Appletell review - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Section: Software + Apps, Games, Mac + Computers, Software, Features, Review Genre: Team-based first-person shooter Format: DVD Developer: Splash Damage and Nerve Software Macintosh Developer: Aspyr Studios Publisher: Aspyr Minimum System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.5.1, 2GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 1GB RAM, 128MB ATI Radeon X1600 or NVidia GeForce 7300 graphics card, 5.5GB hard disk space, DVD ROM, mouse and keyboard, broadband Internet connection for Internet play Review Computer: 2GHz 20” Intel Core Duo iMac, 1GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon X1600 Network Feature: Internet and LAN Processor Compatibility: Intel only Price: $49.95 ESRB Rating: T (mild blood, mild language, violence) Availability: Out now Demo: No Official Website: www.enemyterritory.com Playing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (ETQW), I find myself empathizing with Roger Ebert when he has to go see one of those Diary of the Princess Pants movies. I am not the target audience. This game is not meant for me. It’s meant for gamers who not only have the time to spend mastering the controls and strategies required to be effective, but the desire to do so. Perhaps a side-effect of reviewing Mac games for over 10 years is that I’m so used to being forced to move along quickly, that I now get bored if I don’t. Which isn’t to say that ETQW is boring. Far from it. The action is relentless, the graphics are some of the best available in a Mac game (provided your computer can handle them), both the single-player and multiplayer versions are intense. This is a great game; most likely the best team-based FPS currently available on the Mac. I just wish I didn’t suck at it so badly. There’s kind of a story in ETQW, but it’s as pointless as adding a story line to Wheel of Fortune. No one cares about why you have to kill all these Strogg fellows (other than that the name just sounds like something you’d want to kill), it just matters that you do. Strogg invade Earth, Earth fights back. Roll credits. There are two ways in which you can defend the Earth: alone, or with a little help from your friends. No matter which component you’re playing, the layout is the same. After receiving a briefing on the mission goals, you pick what type of soldier you’d like to be, and you’re then dumped on the battlefield. Go. Even in the single-player mode, the class of soldier you pick directly affects your role in the mission. Obviously, if you’re a sniper, you can’t be expected to hop into an armored vehicle and tear straight through enemy lines. Rather, it may be your job to take out someone who would prevent that vehicle from getting through. This adds a lot of replay value to the single-player version, as playing a different class of soldier greatly alters the gameplay of each level. And believe me, there’s plenty to do. You can play as any of five classes of human soldiers or Strogg soldiers. There are over 40 types of vehicles you can commandeer, such as tanks, alien walkers, helicopters and anti-gravity ships. Your missions will see you establishing bases, destroying bases, taking out enemy defenses, defending your own, etc., and will often change multiple times during a mission. It’s actually an interesting comment on the industry. There was a period of time when first-person shooters such as this sought to one-up each other on graphics alone. The big news was always the new graphics engine, or perhaps the addition of two new types of guns. Yippee! Now, it seems the graphics are a given, so attention has focused to actual gameplay. With locales that vary greatly and a huge number of weapons and vehicles to employ, the gameplay has to be able to fill all of this up or risk being dwarfed by the design. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is up to the task, which is why it can focus its attention on the multiplayer component, with the single player component feeling tacked on. See, adding a story line to play through can give a game purpose and drive if there’s really not much to do. But, there’s so much you can do in ETQW that the story isn’t needed. Indeed, as I mentioned above, it just gets in the way. I could go into the benefits of team-based play in ETQW, but there’s really no point. I mean, it’s fairly obvious, isn’t it, that a game centered around squad combat would be more fun with an actual, you know, squad? You get a rush from fighting alongside other human players (especially if you have some sort of VOIP set-up, such as TeamSpeex or Ventrilo). The action in ETQW just feels more urgent when played with humans and against humans, and is ultimately more satisfying. So, why a single-player version at all? Because the game is hard. Learning when and how to use all of these vehicles and weapons takes plenty of practice, and I don’t need to tell you that multiplayer action can be a horrible experience when you’re not any good at the game. Practicing will pay off, too, as you’ll be rewarded in the multiplayer version with special weapons and abilities as you rise through the ranks. This helps the multiplayer version remain fresh, and gives you