object in the scenery. This massive wart on the face of graphic adventures is just as present as ever. In several places I have had to turn up the brightness on my monitor in order to actually see the room I'm in...

But is it any good? The answer is of course, yes. Is it as good as Monkey Island 2? Only time will tell; at the moment I'd say it's pretty equal.

Oh, and you know how Guybrush has looked different in each of the three games? Here's a quote from the manual:
Now, in THE CURSE OF MONKEY ISLAND, somehow Guybrush has escaped [from the Carnival of the Damned, at the end of Monkey 2] and once again found his true love... whose fort is under attack by forces of the zombie pirate. Can Guybrush defeat LeChuck? Will Elaine take him back? Will Guybrush ever learn the secret of Monkey Island? And how come Guybrush looks so much taller in this game?
(Next to this text is a thing showing what Guybrush looked like in each game)

Anyway, is that the time? See 'ya.

Late night update...
Here's how bored I was - I reinstalled the demo of Joint Strike Fighter, to see how it ran on my P200. Once again it took ten minutes to install. It took up 110Mb of disk space - yes, that's just the demo. And, just as before, the actual game was terrible. I was able to run it in a better video mode than before, but there wasn't any noticable difference in the graphics. In fact, it was pretty much impossible to see anything, because the ground was really dark, and the sky really bright. Anyway, after about one minute of this torture, I quit and banished it from my hard drive for ever. If its engine is so incredible, why does it run at half the frame rate of F22 Lightning 2, and look less than half as good? No cigar? They haven't even got a tiny particle of hot ash...

After that, I played Doom95. Having played Quake II a few hours earlier, though, this was just stupid. The difference is unbelievable - talk about dated. It has dated as badly as Pong.

Anyway, I've now got a lovely 320Mb free hard disk space, all ready for the installation of what will from now on be known as 'The Beautiful Game'. With a lot of luck, it should arrive tomorrow.

Saturday 13th December 1997...
Quake II is here.

Well, not here, actually. Annoyingly. I am getting it via mail order, but it hasn't arrived yet. But I have played it on someone else's machine - with 3Dfx acceleration. And what are my first impressions?

Quake II RULES...

Quake II is UNREAL. It will NUKEM. It will take up HALF your LIFE. It makes you hungry for BLOOD. All other games are its PREY. It is definitely not DOOMed...

(Hmm, can't seem to think of ones for Wolfenstein or Daikatana...)

Yes, there is no doubt about it. Quake II is one of the best - if not THE best - games of all time. Only time will tell, but the signs are good. Here's a list of what is good about Quake II.

• The weapons. Forget my past doubts - they rock. So far I've used the shotgun, the super shotgun and the machine gun. And they are all amazing. Of course, I've also used the standard blaster, which, as per any initial weapon in a game like this, is rubbish.
• The monsters. I previously thought it would be boring, having a load of monsters that all looked very similar. But at the risk of infuriating the Daily Mail, it is a thousand times more fun shooting monsters that look human. A THOUSAND TIMES. NO EXAGGERATION.
• The painskins. Cool.
• The flies. A lot more convincing than the ones in Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker...
• The levels. And the graphics. And everything else.

• The music! I totally forgot about the music. It is excellent - possibly the best music I have ever heard in a videogame.

• Software mode. Ugh. And the terrible thing is, this is the mode I will have to play it in... DIE, VIDEOLOGIC!
• It needs 250Mb hard disk space. Or, alternatively, it could run off the CD. I've seen this. There are constant pauses for loading, during which the sound messes up. It even has to load stuff off the CD when you press ESC to get to the menu. I've started trying to maximise my hard-disk space, but I'm not optimistic. (I've got 200megs free so far, but not much more can go.)

Wednesday 10th December 1997...
There are these things called 'Christmas holidays' (that's probably 'thanksgiving vacations' or something in American), so I won't be around for the next three weeks. When I get back, around the start of January, I will have played some incredible games, such as Quake II, The Curse of Monkey Island, and Ultim@te Race. I might even have a review or two. So create a bookmark to this page, and come back in January. It'll be your loss if you don't...

