Article Type: Trade Show Report
Article Date: May 24, 2001
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| An Entertainment-Ware Orgy |
There are several RTS games that are historical in the sense that you can move through timelines like Age of Empires by Sierra. You may wish to command medieval archers then 18th century musket wielding infantry and then WWII hardware. I wasn’t impressed since these games seem a bit weak in graphic detail to me. If you want to be on a squad equipped with killer skateboards armed with missiles and Vulpods battling Harry Potter moto-bikers from Ceylon you’ll be satisfied—lotsa that kind of stuff.
Our kind of combat simulations point towards IL-2 Sturmovik and the follow-up to Falcon 4.0 and Flanker 2.x's offspring Lock On: Modern Air Combat (LO:MAC) with Silent Hunter II and Destroyer Command thrown in there. Destroyer Command is due in July 2001. And IL-2 Stormovik looks to be a sim we will all have to own. It’s not that IL-2 Sturmovik is so great—it is actually!—but that until the next good prop flight sim, we will probably have a long dry spell.
IL-2 Sturmovik looks fabulous and more has been written in COMBATSIM.COM about its forthcoming details than I can say here. But on a good video card you will be thrilled and amazed. There are NO JAGGED LINES anywhere. When you see the rounded wingtip of a Bf 109G, trust me, it is round. All the aircraft are beyond reproach in detail clarity and completeness. You will SEE the add-on 20mm gondola guns under the 109’s wings just like they really were and not just extra fire coming from the general wing area if you pick that model.
There will be an array of lesser known but historically accurate aircraft either to fly or to fight. (Attention readers: we must bug Oleg Maddox to make the He 162 flyable!) And beyond the air action there is accurate depiction of ships, armor, and infantry going on at the same time as you are flying. It is immense in scope of action just as the Russian Front really was. I’ll leave it to you to read what "Viking1" has related about IL-2 Sturmovik so far (click here). But as a true WWII air combat fan I am well satisfied with what IL-2 Sturmovik will deliver. The creators have tried very heard to make it accurate and employ the many types of aircraft historically used. No, you can’t make the Germans win the war in the semi-dynamic campaign, but you will enjoy the sim.
Perl Harbor: Zero Hour
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| Nice Box Art |
Pearl Harbor: Zero Hour is something you’ll probably want to use to train your young ‘uns on for hairy-chested things like IL-2 Sturmovik. I didn’t see it running so I can’t comment much but I will get a copy to test. Press kit images on CD ROM show pretty rough graphics.
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Screen Shot Looks Rough  |
You will fly fourteen planes in just ten missions like the Zero, B-25, P-51 from Pear Harbor through at least Okinawa and perhaps to the war’s end so there can’t be a campaign as we know it. It is from Simon & Shuster. We’ll check it out as soon as we get a disc.
Real War
Real War is an RTS offering also from Simon & Shuster. This looks much better for what it is. Your view is the usual 45-degree angle on the 2-D “board” and you can zoom in and out for some good close ups. This is filled with 3-D modern-era military equipment from land, sea and air arenas. It pits you with the U.S. forces against, or as, well-equipped terrorist brigands that threaten the world. There are twelve missions for each side and you can win with either. You command and coordinate all aspects of all forces like General Schwartzkoph wished he could have and have fun doing it.
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| A Good RTS Game |
You’ll find everything from infantrymen and armored vehicles to attack helos and submarines through aircraft carriers plus AWACS and satellites for intel. There are weapons as small as anti-personnel mines and as large as nukes. Heehee! Terrain is varied. You can find desserts, jungles, snow, mountains and oceans. Specialized equipment only can traverse certain terrain and you’d better have built them to advance.
Your set up screen allows you to select the equipment and units you think you should begin with. As your units get experience in combat they get smarter A.I. while you worry about things like supply lines and setting up bases. If you don’t have enough generators, for example, you can’t power a growing base unless you build more. You virtually build all your assets from your treasury. When you need a B-1 you build it and use it to take out a bridge at low level that no other unit can get at.
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| Hitting a B-1 Base |
Damage graphics are very good. When that bridge blows you’ll see debris flying plus splashes and ripples in the water. All the effects are complex enough to make the thing look good for its scale—much more so than I expected.
Online action will allow four players to compete. Best of all, these 2-D, RTS games are not memory and graphics hogs. System requirements call for a minimum of a P II 266 MHz with 64 MB RAM and an accelerated video card. I ran Star Trek Armada, a similar RTS game on a 266 with 96 MB RAM but with a 32 MB video card and it was fine. Your average 500 MHz with 64-128 MB RAM and a ‘good’ 16 meg vid card should do fine with this.