incentive beyond simply completing each individual mission. Aspyr Studios did a fantastic job with the Mac port, bringing us parity with the PC version (which provides a huge online gaming community). The graphics provided by id Software’s MegaTexture rendering technology are stunning, but they come at a price. I wasn’t able to get decent enough performance on my 2GHz Intel Core Duo iMac with 1GB RAM and a 256MB ATI Radeon X1600, and had to install the game on the 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 2GB RAM and 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 at the office in order to do the game justice. What a difference it makes to be able to play ETQW without handicap. It’s somewhat playable at the lower range of the recommended system specs, but you’ll really have to dumb down the graphic in order to avoid series hiccups during the battles. And the last thin you need during these battles are hiccups. As far as I know, MacSoft still plans to release Unreal Tournament III for the Mac. The UT series has been Quake’s rival for some time now, so I’m curious to see if it’s able to top the features and gameplay of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Until UT III’s release, though, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars stands without competition on the Macintosh. Just be sure you set aside a lot of practice time, and perhaps a few paychecks to cover the purchase of a Macintosh that can handle the game. Me? I have to move on to the next game...thank God. A man can only take so much embarrassment, even if those mocking his FPS abilities are half a country away. Appletell Rating: Buy Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Appletell review - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Section: Software + Apps, Games, Features, Review Genre: First-Person Shooter Format: DVD Developer: Infinity Ward Mac Port: Aspyr Studios Mac Publisher: Aspyr System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.5.4, 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM, 128MB ATI Radeon X1600 or Nvidia GeForce FX 7300 graphics card, 8.0GB free hard disk space plus 1GB swap file, mouse and keyboard Review Computer: 2.4GHz 24” Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, 2GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 Network Feature: Internet (TCP/IP) or LAN (TCP/IP) multiplayer supported Processor Compatibility: Intel only Price: $29.99 ESRB Rating: M (intense violence, strong language, blood and gore) Availability: Out now Official Website: www.callofduty.com As has been noted numerous times here at Appletell and throughout the gaming world, there are three things you can kill in computer games without fear of reproach: Nazis, zombies and Nazi zombies. If you like, you can lump aliens in with the zombies, and you can lump robots in with the Nazis. But you can’t use cops, hookers, marching bands or video game reviewers without expecting to eventually stand before Arlen Specter to explain why the downfall of modern civilization is not because of your little video game. And yet, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) is set in a realistic, timely world in which the battles you’re fighting don’t really stray from those you might hear about on “All Things Considered.” The developers get away with this for two reasons. First, then invent militant organizations to serve as their bad guys. Second, this game is a brutal depiction of war. Brutal to an unsettling degree. It doesn’t glorify war, and it doesn’t even really lionize soldiers. If this were a movie script, John Wayne and Chuck Norris would run from it in terror. Is that the appeal of CoD4? Not entirely. It’s the gameplay itself that drives CoD4 to the upper echelon of first-person shooters. More specifically, the multiplayer gameplay, because although the single player are varied and intense, they never really feel like more than a training session for the multiplayer game. In CoD4, you play the role of a United States Marine and a British S.A.S. operative. As with other Call of Duty games, you’re sent on different missions in which you will have different roles, usually assigned to you by your commanding NPC. Sometimes you’ll snipe, sometimes you’ll lead an attack, but almost always you’ll be accompanied by a squad of fellow soldiers who help you in your quest. Keeping your comrades alive can make things easier for you, but there’s never really an emotional involvement with them. You don’t get to know the bulk of them, you just see their names over the head as they run in front of you. Although there are some powerful story elements that make this game smarter than most war games, a little more care with the story leading up to these moments would have greatly improved their emotional impact. But, the developers made the decision—and probably correctly—that a combat-based game should focus on combat. Here, CoD4 delivers. You thought previous Call of Duty games were wild? Huh uh. The action on many of these levels is just insane, with enemies attacking you from all angles and using terrain and weapons better than any AI characters I’ve ever seen. Yes, they’ll occasionally poke their head out from around the wall to give you