Update - I just tried to order a 3D card (an 8meg Apocalypse 5D), and I was told that they were unavailable until after Christmas.
AIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE...
Videologic! What are you thinking of?! How are you going to win the 3D card war if people can't buy your cards? What the fuck am I going to do now? I want to play Quake II with 3D acceleration, and I NEED a new 2D card. Suddenly Christmas is looking a lot less fun. Thanks.

Sunday 7th December 1997...
Hello, I'm on speed.

No, you misunderstand. I am marvelling at the wonder of the Intel Pentium Processor with MMX Technology. In fact only just now, a dolphin jumped out of the CPU. And there are loads of coloured lights inside my PC. And not, for example, three miles of parallel cables which helpfully prevent access to the jumpers.

I've been testing it all afternoon. Here are the results I got:

• DEATH: Rating of 14. In comparison to another P200, which got 8. Lower numbers are better, so his is twice as fast. In fact, mine is about the same speed as my old P100.
• Quake: 37fps in mode 0. 9fps in 800x600. 20fps in 512x384. Another disappointing performance, but way better than before.
• Hexen 2: 30fps in 320x200. Unplayable in 640x480.
• Daytona USA Deluxe: Very impressive in 640x480. Which was quite useful because all the other modes were greyed out. Still a rubbish game, though...
• Wipeout 2097: Just as unplayable as before.
• Sega Rally: Slightly better than before.
• MDK: Rating of 86 (five slower than other bloke with P200). Silky-smooth gameplay, except for the bombing run, which is as unresponsive as ever.
• Tomb Raider: A bit cack. Same speed in VGA, slower than before in SVGA.
• Tomb Raider 2: Very sluggish, then crashed after a few minutes. Yech.
• PaCifiST: No noticable difference.

Saturday 6th December 1997...
Quake II will be out on Friday the 12th of December. This is the universally agreed date on uk.games.computer.quake.

I will have my P200-MMX in just an hour or so... Hopefully I will not have to reinstall Windows like I did when I 'upgraded' to my 6x86MX-200 (with the wrong motherboard).

Friday 5th December 1997...
The day arrives. I haven't been into town yet, so I don't know if it's here. If it is, I will buy it. I am leaving in one hour.
I wouldn't be that surprised if it isn't there, though. And that would also mean that I would not be forced to play it for a day on my old, slow PC (which is a malfunctioning 6x86MX-200 which runs Quake at the speed of a P90).
I will report back later...

Okay, I'm back from town. And did they have it?

NO!

I said a while ago that I would buy Grand Theft Auto. The chances of this happening are now much smaller. The main reasons for this are that a) It costs too much (£34.99), and b) It hadn't been released when I first went down to the shop with the intention of buying it. After that, my longing for it tailed off dramatically. There is an important lesson for publishers here!

Thursday 4th December 1997...
It's almost here... My P200-MMX will be here the day after. Now all I've got to do is get a 3D card. But that could take weeks.

I've been playing this Pacman game called 'Greedy'. It is good, but the annoying control system can often cause unnecessary deaths. In fact, in my last game, I died THREE TIMES IN A ROW in the same place, just because it wouldn't let me go down a certain corridor. When I say three times in a row, I mean in the same place, within seconds of each other. And it's crippleware - it ends after just a few levels.

LISTEN, THE MEATHEADS WHO DESIGNED THIS! If you had spent just a few extra days sorting out the control technique, and allowed all the levels to be played without having to register, you would have created one of the best games the PC has ever seen. As it is, the control problems totally cancel out the coolness of the new innovations. Also, people aren't going to register something that only takes five minutes to complete - that's not enough to evaluate the game properly. If you had given away all the levels, people would have had a lot more respect for you and would have been more willing to register. You'll probably still get quite a few registrations anyway, but only from people who haven't played a proper Pacman clone before...

If you read this, MAKE THESE CHANGES! I assure you it will be worth it.

Note from later in the day - I just just finally zipped up the once-great shareware masterpiece, 'EITtris'. Nine months ago, having got totally fed up with Red Alert, and with the eagerly awaited LBA2, X-COM Apocalypse and Riverworld being delayed on a monthly basis, EITtris was just about the only game I played. When version 1.22 was released, I thought we would soon be hearing the sounds of wedding bells. Alas, it was not to be. v1.22 changed one of the sound effects to one that I didn't like as much, it toughened up the stupid computer players so that they were capable of easily thrashing the player. And the music didn't loop - it just played once, then stopped.