You can play games in the easy-medium-difficult mode you select at start-up and save them to finish after dinner. The A.I. supposedly has no cheats like fast built and unlimited $$$.
We’ll review this before its August 2001 release and see if it measures up. Real War Website.
Dominion Wars
Dominion Wars is also from Simon & Shuster. It too is an RTS game with space vessels but no building and resource gathering like Star Trek Armada. The player selects up to six commandable ships at once from twenty Federation, Klingon, Dominion, or Cardassian selections. Included is a Starship Creator Warp II disc that allows you to create more to use, at least, in multi-player games for up to eight persons. I’m not certain whether they will integrate in the normal single-player game.
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| Star Trek Saga Continues |
You can choose your captain from personnel profiles then build your crew. With the right captain and ship you will do better and your captain and crew will gain A.I. experience.
It is possible to switch to a tactical mode and fight using one ship that dominates the screen for high graphic detail. The shields change color relative to their strength as they are hit. As the ship takes light to medium damage it is nicely illustrated on the model. If parts are destroyed they will blow away in pieces and the section will stay gone rather than no visible damage until the ship blows up in polygon pieces. If that ship is badly damaged the captain can transport to another and fight another day. You, as the player, can move to any ship you want and the game isn’t over if the ship you are in dies.
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| Full Screen Tactical View |
You will have twenty missions where you can use your sensors, deploy a variety of weapons and allocate power to engines, shields and weapons. The ships stretch as they are at warp speed like in the TV series and movies. Your tactical map automatically aligns itself relative to the nose of your ship to assist disorientation in battle. This is sort of like the Combat Flight Simulator I & II tactical window that "moves". I thought the vessel final explosion effects were excellent too.
Stated system requirements are equal for Dominion War and Real War but I’d rather have more power for Dominion War if I had to choose. August 2001 is the projected release. Dominion Wars Website
Star Trek Armada II
Star Trek Armada II (STA II) by Activision is coming. I had fun with the original and the following is very large. The producer of II states that STA I is still selling at retail. The thing I like about this RTS is the fact that for once a company had the foresight to make a game that is easily modifiable by the user. If any combat simulations were as logically laid out in their file systems with plain English we’d would all be better off. It gives the game/sim a long, long life that translates into sales.
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| 8 Borg Cubes Joined |
As I mentioned in my original review and follow up article on the many mods of STA I, it is a familiar scenario with all the movie and TV races with hardware that everyone will recognize. And Activision has actually read the forum boards of fan sites and acted upon problems and “wishes” from them for STA II.
The big difference will be a tactical mode where you can zoom in on one ship which dominates the screen and shows a lot of the fine detail. In normal mode we will all feel the familiar STA I. I must acknowledge that the producer DOES read the posts at fan sites. He knows what has been talked about and many of theses wants are addressed. Perhaps not everything, but much of it.
There will be more ships per race with many all-new shapes. And two new playable races will be there: Species 8274 and the Cardassians will be available on instant action along with the other four. There will be numerous new weapons and most of the old including old/new super weapons. Species 8274 will be able to obtain rift weapons, for example, and open up a hole near your base for surprise attacks. There will be other new tactics, no doubt.
Planets will be colonized and structures built on them. The planets will have shields. Population build-ups will be more dependent on them. They’ve taken the movable turrets idea we’ve made and implemented them to defend planets and mining stations.
Black holes will have new features instead of mostly just being there as before. New star map backgrounds and nebulas will be on larger size maps that should work, hopefully on slower machines. Asteroids will have a new look and the moving feature will probably not be included.
Moving in warp your ships will stretch out. You will be able to set up attack formations from an icon menu of about nine different choices. Once they enter battle a more three-dimensional action will enhance combat maneuvers. There will be more ability to go over and under things. The AI will assist ships in formations so if you have twelve ships in one formation they can attack in smaller squads in combat separately automatically. They will attack ships where you send them and keep on attacking anything in range more autonomously hopefully ending the scurrying around to direct ships so much.
Certain ships may have multi-target capability. It is still under discussion whether there will be any ships that can launch and retrieve fighters. The problem seems to be that the scale of tiny ships will make them almost unseen on the map. The demo was running at 1028 X 764 and everything looks small at that scale. I’d like them to include this though. But you will be able to find idle ships with the menu so you are not endlessly scrolling around the map looking for stopped ships.
At this point damage modeling is not better but it will be. When a ship is destroyed it will break up into its components. Engine nacelles will blow away, for example, from the main hull. The pieces will dissipate and not float around the map, though.
The menus and icons are familiar with STA I, but added items will make them more complete. STA II will not be alien, so to speak.