a chance to shoot them, but by the time they do, you’ve already been killed by a grenade that seemed to come from nowhere. Even a lot of the cover provided in the game won’t protect you long. In CoD4, bullets can travel through items such as wood, so it’s no longer enough to hunker down behind a table and wait for your shot. You’ve got to create your shot by making better use of the terrain and your weapons. This makes CoD4 quite difficult. In many cases, you’ll have to die multiple times before you can even figure out who’s killing you, let alone develop a strategy for killing him/them. It’s frustrating in that matter, and I anticipate that some gamers will be turned away early. Those who stick around, however, will be rewarded with a satisfying gaming experience, and the practice necessary to compete in the multiplayer game. Thankfully, there’s a lot there to satisfy. Mac users can play PC users online, first of all. And, unlike most multiplayer first-person shooters, CoD4 is somewhat RPG-like in its approach; the character you create is rewarded for kills, assists and such, allowing you to accrue experience points that unlock further levels. These, in turn, unlock new weapons, accessories and abilities. My favorites are “Martyrdom,” in which a dying character can go all Jennifer-Grey-in-Red Dawn by blowing up the enemy with a grenade, and “Last Stand,” in which a dying character will be able to get off a few more shots before dying. It’s all very Hollywood. I expect it won’t be long before they release the “I can’t move my legs, go on without me” mod or the “Tell my wife I was thinking about her” extension. What brings all of this together, of course, are the visual and audio effects. If you’ve got the system for it, CoD4 looks fantastic, even when the action is at its most intense. The smoke and particle effects are especially amazing, and really do become strategic elements. The audio is equally stunning, totally immersing you in the action in a way that graphics alone couldn’t accomplish. Using just my iMac’s speakers, I was impressed. Playing the game with headphones, I was floored. If you’ve got a decent set of speakers, your neighbors will be hiding in their basements. Of course, all of this comes at a price. My test computer is at the high end of the system requirements, and I still couldn’t max out the graphics. My home computer, which is my normal test system, is at the bottom end, and I had to dumb things down to the point where I knew I wasn’t doing the game justice. The game still plays, but it looses a lot of its punch. I’ve read numerous reports/reviews that claim Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the greatest first-person shooter of all time. I attribute that more to the emotional impact of the surprising turns along the way, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t an amazing game. The single player game seems shorter than previous Call of Duty games (setting aside all the restarts, of course), but flows well and serves as excellent training for the multiplayer version. There, you’ll be able to kill hours at a time, if you’re inclined to do so. You could also pop in and out within half an hour and still have plenty of fun. Well, as much fun as one can have in a game without zombies and robots. Appletell Rating Buy Call of Duty 4 Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Appletell review - Sid Meier’s Pirates

Section: Software + Apps, Games, Features, Review Genre: Action/Sim Format: DVD Developer: Firaxis Mac Port: Robosoft Technologies Mac Publisher: Feral Interactive System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4, 1.6GHz PowerPC, 512MB RAM, 64MB video card, 1.4GB free hard disk space Review Computer: 2GHz 20” Intel Core Duo iMac, 1GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon X1600 Network Feature: No Processor Compatibility: Universal Price: $29.99 ESRB Rating: E Availability: Out now Official Website: www.2kgames.com/pirates/pirates/home.php This review was a long time coming. I started preparing for this review 18 years ago when I first played Sid Meier’s Pirates on my Apple II GS. I also recall playing Pirates Gold on my LC II, but I didn’t like it as much. Can’t remember why, other than that it seemed the sea battles were relentless, and got in the way of the… Oh, wait. I’m not reviewing Pirates Gold. I’m reviewing Sid Meier’s Pirates for Mac OS X. From Feral Interactive. In 2008. It’s all just so weird, especially considering I’d given up hope that the 2004 remake for the PC, Xbox 360 and PSP would ever come to the Mac. But then, Feral announced its Legends Series, with Sid Meier’s Pirates as the flagship game. Joy! Come Friends Who Plough the Sea Rather than try to explain what type of game Pirates is, it may be easier to just say that it’s not a first-person shooter, and it’s not a hidden puzzle game. It is pretty much everything else. Pirates combines action, adventure, turn-based strategy, resource management, people sims and rhythm games (yes, rhythm games) into one unit. Each element stands on its own, but they work together well. The story is that your happy and apparently well-off family was about to sit down to a tasty meal, when the traditionally evil government-types