Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: September 4, 1998

I thought I had played and reviewed every kind of racing game imaginable: arcade and simulation games, automobile and motorcycle games, and serious and wacky games. While I had heard of drag racing, and even seen a bit of it on television, it never occurred to me that a drag racing computer game would be fun. When I thought about the sport, it seemed to my naive mind that there was absolutely no challenge to drivers of drag racers, as they would all floor their accelerators and the fastest car would always win. After all, there are no curves or unforeseen obstacles, so where could there be any challenge?

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Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: August 30, 1998

Most games today that have simple, straightforward gameplay also seem to have graphics that are far from state-of-the-art. It’s almost as if only games with really complicated backgrounds, plots, and strategies are deemed to merit the very best in audio/visual enhancements. The rest of the pack are delegated to second-tier or third-tier status, for uncool geeks or losers who somehow do not manage to go with the flow of becoming addicted to the major powerhouse releases. To put it bluntly, it is widely considered perfectly appropriate to have second-class visuals in second-class games (arbitrarily defined as those that are a snap to play) for second-class gamers.

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Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: August 26, 1998

Have you ever noticed what has happened to the quality of game collections? You walk into a software store, and see amazing collections of 200 games for less than ten dollars, but if you opened it up you would see that it simply seduces the unsuspecting consumer into paying money for unregistered versions of primitive shareware games that could be downloaded for free off the Internet. You look at huge boxes that look like they contain several premier releases from major game companies, but when you look closely you realize this is just a way for the distributors to get a few extra bucks for old releases for which demand has dwindled. You go out and buy Microsoft Plus! 98, hoping the company (which now distributes a number of quite respectable stand-alone games) threw in some great games, but all you get is a set of previously released or unexciting retreads. You buy a new computer which says it comes with a great game collection, but when you examine what is there you realize that all you got was a Microsoft Entertainment Pack, Microsoft Arcade, or the Microsoft Puzzle Collection, none of which exactly sets the world on fire.

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Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: August 4, 1998

Have you ever noticed how conditioned we are to expect a certain kind of introductory sequence in a computer game when we first play it? After we put the CD in the drive, install the software, and have the game actually running, we have come to expect three things to occur in order: the credits for the game’s designer and distributor; an opening video showing the background of the game or a snippet of its action; and a menu screen (sometimes preceded or followed by an instruction screen). Only then are we truly psychologically prepared to actually play the game, as the stage has been perfectly set for us. We have come to anticipate eagerly viewing these introductory pre-play phases of the game for the first time, even though after we see them once we usually skip through them in subsequent play sessions.

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Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: August 2, 1998

To prepare for this review, I decided right after playing 3-D Ultra MiniGolf Deluxe I would go to a real miniature golf course. Sure enough, the county fair was going on (fortunately for free), and it contained a rather typical miniature golf course that I had a chance to observe, walk through, and even play a few rounds myself. I was amazed to find how mundane and dreary I felt the challenges in the real-life course were compared to the imaginative obstacles in the computerized holes I had played just earlier. Not to mention that in the computer game I did not have to wait for slow-moving uncoordinated humans to move out of the way so I could finally have my turn. Perhaps most importantly, if I missed an easy putt, there was no way to silence the sneers and snickers of onlookers. Reality often seems to pale in comparison to the artificial environment of the computer, even for physical sports (assuming, of course, that anyone would call miniature golf a sport). ( read more… )

Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: July 26, 1998

Though it may seem amazing to some of you who view game reviewers as pig-headed, close-minded individuals who make a final irrevocable judgment of a game’s worth within ten seconds of seeing the first screenshot, most of us actually reconsider our initial evaluation of games and change our opinion of them as we gain more information on them and play them more thoroughly. So when you check out The Adrenaline Vault to find out about a given game and then compare a preview to a final review, you will often find a distinctly different tone in each. In my opinion, this pattern of difference is highly desirable, because it shows that reviewers are willing and able to admit (almost never explicitly, of course) that their first impression of a game was off-base.

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Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: July 22, 1998

I must admit right off the bat that there are few subjects that intrigue me more than pirates. My home is full of pirate books, and ever since I was a boy I have been fascinated with the pirate life. On the computer front, I have played all of the major recent games drawing heavily on pirate lore, including Microprose’s Pirates! and Pirates! Gold, SSI’s Buccaneer, Imagisoft’s Redhook’s Revenge, and even the more lighthearted Shipwreckers! by Psygnosis and the Monkey Island series by Lucasarts. While I have enjoyed all of them, each had its limitations; some lacked great graphics (Pirates! And Redhook’s Revenge), some lacked solid gameplay (Pirates! Gold and Buccaneer), and some used pirates as the setting but were not really connected much to the details of pirate history (Shipwreckers! and the Monkey Island series). ( read more… )

Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: July 15, 1998

When a game company considers releasing an updated version of a classic arcade shooter from the 1980s, it faces two clear choices: either release it with the exact look-and-feel of the original game, as Microsoft did in its Arcade release a few years ago, or attempt to update the game with all of the latest bells and whistles, the way Activision is planning to do with its forthcoming release of Asteroids 3D. I will let you know right away that I vastly prefer the second approach, because I believe that the exciting arcade gameplay can be dramatically enhanced by the latest 3D-accelerated graphics and sound. ( read more… )

Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: July 13, 1998

As most of you faithful readers know, recent trends in computer gaming have not reflected brilliant outbursts of creativity. While many technical advances have occurred, most releases simply embellish the basic structure of those that came before. One method of moving in an innovative direction when there are not many revolutionary new ideas floating around is to create a game which mixes the approaches of several different genres. While each part is not novel, the particular combination of play elements can make for a refreshing new experience.

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Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: July 3, 1998

Computer game companies spring up in many ways. Lately, we have witnessed increased movement by traditional manufacturers of toys and hardcopy games into the potentially lucrative PC games market. Among the more noteworthy entrants are Playmates Toys (the parent company of Playmates Interactive), Tiger Toys (the maker of hand-held electronic games, who recently released Lights Out 3D for the PC), Lego (the Danish building-block company that recently released the successful Lego Island CD) and of course Hasbro (a company that has successfully transformed several Parker Brothers games for the computer). While the risk and marketing strategies are quite different, this transition seems to be quite a natural one. ( read more… )

Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: June 21, 1998

Even though I have been somewhat inundated by racing games lately, I have most eagerly anticipated the release of Motorhead. Designed by the Swedish company Digital Illusions and marketed in Europe by Gremlin, it is still not officially out here in the United States. But thanks to Fox Interactive, the American distributor of the game, I managed after much pleading to get an advanced copy of the final version before its initial release, so that I could give all of you a special early look at what is to come in just a couple of months. ( read more… )

Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: May 29, 1998

Perhaps the greatest sign of a game’s success is neither the volume of its sales nor the glowing praise bestowed on it by game reviewers, but rather the quantity of imitators it spawns. Interplay’s Descent is a game that richly illustrates this: although a distant Doom clone itself, Descent has generated a sizable number of subsequent attempts to replicate its incredible freedom of motion combined with exciting gameplay (ironically, the latest in the Descent series–the forthcoming Descent Freespace: The Great War–seems to be moving in a new direction copying from Origin’s Wing Commander series). Within the last month two major game releases, Forsaken by Acclaim and Adrenix by Playmates Interactive Entertainment, fall squarely into this Descent-clone category. ( read more… )

Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: May 21, 1998

Having excitedly just obtained a brand new mega-machine, I wanted — like any owner of a state-of-the-art computer — to find immediately a piece of software that would stretch the beast’s capabilities to the limit and make the often tortuous upgrade process seem worth the effort. Locating such software would be no easy task, as the computer’s features include a 400 megahertz Pentium II CPU, 128 megabytes of 100 megahertz SDRAM, a 12 megabyte Voodoo2 3D video accelerator coupled with a 21 inch monitor, and a 64 voice 3D PCI sound card attached to speakers with a huge subwoofer supporting Dolby surround sound. Fortunately for me, right about the same time the new PC arrived I received an air express package straight from England containing the full retail release version of Incoming (not to be confused at all with the “special” versions distributed earlier as part of free hardware bundles). ( read more… )

Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: May 11, 1998

Sometimes, if you are really lucky, you encounter a computer game that feels like it was made just for you. The graphics, music, sound effects, and gameplay all seem just right, and no matter how much you play it you simply cannot get enough. Even if you suspect deep down that nobody else in the whole world likes this game nearly as much as you do, you feel like hugging the designers and programmers and saying to them, “Thanks for making one for me!” Such is the case for me with Astrorock 2000. ( read more… )

Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: May 4, 1998

In an era of high-powered computers, 3D accelerated video cards, and 3D surround sound, the action puzzle game has largely been cast aside by major computer game companies. Over the last few years, if we ignore clones of existing board games transported to the computer, there has only been a handful of games of this type released, and of those only a few — such as Lose Your Marbles, Gubble, and Icebreaker — have really provided high-quality entertainment. None of these has made a significant splash in terms of consumer sales (even Microsoft’s entry into the fray last year with its Puzzle Collection did not have a big impact), and indeed one would have to go all the way back to the emergence of Tetris in the late 1980s to find a real market winner here. While in the shareware world action puzzle games still emerge with great regularity, in the retail game world the preponderant assumption has been that buyers expect and demand more realism, immersion, and bells-and-whistles than this type of game can possibly provide. ( read more… )