Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: October 30, 1999

Hello, my name is Adam, and I’m a football-aholic. I can’t remember exactly when the realization of my addiction struck me, but I know that it has me firmly in its pigskin-covered grip. The months between August and January are pretty much sports heaven for me, as it’s incredibly easy to immerse one’s self in the developments in both the college and pro games.

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Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: October 26, 1999

With the demise of the Front Page Sports/Football Pro series and the failure of Accolade’s last football entry, it seemed as if there would be no one left to challenge EA Sports and their Madden franchise for complete dominance of the action-oriented gridiron market. Sure, there were other sims out there that handled the statistics and off-field aspects better, but there appeared to be no real contender that would make dedicated Maddenites or those disenfranchised with the series to sit up and take notice. This was quite unfortunate, as a somewhat lackluster Madden 99 left the door open for just such competition. Until recently, it seemed as if that call for a challenger would go unanswered. But suddenly, out of the fog, there arose an underdog who would seek to displace the Madden series, or at least put a little fear into them. And while dedicated PC football-philes were eager to usher a new entry into the field, there was also a degree of skepticism in the air. Could this upstart truly sling the stone that would fell Goliath? ( read more… )

Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: October 15, 1999

For a genre that uniquely rejects conflict by its very design, the civilian flight simulation category is certainly getting competitive. You’ve got newcomers like Terminal Reality’s Fly! coming in, offering a worldwide flight area and some of the most detailed cockpit arrangements ever made. You’ve got the 900-pound gorilla of the computer industry, Microsoft, set to release the next step in their venerable Flight Simulator franchise. Titles are appearing that continuously push the envelopes of technology and feature depth, creating a playing field in which one-upsmanship is the order of the day. In this dog-eat-dog game, there appear to be two main schools of thought. On the one side, you have those that would throw in everything but the kitchen sink in order to distinguish their title. Proponents of this school of thought look for elements like a worldwide flight area as indication of superiority. On the other hand, there are those who would see the detail level of what is already included ratcheted up so high that a certain lack of breadth is overshadowed by refinement. ( read more… )

Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: October 8, 1999

What’s that noise? It sounds a little like the steel blade of a skate biting into a sheet of smooth ice. It sounds kind of like the sharp crack of taped wood against rubber. It may be something like the rattle of bones and muscles against plexiglass. It’s the shrill tone of a whistle, the snap of a puck on netting, and the howl of a horn signifying a goal. Ah, it must be hockey season. I knew it was here when I flipped on the Madison Square Garden sports station and watched the new-look New York Rangers play their way to a tie with the Edmonton Oilers.

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Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: September 30, 1999

It’s good to be da king!
–Mel Brooks, History of the World, Part I

When the package containing Madden 2000 arrived on my doorstep, I couldn’t help but feel my age a bit. Included in the box was a piece of paper showing all the cover art for every edition of the John Madden Football franchise that has been released, dating back to the series’ earliest days, and I was taken aback by the scope of such a retrospective. Oh, I always knew Madden was out there, and I realized that, every year around September, we’d see a new box on store shelves proclaiming EA Sports’ dominance of the PC football market. It’s just a little hard to grasp the fact that one company and a well-liked ex-NFL coach have combined to rule the roost of digitally represented football for ten years. In the computer games industry, through which trends come and go within a matter of months, that kind of run is worthy of comparison to the greatest of NFL dynasties. With the demise of Sierra’s Football Pro (formerly Front Page Sports: Football) line, PC gridiron fans have had no choice but to look forward to each year’s new Madden as the undisputed monarch of professional pigskin action. ( read more… )

Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: September 22, 1999

There have been a whole legion of Star Trek titles released since the inception of computer gaming as a viable hobby, running the gamut from action to strategy to adventure, and varying wildly in quality. But for all this effort, the most popular Trek game ever created arrived not on a set of floppies or a shiny CD-ROM, but in little plastic baggies. That’s right, I’m talking about Starfleet Battles the 1979 board game from a company called Task Force that was designed to provide a recreation of the tactical, ship-to-ship combat often seen in Star Trek. The product, released around the same time the first Trek movie appeared, attempted to blend the methods and strategies witnessed on television with a unique and home-grown set of fiction for a wargame that encompassed just about everything for which a Trek enthusiast could wish. While the highly complex play system and rules set kept Starfleet Battles from appealing to the unwashed masses, it’s safe to say that — having survived various incarnations and a slew of updates over the years — it’s been a success. ( read more… )

Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: September 17, 1999

The computer game industry gets more like the film industry every day. You’ve got your major studios (EA, Interplay and so on), your small, independent producers of media, and your starving fans looking for the next piece of entertainment that will blow them away. If this is true, then Command & Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun (C&C2) is the Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace of gaming. Think about it. Both were sequels to predecessors that were smash-hit, genre-defining successes. Both were years in the making. Both were big-budget productions being generated by well-respected creative talent. Heck, both even featured well-known thespians acting out their roles over computer-generated backdrops and with objects and people that would be added by special effects crews at a later date. ( read more… )

Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: September 2, 1999

It’s fascinating to track the product cycles of the PC gaming industry. Different genres and types of titles rise and fall in popularity almost regularly, and what’s extremely popular today may be tomorrow’s bargain-bin refuse. One need only look at the decline and meteoric re-ascension of computer role-playing over the past couple years to see a prominent example of this phenomenon in action. But nothing could have prepared me for the nosedive that has been taken by one of my favorite categories: the adventure game. Since the runaway success of Myst, we’ve seen the popularity of this once-ruling genre go straight down the ol’ toilet. It’s gotten so bad that more than a few media outlets have begun to ask whether the traditional adventure — pioneered by such giants as Sierra (home of all those Quest classics) and LucasArts (creators of SCUMM-driven fare like Full Throttle and the Monkey Island series) — is well and truly dead.

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Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: August 25, 1999

The civilian flight simulation is a bit of an odd beast. Just about every other game you’ll find on the shelves has its basis in some form of conflict or another, tasking the player to overcome an adversary in pursuit of a goal. In first-person shooters, it’s generally a horde of rampant aliens, demons or robots serving as cannon fodder as one progresses through a series of levels. In adventure games, there’s usually a grand mystery to be solved, while CRPGs pit you against some kind of Foozle intent on doing some really bad thing. And, of course, nothing needs to be said for the myriad combat flight and science fiction simulations out there. But the civilian flight sim eschews antagonism in favor of something a bit more, well, civilian. Your only real adversary here is Sir Isaac Newton and the laws of gravity, not to mention the learning curve that comes with any truly decent stab at realism. What’s more, there’s usually no pre-defined mission structure or anything of that sort. Instead, the civilian flight sim entreats the user to take to the skies and experience the joy of unhindered aviation.

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Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: August 18, 1999

“Mawage. Mawwage is what bwings us togethaah…today.
Mawage, that blessed event. That dweam within a dweam.”
- The Impressive Clergyman, The Princess Bride

Chemistry can be a tricky thing. As anyone who has ever mixed baking soda and vinegar can tell you, putting two distinct elements together can often result in a rather explosive reaction. This is true whether you’re talking about molecular compounds, foodstuffs and even people. Sometimes, however, you come upon a match made in heaven; a pairing that appears tailor-made for success right from its inception. Two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen. Cookies and milk. Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor in any comedy movie. ( read more… )

Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: August 11, 1999

Once upon a time, there was a young gamer in search of a new challenge to occupy his attention. He discovered a game called X-COM: UFO Defense and was unavoidably hooked. The idea of taking a squad of soldiers into battle against a variety of foes in a turn-based framework gave him this funny feeling down in the pit of his stomach that he wasn’t able to identify, and it worried him slightly. After consulting with some of his gamer friends, however, he discovered that this sensation was known as “addiction,” and was not to be feared, but embraced. To that end, our intrepid gamer began to seek out another fix for the jones he had cultivated with X-COM. It was thus that he stumbled upon a little gem called Jagged Alliance from Sir-Tech. But what he found when he booted it up was something very unexpected. He was not in command of a cadre of well-trained marines, but a ragtag collection of mercenaries who expected to be paid for their participation. Their weapons were not science fiction armaments, but the type of firearms you might find in that month’s issue of Guns & Ammo. And, most interesting of all, the mercs under his control were not the sort of courageous yes-men found in X-COM, but a bunch of individuals with their own agendas, some of whom caused them to disobey direct orders. In Jagged Alliance, the gamer found an experience that took the turn-based tactical model of X-COM and ran with it. And they all lived happily ever after. ( read more… )

Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: August 4, 1999

To me, Dynamix’s Red Baron series has always reminded me of Dana Carvey’s “Grumpy Old Man” character from early 90′s Saturday Night Live episodes. From time to time, it drags its crotchety old butt out of mothballs and wags its cane at the high-tech flight sims that pepper software store shelves. I can picture it now: “Flibble-dee floo!” It shouts. “In my day, we didn’t have any fancy navigation systems or steel alloy aeromoplanes! For us it was good old wood and paper, with a compass and the sun to let you know where you were going. And forget about radar-guided weapons and new-fangled rockets! In my day, you only had two guns per plane at most, and our only targeting system was called ‘the eyes in your head’. And if you ever met an enemy plane you had to fly this shuddering pile of garbage without your computer-aided control systems, and sometimes your arm would be so tired that it felt like it would fall right off. And at the end of the day your plane was shot up from machine gun fire and your face was all pressed back from the wind, and you said, ‘Oh, no, what will I do? I’m a disgusting freak with only one arm and my eyes are burned out from looking at the sun, and I’m stuck in this fragile little airplane! Oh, woe is me!’ But that was the way it was, and we liked it!’” ( read more… )

Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: July 29, 1999

While modern maritime strategy has become a key point in global power politics, technology has rendered it a bit sterile. Sure, today’s aircraft carriers can transport more aircraft than pass through most civilian airports. And yes, the long-range destructive capacity of latter-day cruisers and battleships is indeed fearsome. But, to me, the effect of watching one of these vessels toss up a cruise missile pales in comparison to the sense of power conveyed in films of World War II naval battles. Fleets of steel-sided titans, standing toe-to-toe and duking it out with massive deck-mounted artillery, fire boiling from their very sides there’s just something primal about it that modern naval combat can’t touch. It doesn’t hurt that, from a historical perspective, World War II witnessed the most intense, crucial sea-borne combat of the century. Some of the conflict’s key turning points focused on naval strategy and tactics.

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Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: July 24, 1999

Admit it: You didn’t know if it would work.

I know the feeling. I was the same way. When I first heard Pop Top Software would be resurrecting one of the all time classics of computer gaming, my first reaction was skepticism. After all, would it really be possible for contemporary designers to recapture the quaint, yet epic feel personified by Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon? Hadn’t it been years since anyone had even tried to create a workable train game, let alone one that could penetrate the consumer consciousness like that MicroProse masterpiece? And this Steinmeyer guy was going to recapture the deep strategy, accessibility and addictive nature of the game while giving it a modern facelift? While the screenshots and news that accompanied development of the title certainly looked promising, it would be an understatement to say I wasn’t thinking positively. ( read more… )

Review by: Adam Swiderski
Published: July 16, 1999

There is no Quake II.

These were the words that first inspired me to try Unreal. They were spoken — typed, rather — by a fellow writer at an online staff meeting for the small site for which I was working last year. I had been waffling for a few days over whether or not to purchase the game, but this pretty much sealed it for me. I wasted little time in rushing to my local software store and picking up GT Interactive’s long-awaited first-person shooter (FPS), all the while drooling at what I would find when I finally loaded it up. After all, it had to be something truly special to bring about the downfall of the reigning action gaming king. Didn’t it? ( read more… )