The Ferengi will be back scavenging ships. But something a STAMODS member thought of will be included: a neutral trading base that can be built by any race except the Borg. Latnium will be a new currency to be mined as well as the usual dilithium. Goods on the trade stations are bought. If you attack and capture it all, the “stuff” will not be obtainable by your forces. Everyone will have mobile repair ships.
Most of the familiar ships will be there with the new. The Borg will have many new shapes and the ability for eight tactical cubes to merge into one big ship that can use its weapons in multi-target mode. The textures are all re-done and in close-up tactical mode view, stunning! Regular map-mode objects look about the same quality as before at this point.
Now for the best part. The file structures will be the same as STA I so we can use things we have now. All the mods worked so hard upon will not be trash! ODFs will be the same and STA I .SODs will be importable to STA II with “the addition of a couple of line in the .SOD file.” It will seemingly be backwards compatible to that extent. Whether STA II things can be used in STA I is not known.
There is a promise to make STA II more stable. I believe most problems with STA I are with users set-ups and systems and not inherent with the game. A map editor will either be included or available immediately from the web site. A .SOD tool like Armada Storm3D will be along shortly after release. I believe 3D Studio Max is the main creation tool and other “off-the-shelf” software will be usable.
I will be getting preview and beta discs as soon as they are available and give you full reports.
STA II will be in stores by the end of November 2001 if all goes well. See ActiVision Website for details.
MechCommander 2
MechCommander 2 (MC2) is the latest in the Mech Warrior franchise from Microsoft. With Mech Warrior 4 out and selling well MC2 is a departure in the fact that it is an RTS. It’s sort of strange to see the whole scenario from this game board perspective rather than from the mechanized robot cockpit.
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| New MW Aspect |
As with most all realtime strategy/board games, a minimum of computer power is needed to move things along. You have the usual three levels of difficulty to play with and 480 X 640 resolution can look good.
You will see many of the familiar Mech shapes from the previous Mech combat games but on a much smaller scale. But in MC2 you will deal with mech pilots’ personalities, skills and specialized backgrounds to create a well-rounded assault group.
In previous Mech Warrior titles I, like many no doubt, liked to build and manage big mechanized bipedal machines. I’m told that if one does that they will fall short in certain areas of combat. If you need a Mech that jumps or is fast and you lack them, you may have a tougher time of things. The pilot you pick is important too. If you place a guy that is a jump expert in a 100 ton hulking Mech he will not do well. And if you put a big brute guy in a light, fast jumping Mech he will not do as well. You get the idea—match pilot ability to machine.
You become interactive with all the hardware on the battlefield in MC2. Before where you just blasted attack helos and wheeled/tracked vehicles, now you will be commanding them along with you Mech squad of bipeds. If you can’t see over a fortified wall you can send in a helo for recon so your shorter Mechs can deliver accurate fire on a tall enemy Mech that can see you.
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| New terrains include snow and urban settings |
The terrain will vary as with the previous Mech Warriors. A favorite with Mech fans is urban zones and there will be plenty of structures to lay waste to as you hone in on enemy Mechs. Of course, much of the terrain appropriately has that “Mad Max” type of desolation to it. The “little guys” move with surprising speed on the “board” too.
The Warriors show the damage they have in the same way: they go from normal to pinkish with a little damage to glowing red when they’re hurt badly. If you fell a big enemy Mech you can salvage him in the game you are playing and use him for the remainder of that game though he will still be damaged. In the next game of the campaign he will be fully repaired though. This is a good diversion from the previous Mech Warrior titles since you could not use the Mechs you knocked out until the next mission.
You have to be a good asset manager and apply your salvaged ammo and equipment wisely in the proper machines with the proper pilots to triumph. This is yet another fun diversion in combat fiction that you may find interesting when it is released in July 2001.
Check out the Mech Commander 2 website.
Tools of the Trade
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| The Doctor Is In!” |
Digital Innovations has a product that everyone can use. The Skip Doctor series of compact disc and DVD repair tools are handy to have. Every disc gets scratches both minor and major at times. Retailing at $29 for manual and $49 for motorized, the compact little scratch removal machines are worth their weight in disc titles.
Lighter scratches disappear but badly marred discs may need the extra scratch pads, (2 for $10) to polish them. Even if you can’t remove a deep gouge it may be repaired enough to make the difference between a skip or a distortion to a total crash in a CD-ROM, CD-R, DVD movie or audio CD.
Looking like a hair dryer on steroids, the Skip Doctor is available in over three-dozen retail locations in the U.S. and is distributed in over three-dozen countries world-wide! A full list of distributor/retailers and full operational details are available at their website.