"Wait a minute," you say. "Why is it so bad that it improved the AI?". Well, maybe. But I always got a huge buzz out of thrashing an enemy who was rated 'Completely Unfair'...

The only amazing addition to 1.22 was the creation of a Web-based global high score table. Excellent! So I played the game a lot, and eventually I had a totally stunning game where I got an incredible score. My God! I thought. How did I do that? This has to be the best score possible! I'll be number one in the world! Etc...
So I went and posted my high score, and guess what? It turned out to only be the seventh best score in the world. To say I was gutted was an understatement. That incredible moment of glory had been taken away, and it was gone for ever.

"But," you say, "surely at the end of the day, you should accept that you were beaten?". But I don't accept that! You see, as it turns out, there are three ways to get a ridiculously high score on EITtris:
1) Get loads of 'slow-down' power ups, which prolong your life. The chances of getting a decent number of these in any one game are incredibly small.
2) Get a 386. They allow you to play the game in slow motion, which naturally takes all the skill out of it. This happens to a much lesser extent on slow 486s.
3) Hack it.
If you go there now, you will find that the top places have all been occupied by hackers. The top score that I saw was around 15 million. Whereas my so-called 'incredible' score was around 200,000-400,000 (I can't remember, it was so long ago). The second the 386 owners entered the chart, my enjoyment of the game - the game which I had considered to be possibly the best shareware game ever written - was just totally destroyed. Never again did I have fun when playing it. Something incredible was gone.

The moral of this story is: Don't hack or 386 these kinds of games. It's just really low.

Anyway, as I was saying about half an hour ago, I've now played my last game on it. EITtris has quickly dropped out of favour with me, leaving the ingenious Biprolex+ as the only shareware game remaining in my top ten. And it's only a matter of time before that goes as well...

Monday 1st December 1997...
Why are we waiiiiting.....

I played X-COM Apocalypse in an attempt to pass the time, but this yielded no pleasure.

Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II, Quake II.
It had better be bloody good or the disappointment will scar me for life...

Sunday 30th November 1997...
My word.

I have finished what was almost certainly my last ever game of Civilisation II. And I couldn't have done it in more triumphant style - I got a rating of 123%, compared to my previous best of 87%. Here are the stats:

• The last game: Pepperami the Lion-Hearted of the Carthaginians (to A.D.2003), Population: 55,570,000, Score: 2054 (Prince), Civilisation Rating: 123%
• My previous best: Ham Sandwich the Fair of the Babylonians (to A.D.2015), Population: 43,340,000, Score: 876 (Emperor), Civilisation Rating: 87%

As with most games on Prince difficulty, I managed to get a significant technological advantage over my opponents. This lead to me eventually conquering all the empires except one tiny little one.
Now, I could have just gone on to conquer this last one - but the game would then have been finished. And the bonus for conquering the world would have been very small. So instead, I decided to let him live. This left me with about a hundred extra years in which to make my population go through the roof. This was also plenty of time for building a huge spaceship (the bigger your spaceship, the higher your final score). So I gradually increased the luxury rate over the years (as the population increased), and in 1992 I launched the biggest possible spaceship. Eleven years later, it arrived at Alpha Centurai, giving me a very nice 400 points. Oh, and the Peace bonus was very useful as well (100 bonus points because there had been 100 years of peace). So that's how you do it. Of course, this feat would be pretty much impossible to achieve on higher difficulties unless you're the programmer...

This leaves me sitting around with nothing to do for the next week, other than waiting for Quake II to be released...

Saturday 29th November 1997...
I got PC Gamer today, and there was a review of this thing called 'Quake II'. More on that later.