barge in and send everyone away to prison. You escape, and grow up resorting to a life of piracy to get by. Throughout the game, the locations of various family members is revealed. Find them, and you’ll be rewarded with treasure tips and such. But, you don’t have to find your family. The beauty of Pirates is that the goal is simply to retire rich and married, and it’s completely up to you on how you get there. At the very beginning, you’re asked if you’d like to align yourself with the French, English, Spanish or Dutch. Once you decide, you’ll be told with whom your country is at war, so you’ll know whom to attack. The more enemy ships you plunder, the higher you’ll rank. National alignments change, though, so you may find yourself having to smooth out relations from time to time. Or, you can forgo any alignment and decide to live life as a true pirate, attacking everyone. I Am A Pirate King Attacking ships and towns yields money and goods. The money pays your crew, the goods can be sold for money. As you acquire more and bigger ships, you’ll need a larger crew, and keeping them fed and happy isn’t always easy. The unhappier they get, the harder it’ll be to keep them on and to hire new sailors, and it could even lead to mutiny. So, you attack the enemy. By sea, Pirates becomes an action/arcade game with you utilizing your best ship and wind direction to fire canon salvo into the hull of the enemy ship. Do enough damage, and the enemy will surrender. But, if you plan to add the ship to your fleet instead of sinking it, damaging it too much will lead to costly repairs. So, best to board it early and engage in a sword duel with the captain. Here, Pirates becomes a rhythm based game. Using the number pad, you dodge your enemy’s attack by hitting the appropriate button at the appropriate time (indicated by which attack he’s about to use), then use an attack of your own while he’s off balance. Score enough hits, and you win. Lose or take to long (your sailors are fighting all the while, and their numbers will be dropping), and you’ll find yourself walking the plank. When invading towns, battles are fought in real-time strategy mode on grid-based land. You move a squad of pirates on the grid, then attack those you can reach. Do this for each of your squads, then the computer gets its turn. If you eliminate the enemy or send them screaming into the woods, the town is yours. How Can I Live Without Her? In said towns, friendly or otherwise, you can visit the tavern to get important gossip and recruit sailors, go the merchant to sell or buy supplies, get your ships repaired or enhanced, and talk to the governor. The visits to the governor are very important as they lead to promotions and, well, the ladies. Apparently governors’ daughters are all smitten by pirates, and they all love to dance. You’ll be doing a lot of dancing in this game, and it’s played just like a sword fight. Your partner indicates which direction you’re to turn, and you quickly hit the corresponding number key to move in that direction. Dance well, and you’ll get more juicy gossip and perhaps a wife out of it. Dance badly, and you’ll be laughed out of town. You know, because pirates were always pretty big on dancing and marriage. These elements come together in a great package that plays quite a bit differently from most sim style games. The goal isn’t to set up a thriving economy or character you can tinker with forever. Rather, because the end is always in sight (retirement, you know), the game is about making as much money as possible in the short period of time you’re given. Pirates can be played in one sitting, or you can stretch it out over a couple of weeks. Finish it, and you just start again with a different affiliation in a different time period. Pumpin’ and Blowin’ Unfortunately, not everything is smooth, here. You spend a lot of time exploring (looking for people, buried treasures, specific ships, etc.), but there’s no handy map to help you along your way. You can pause the game to pull up an on-screen map, but it’s clunky and hard to read. The constant pausing gets in the way of game play, too. I’d rather a printed map be included, as with the old version. The note system is also a mess. At times, you’ll be given so many things to do that it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Key bits of dialog are saved to your journal, but there’s no way to separate your mission goals from random bits of gossip you may have picked up at a tavern. After trying for a week to make sense of the mission goals, I finally had to start writing them down on a piece of paper: ships with tremendous treasure, locations of key figures, which towns are paying the most for various goods, etc. It’s too much to manage without notes, and there’s simply no reason I should have to be writing them down myself. The game looks attractive enough, but dated. Some nice water and cloud effects enhance the sailing portion, but it’s the ambient sound effects that really carry the game. The wind and the surf are almost relaxing, and the music reminds you that these are happy pirates. Fun pirates. In other words, the type of the pirates that never actually existed. Happy Ending (version 1) Robosoft again did the port for Feral, and they continue to be one of the best porting houses out there. The game ran very well on my iMac (of course, Pirates being nearly five years old, it had certainly better run well on my iMac) and is built to run even with GMA graphics cards with shared RAM. Good to know that if you’re forgoing the new MacBooks to keep FireWire, you can still play some good games. Happy Ending (version 2) Sid Meier’s Pirates does feel dated at this point, which is not surprising considering the core gameplay hasn’t changed much since the 1980s. Hard core sim players will be put off by its simplicity, while hard core action gamers will grow bored with all the sailing and dancing. But for all of us in the middle, Pirates is a fantastic blend of genres, requiring just enough strategy and skill to keep it challenging while providing just enough adventure to keep the game moving. Yes, it’s old, but there’s a reason a game like Pirates continues to be updated 20 years after its initial release; because it deserves to be. Appletell Rating Buy Sid Meier’s Pirates Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Appletell review - Battlestations: Midway

Section: Apple, Software + Apps, Games, Features, Review Genre: Action, real-time tactics Format: DVD Developer: Eidos Interactive Mac Port: Robosoft Technologies Mac Publisher: Feral Interactive System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4, 1.83GHz Intel processor, 512 MB RAM, 128 MB VRam, DVD ROM. Review Computer: 17” iMac, 1.8 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 128MB ATI Radeon X1600 Network Feature: Yes Processor Compatibility: Intel Only Price: $50.00 ESRB Rating: T Availability: Out now Official Website: www.battlestations.net Whether you’re in a warship, aircraft or submarine, you control the battle and lead it every step of the mission. Battlestations: Midway allows you to choose a different path on which to play the game. U.S. Campaign, Naval Academy, Ship Challenge, Plane Challenge and the Submarine Challenge are the five different battles of which you can take control. So, if you’re playing the Ship Challenge and are really getting annoyed from the submarine shooting missiles at your cruiser, play as a submarine and demolish a ship. This fast, action-packed game has stunning graphics that make you wonder if they could get any better. Leading and controlling your ship, submarine, aircraft, shipyard or airfield requires more skill than pointing and shooting, such as creating tactics to avoid the emenies and complete your mission. Each unit has its own unique features which change gameplay and keeps it interesting. The graphics of all of the units are filled with incredible detail, whether it be a “Brewster F2A Buffalo” aircraft from the American fleet or a Japanese “Akagi” warship. Even when zooming in, the textures on all of units have great levels of detail. You don’t need a powerhouse Mac Pro to crank up the graphic settings. Some games require heavy processing power, but my two-year-old iMac (Specs above) handled it quite nicely. While I did see a slight increase in graphics quailty when I ran it on a newer iMac with twice the graphics memory, it isn’t CPU intensive. Robosoft Technologies did a great job porting the game to the Mac. I’ve played a bunch of games that are ported to the Mac poorly and they hog up your RAM and CPU usage. Some of those games are virtualized for the Mac, which gives you sluggish gameplay and doesn’t take full use of your computer. In addition, Robosoft gave the game some traditional Mac features, such as automatically pausing the current iTunes Song when launching the game. As for the action, I found it hard to hit opponents when moving fast, but slowing down makes you more vulnerable to being gunned down. But, what’s the fun when it’s too easy? The only thing I struggled with was my Mighty Mouse, which kept throwing me off the screen. It ended up having dirt in the clickwheel. Before playing, I’d suggest cleaning it out, if you’ve got one. On another side of controlling the game, each unit has a different method of controlling it. While they all may be reletaviely easy, it does take some time and would’ve been easier if they had standardized controls for all units. Let’s get a little deeper into the gameplay. When you initially choose a path to play, you’ll be asked to complete certain missions, such as travel to the US ship or “Bomb the Mini-Sub!” Some tasks take quite a while and require lots of planning and thought, while others can be simple and quick. In addition you’ll be switching to new units almost every task. As previously mentioned, you may feel the need to pause to the menu for a second to review the new controls for the unit. Since you switch units so often, you’ll eventually get used to it, but it does get annoying. Leading battles alone in a variety of units is plenty of fun, but multiplayer makes it all the better. The game uses GameRanger for online play, which allows up to 8 players to play together anywhere in the world. Online play can get fun with up to 100 different warships, aircrafts and subs all fighting it out. Multiplayer gameplay gets players to work together, where each player would control a different group of units. Loading screens are quick on just about every Intel Mac, so you can get in to the game fast after every mission. Whether you’re playing a sub, aircraft or one of the other 60 units, or leading massive battlefields you’re sure to have plenty of fun in the war. Appletell Rating: Buy Battlestations: Midway Full Story » | Written by Nicholas Montgomery for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Appletell review - The Movies: Stunts and Effects