There was also a demo of Total Annihiliation. Not before time. It's okay for Westwood to hold their demos back for months after the game is released - they've got a proven track record. But I really think that we should have seen demos of TA and Dark Reign many months ago. Right now there are tons of great games being released all the time, so the demos of these two games were going to have to be damned perfect. So was TA perfect? No way.
On the first mission, the task was to select some units, and send them to the top of the map, killing some enemies on the way. Not exactly a stunning start.
On the second mission, I had to build a base. This sounded a lot more promising. I told my commander to build some solar power things and some metal digging things (I can't remember exactly what they were called). Then I had to build a thing which would manufacture robots. But on the sidebar, there were six building icons, and four of them were greyed out. So where was this robot factory thing? I spent about half an hour just making my commander walk around, destroying trees, and after all that time I still had no idea how to build this factory.
As you can imagine, I was getting incredibly annoyed by this time. I looked at the tutorial. It just said that I should build a robot factory. It didn't say how.
Listen up, the fools who wrote this tutorial. A tutorial is not a tutorial if it just tells you what to do - it also has to tell you how to do it. Otherwise, how are you going to know?
Anyway, I then discovered that my Commander had a great big thing called a 'Distruptor Gun'. Using this weapon, I went and took on the enemy base, and won. With one unit. (Although it wasn't easy).
On the third mission, there were a lot more enemies, and just as before I wasn't able to build any factories. One extra building icon was available, but that was just for a Wind Power Generator. As before, I just sat there for ages wondering what to do. Eventally the enemy managed to destroy the units which I was supposed to protect, so the game was over. So, all in all, a very dull, annoying, tedious experience...

A few hours later I came back to it. I did the first mission. I got to the second mission. Once again I walked around wondering what to do. While I was doing this, I inadvertantly clicked on a certain area of the screen - which was just below the building icons. And lo and behold, a new set of icons appeared, including the robot factory.
AIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE...
It turns out that there were two grey arrows underneath the building icons. They were so grey and inconspicuous that I had never, at any point in the last three hours, even vaguely noticed their existence...
So I continued playing the game, and it was a lot more fun than it had been previously. But the damage had been done. I finished the demo, but none of it had been massively mind-blowing. The following excuse was given in PC Gamer:
... believe us when we say you're not even scratching the surface yet. The demo contains about 20 of the 150 units in action and no nukes, plasma weapons or any of the brilliant air and water units. Oh well.
So why didn't they include all this better stuff in the demo? I seem to recall that the demo of the original C&C contained a mission from the middle of the game - to demonstrate all the cool units that were available. That was good. This (TA) is not. Of course, the people behind it will probably not give a &*$#, because it has already sold in large numbers. But it is this kind of attention to detail which separates very good games from mind-blowing ones.

There was also a demo of Dark Reign, but I couldn't be arsed to play it. I installed Screamer Rally, but it insisted on running in 16 bit colour. This was a problem, because my video card has this problem with some games where the frame rate drops to 2fps (no exaggeration) in 16 bit colour. I think this is probably because I only have 1 meg of video RAM. That said, GTA runs fine in 24bit colour... Soon I will have an Apocalypse 5D, so this should be able to manage better.

Okay, back to Quake II. Despite the review ('The best game ever'), I still have doubts. Of course, this is the case with many eagerly awaited games. Here is a full comprehensive doubt list:

• Coloured lighting. Has it been used too much? The rolling demo on the CD suggested that it had.
• The enemies. They all look the same, i.e. dull and bland.
• The weapons. I don't like the side-placing. Also, the shotgun doesn't seem to have the same 'kick' as in Quake. (And Quake's super-shotgun had about half the 'kick' of the super-shotgun from Doom II).

And finally, I will ALMOST CERTAINLY have my P200-MMX in exactly one week (i.e. one day after I buy Quake II)...

Wednesday 26th November 1997...
I was a bit annoyed by the way the tracks were called 'Track 2, Track 3, Track 4', etc, when I played the Quake CD, so I made up my own track names. See if you agree with my judgement:

• Track 2: Intro
• Track 3: He's Behind You!
• Track 4: Santa's Workshop
• Track 5: Mystical Helicopter
• Track 6: Eastern Enforcer
• Track 7: Tedium Maximum
• Track 8: The Old Forest Road
• Track 9: Jungle Abduction
• Track 10: Central Heating
• Track 11: We all live in a brown submarine

Tuesday 25th November 1997...
Just a week after zipping it up, I unzipped Civilisation 2 and started playing it again. I had to physically rip myself away from the game so that I could write this.

Saturday 22nd November 1997
I've been playing the Grand Theft Auto demo for most of the day, so here's my analysis:

Reasons to buy Grand Theft Auto:

• If you bump in to someone while running along, they shout 'Screw you, asshole!'.
• You can steal stupidly fast cars and go joyriding.
• You can be a getaway driver. A brilliant moment is driving up to the bank, with the alarm bells ringing, waiting for the robber to get into the car, and starting to move away before he's even shut the door. And this is just as good the second time around.
• Running over a policeman gives you 1000 points (10 times more than other people).
• The AI for the police is superb.
• You can get loads of points by picking up a machine gun and shooting anything that moves.
• Hearing the screams of people you narrowly missed is almost as good as running them over.
• It runs at a decent speed in 24bit colour!
• It's the most addictive game I've played all year, full stop. "Just ten more gos..."

Reasons not to buy Grand Theft Auto:

• You've just picked up the bank robber, you drive to the hotel with thousands of police chasing you, you get there, you have to drive into a garage, you're at the wrong angle to it, you have to reverse to get into position, while you're doing this a policeman opens your door and arrests you. You don't even get the option of punching him in the face, buying some extra time. The whole mission is blown. This is crap.
• The police are unrealistically fast. You run over a few people and ten seconds later you're surrounded by five police cars. I think not.
• Control when you're on foot is crap. You turn at angles of 45 degrees, so if the person you're trying to shoot is at the right angle, it is impossible to get him. The person is generally a policeman, and he arrests you, often meaning you fail the mission.
• Events can be very hard to follow sometimes.
• It's not very forgiving. The tinest mistake and it's: MISSION FAILED!
• When you're going over a bridge, the upper part of the bridge can make it impossible to see other cars (and sometimes your own car).
• Pistols are crap, and there aren't enough machine guns around...

So, the vital question: Am I going to buy it? And the answer is: Yes. I don't know when, though - if I see it in the shops for £29.99, I'll buy it, but if it's any more, it could be a lot longer before I get it. (Monkey Island 3 is currently a ridiculous £34.99 in the shops, so I'm going to get it through Special Reserve).

There is a tiny chance that I will have my P200MMX soon...

A few hours later...

I've just played the demo of Broken Sword II, and very nice it was as well. I didn't really know what to expect because I had never played Broken Sword I, but pleasingly, the demo contained various humourous elements reminiscent of those times in Monkey Island 2 when Guybrush would innocently steal a vital piece of equipment (or the time when he framed one of his 'friends').

Friday 21st November 1997
I got the latest issue of PC Zone. I bought it because it had a demo of Grand Theft Auto, and also, it said it had news on X-COM 4. I'll deal with the latter first:

X-COM: Interceptor is - cardiac arrest - not a strategy game. It's an Elite-style space shoot 'em up... As yet there are no indications as to whether it will be any good or not. The only thing that is clear is that we will have to wait for X-COM 5 before we can get back to proper, man-to-anthropod, battles.

Then there's the demo of Grand Theft Auto. I don't want to spend all day sitting here writing this, so I'll just give you the basics. It's great fun to play, but can be very annoying at times. Particularly when you're standing next to a car you want to steal, and you keep pressing 'Return', but it doesn't actually let you get in for ages. Also, getting lost is very easy. And the game itself is quite difficult. Nicking stupidly fast cars is fun, though. And running people over is brilliant...

I also played the demo of 'Age of Empires'. I was quite nervous when I loaded it because I thought there would be a chance that I would love it and have to go and buy it. But as it turns out I was disappointed. The game is basically a cross between Civ 2, Settlers 2, Warcraft and Red Alert - but it isn't as good as any of them. Not even Warcraft. It's just dull and tedious.

Monday 17th November 1997
I saw something unusual in WH Smiths today - the US edition of PC Gamer. And from reading just a few pages I can confirm what some of the Australian readers of PC Gamer UK said - the US version is a pile of $%£*!
I base this judgement on their review of X-COM: Apocalypse - so far the best game of the year in my opinion (although Quake II is likely to steal the glory). They gave it 86%, and said that the turn based option was good. As anyone who has played the game properly will know, the new real-time option is a stunning gameplay advance which all developers could (and should) learn from. Whereas the turn-based option is dull, monotonous shit. And that's from someone who really liked the previous two X-COM games (which were turn-based only).

Further evidence that PC Gamer USA can't be trusted can be found in their 1997 Top 50. According to this, the best game of all time is Doom. Which, and I hate to be so Daily Mail-ish, is wrong. Doom is not the best game of all time. Maybe it was in 1994, but not now. Quake was around seventh in this chart. Even though it is better than Doom. And that includes the single player game. "Wait!" I hear you cry. "What makes you say Quake is a better single player game than Doom? Remember how you had the opportunity to have masses of monsters on-screen at a time?". To which I reply: "Yes. I remember. I also remember running around in Doom for hours, trying to find the last key, or just getting totally lost. That never happens in Quake. And the multiplayer game is incredible. And it's really great the way you can look in any direction. So that's why Quake is better than Doom."
In second place in their chart was Heroes of Might and Magic 2. Hmmm. Why do the Americans like this so much? Don't get me wrong - it's a really great game - when I got the demo I played it solidly for a week. But no way is it the second best game of all time. It's brilliant while it lasts, and has great presentation - but at the end of the day it can't hold a candle to Civilisation 2.
Monkey Island 2 was miles down the chart. Why?

I know that PC Gamer US is, of course, written for the US audience. And different countries often have different preferences in terms of what games they like to play. For example, the Japanese like to play lots of RPGs. But what is it with the Americans? Why slag off such an incredible game as X-COM: Apocalypse? I know many developers would be pleased to get a rating of 86%. But X-COM is up there with the best games ever made, and should have got at least 90%.
Why say that Doom is better than Quake? The only explanation is that it could be misguided nostalgia. Seriously, guys, which game do you play deathmatch in your lunch breaks? Doom or Quake? If you seriously prefer Doom, you need help. It was incredible at the time, but now it's been superseded. Get with the 20th century, dudes.
Maybe if any Americans read this they could e-mail me and try and explain what is going through these peoples' heads...

Sunday 9th November 1997
Yesterday I downloaded MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator), along with three games - Joust, Robotron, and Galaga.
Two of these are pretty crap, and one of them is totally stunning... Jeff Minter always went on about how great the original Robotron was, but I had assumed there was not much point in playing it as Llamatron was probably just as good... But to my horror, it turned out that the action in the original is about three times as fast as Llamatron! On each level the screen is packed so full of baddies that there is barely any black space... And of course, the dual controls are retained (in Llamatron, I once tried to use two joysticks, but it was just too cumbersome).
So how does Robotron 2084 compare to its 90s update, Robotron X? Let's look at all the points:

• X takes five minutes to load, 2084 takes five seconds.
• On X, you can't see the entire play area at once, which is crap.
• The frame rate is a lot higher on 2084...
• On the other hand, 2084 is incredibly difficult. After all, it is an arcade game. I have yet to get past wave 10 (compared to level 171 on Llamatron)...

Wednesday 5th November 1997
I got PC Gamer today, and Edge yesterday. The big disappointment is with Joint Strike Fighter, which got poor reviews. Nevertheless, I installed the demo to see what the graphics were like. The demo took up a criminal 80Mb, and when I finally managed to clear enough disk space to get it to run, it turned out that the graphics actually looked rather crap. Admittedly I was running it in 320x200, but it didn't seem to be drawing that far into the distance. And although in places there was lots of stuff on the ground, it wasn't particularly impressive looking stuff.
Tomb Raider 2 just crashes when I try to run it. PC Gamer say that the clock has to be set back by 1 year when running this demo (no, I don't know why), but it doesn't work even if I do that. (If I don't do it, it doesn't even crash, it just does nothing).
At least Hexen 2 and Jedi Knight work. I was very surprised when I played Hexen 2 when I saw that it had transparent water without 3D acceleration. What's more, it didn't even have any effect on frame rate. Although, if I could choose between high speed bilinear filtering or high speed transparency...
VERY BAD NEWS - Half Life has been delayed for four months. Aiieeeee....

Late night update: I played the 'revolutionary' Artificial Life game 'Galapagos'. The idea is to guide this spider thing called 'Mendel' through a weird 3D world. The twist is that you don't control him directly - he is an independent being with his own thoughts. You have to influence his movements by manipulating the environment - like switching lights on or off, or redirecting moving platforms.
Galapagos has been eagerly awaited by many gamers who were intrigued by its AL concepts. Admittedly, the first AL game, Creatures, didn't take the world by storm... So is Galapagos any better?
Frankly, no. It's crap.
I knew that I wouldn't be too impressed by the demo, having read the review in PC Gamer a month ago, which gave it a percentage somewhere in the 20s. But of course, as with JSF, I wanted to just take a quick look to see what it was like. So I installed the demo. Unlike JSF, it didn't take up a stupid amount of space. Soon I was in the game itself.
There was an intro (which seemed to be unskippable) with some woman talking about Mendel and the world of Galapagos, but I didn't listen to this because I was watching TV. Eventually, the intro ended and the game started for real. Mendel was on this lit platform and just kept walking from end to end, continuously. As he did this, the camera zoomed around constantly. The graphics were reasonably impressive, and the frame rate, although low, wasn't unbearably low.
Since Mendel was just walking around over the same path, I decided to get him to go somewhere else. I did this by clicking on the platform on which he was standing. This switched off the light that illuminated it. Mendel did not like being plunged into darkness, so he stepped off the side of the ledge and landed on a slightly lighter platform.
Then I spent a while trying to find somewhere else for him to go. Eventually I got him to go down this tunnel. And this is where the bad stuff starts to happen.
Mendel is walking down this curving tunnel, and the camera is behind him. What this means is that you can't actually see where he's going. This is the first evidence of one of the major flaws in the game: The camera angles are completely useless. They rarely show you where Mendel is going, preferring to do some fancy cinematic sweeps and zooms.
When we enter the next room, we find the second, much worse, flaw.
The room consists of a massive drop, but in the middle there are loads of moving platforms. These are similar to the logs that you get at the top of the screen on the ancient game Frogger.
Now, Frogger is annoying enough in those situations where you narrowly miss a log, but imagine how bad it would be if you didn't actually have any control over the frog... Yes, this part of Galapagos is like that.
You have a tiny amount of control in that you can reverse the direction of each moving platform by clicking on it. The platforms constantly bounce from one side of the room to the other, and they are generally 'out of sync'. This means that you have to change their direction in order to get them moving adjacent to each other. This is awkward enough, but when the camera view keeps moving, it is a tad infuriating.
Nevertheless, I persevered, and Mendel was soon at the other end of the room. I had not been helped by the fact that sometimes he chose to go back the way he had come, destroying all my hard work. Anyway, he was now at the other end of the room, and there was this final moving platform I had to get him on. This one moved vertically as well as horizontally, so it was a lot more difficult to get Mendel to step onto it. In fact it was so difficult that he didn't succeed - instead he fell to his death and the game started again from the beginning...
When will these developers learn? It's not enough to make a great engine (JSF) or have ground breaking AL technology (Creatures/Galapagos) - the actual game has to be good as well. Creatures was originally marketed as a game, but is now seen as a kind of interactive multimedia edutainment experience thing. Unfortunately I haven't played it yet, but it's bound to be better than Galapagos. At the end of the day, though, AL has a very long way to go before it will become widespread in games.

Anyway, that's all for now. I only just remembered that I've got an exam tomorrow - it's 1:00am, and the exam is at 11:00am or something. So I suppose I should do a bit of revision before I go to sleep... See you another time.

Sunday 2nd November 1997
All the PC and Playstation magazines have Tomb Raider 2 on their covers this month, but I'm not particularly interested. Unlike most people I wasn't totally in awe of Tomb Raider when it came out. It was okay, but not the kind of game I'd want to buy. That said, the demo of Tomb Raider 2 will probably be a bit of fun for a few hours.
What's really intriguing is that so many (probably) superb games are set to be released in the next two months: Monkey Island 3, Half Life, Quake 2, Tomb Raider 2; these will be followed in early '98 by Duke Nukem Forever, Sentinel Returns and C&C - Tiberian Sun.
I'm really looking forward to the rare sight of seeing about five games I really want to buy all next to each other in the shops. This excitement is increased because most of them will be part of the first wave of hit games which were made with 3D cards in mind. Unfortunately I haven't actually got a 3D card yet - I'm waiting for the Apocalypse 5D to be released. As for the rest of the computer, I should have a P200MMX within two weeks. We are living in interesting times...

Friday 19th October 1997
Oh yes!
Yesterday, for the first time, I saw and played the demo of 'Parappa the Rapper' on the Playstation. And basically, it is the most original game I have seen since, well, ever, full stop. I won't try explaining it to you, as that would be a little difficult. But I'll tell you about some of the things in it. The graphics are totally stunning. Not in a Quake II or Scud Race kind of way. Again, I won't try explaining them... One of the excellent things about this demo is that your teacher is someone called 'Chop Chop Master Onion'. And the reason he is called this is, get this: He's got the head of an onion! Which is totally excellent! And the music is of the variety which goes into your head and won't leave for several weeks. Presentation wise, this seems like the best game ever made.
But the crucial question - what's the gameplay like? Well, it won't keep you going for as long as Mario 64 - in fact it probably won't keep you going for very long at all. But who cares? The whole package as a whole is just so much fun you'll still be loading it years from now. Probably.
Essentially, Parappa the Rapper is the only game I have seen on the Playstation which makes me think it would be worth buying one. I'm still not going to, though...

I'm intending to get a P200-MMX this week. Once I've got that, I'll then get a 3D card. I can barely contain myself...

Monday 13th October 1997
(Non-programmers should avert their eyes or risk being baffled...)
I just downloaded MikAlleg 2.2, which should have allowed me to play tracker modules in my Allegro programs (such as DEATH). But when I unzipped it and read the documentation, it said that the module player and the standard Allegro samples could not be used in the same program! Okay, so I'm not entirely sure - I might have misunderstood, but I'm not going to risk it, because it takes ages to install, and then I might have to re-install the old version, which would take just as long. So for now I will have to do without tracker music. Maybe I can just use low-quality WAV files...
I added the 'low frame rate' feature to DEATH, reducing the minimum system to approx a P75 instead of a P133...

Saturday 11th October 1997
Yesterday, I got PC Gamer. On Saturday (today), I installed this shareware space strategy game called 'Delta Hydra'. My first impression was that it looked quite interesting, so I played it all evening, and sure enough, it was reasonably good. On my third game, in which I had generally worked out how I was supposed to do stuff, I managed to avert this major disaster which had prematurely ended my other games. When I reached the 200th turn, however, I was warned of another major disaster. "Fair enough", I thought. "I'll sort out this one as well". But then, up came the message 'Congratulations - You have completed the shareware version of Delta Hydra!". It also said that to keep on playing past that point, I would have to order the full version... Well, I was very pissed off with this, but I clicked on the 'Order Now!' button to see how much it cost... And guess what... It had loads of options to click on which gave you a different address to apply to depending which country you were in. And the UK wasn't there! The former Czechoslovakia was an option, but there was no option to pay in pounds... So I decided not to bother. Let be this be a lesson to all shareware programmers: Crippleware sucks! At the very least you should avoid suddenly stopping someone's game because they haven't registered. Instead, have Doom/Quake style 'episodes', and only give them the first one unless they register. Or something similar to this. For my own game, DEATH, I intend to make all the levels fully available in the unregistered version. When you register, you'll be able to post your highscores on ARGnet, allowing you to compete with gamers all over the world. (It is possible that this will change before DEATH's release)

I'm now going to install this other strategy game called 'Life on Mars' to see what that's like. I'll report back when I've played it.

Okay, I've now installed it, played it and deleted it... I couldn't work out what I was supposed to do, or how I was supposed to do it, or what was going on... It's clearly a more lighthearted game than Delta Hydra - the story says that the commander who was going to oversee the mission had a fatal fit of laughing, which meant that YOU, his deputy, would have to take command. It didn't have as much online help as Delta Hydra. Well, when I say that, I mean that it didn't have ANY online help (loading the useless Help file while playing doesn't count), while Delta Hydra had a bit. I soon quit and deleted it, after I was just sitting there and it said I had insufficient people to do anything (it didn't say how I should get more people)...

I'll now take a look at what else is on the CD.

Half an hour later:
Well, I installed this horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up called 'Nebula Fighter'. It's a lot better than all the other games of this type I've played on the PC - but then, all the other games of this type have been pure shite... This game still retains the main flaw that all the others have - it's ridiculously easy, and while a lot of attention has been payed to having nice graphics and impressive weapons, in terms of gameplay there is hardly anything. Haven't any of these people ever played R-Type? I completed all the levels that were in the shareware version in my first go - when I finished the game I still had about ten lives (I started with about three). Anyway, I can't stay here all night complaining about this game (which I have now deleted). Before going to bed I'm going to take a look at the source code of DEATH, so I can see whether or not I can add an option for a lower frame rate so that it will run on slower computers.

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