Section: Software + Apps, Games, Mac + Computers, Software, Features, Review Genre: Sim Format: DVD Developer: Lionhead Studios Mac Port: Robosoft Technologies Mac Publisher: Feral Interactive System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4, 1.6GHz PowerPC, 512MB RAM, 64MB video card, 1GB free hard disk space, full version The Movies Review Computer: 2GHz 20” Intel Core Duo iMac, 1GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon X1600 Network Feature: No Processor Compatibility: Universal Price: $25.00 ESRB Rating: T Availability: Out now Official Website: www.lionhead.com/se/ I want to like sandbox style games more than I do. All the way back to the Railroad Tycoon II, Tropico, Zoo Tycoon...I really wanted to get into this style of game. Most have been enjoyable, but they seemed to involve too much work to get to the fun. Too much to learn, too much to master, before you could really settle back and enjoy your creations. I blame it all on money. Why does money have to be in all these games? I don’t recall being restricted by finances when building things with my Tinkertoys, Girder and Panel Playset, or even just Matchbox cars and whatever household objects I could find around. Feral Interactive’s The Movies was along these lines, with one important twist; it rewarded you. Learn everything, manage everything, master the tools, and hey! You’ve got a movie! Share it with friends and fellow virtual movie makers! Unlike Railroad Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon, in which the goal was to...uh...have a railroad or a zoo and a lot of money, the goal with The Movies is to have something you can actually watch and think, “Hey, that’s kind of cool.” With the release of The Movies: Stunts and Effects, your films can now be even cooler...well, provided you feel that stunts and effects are cool to begin with. The romantic comedy types may not need this, but those who share my belief that every single movie ever made could’ve been enhanced with a prolonged sword fighting skeleton scene (especially all those Jennifer Lopez movies that weren’t called The Cell) will find plenty to enjoy here. Well, plenty to enjoy outside of sword fighting skeletons, anyway, which aren’t included. Maybe they should get an expansion pack of their own? What Stunts and Effects does bring to the set are plenty of explosions, monsters, alien spaceships, helicopters...everything that makes the independent film crowd run screaming for the Canadian border. Of course, this doesn’t mean you need to become another Michael Bay (and really, isn’t one too many already?). There are plenty of new sets and props that can be applied to any style of film, including blue and green screens that really open up your sets for some wild creativity. To help you capture all of these effects, Lionhead has built in a “free-cam” that provides better control over how your shots are filmed. You can move this camera with the WASD keys or set start and end points for smooth pans across your set. Now, that perfect shot you could never achieve in The Movies is obtainable, although you’ll have to work a bit harder to get it. And that’s an issue, because The Movies was already a pretty complicated game. As I mentioned in my review back at Applelinks: ... The Movies is ... a strategy sim, and that means micromanagement. Plenty of micromanagement. Getting the right actor for a part is easy, but keeping said actor happy is not. As the movies start to make money, actors’ demands increase. If their demands are met, they become unhappy, which translates to bad performances, which translates to poor box office. So, you give them makeovers, send them to rehab, whatever it takes. If they start to cost you more than they make you, you fire them and begin the search for the next young talent. And ... Unfortunately, a lot of The Movies is mired down in finance management and building placement and other such nonsense. If The Movies can be considered a bridge between The Sims and the Tycoon style games, I would’ve liked to see it lean more towards The Sims, where shaping personalities and handling individual conflicts and goals are more important than making sure you’re placing your actor’s trailer close enough to the cafeteria. Stunts and Effects just compounds this with the addition of stuntmen you need to manage, and managing everyone else (your stars, crews, etc.) hasn’t been made any easier. So, although you can certainly make better looking movies with this expansion pack, the annoying bits of the game actually get more annoying, thereby hampering the potentially entertaining gameplay. The Movies: Stunts and Effects is, therefore, an expansion pack for the hardcore fans of the game. It’s for those who have been making their own movies and sharing them at The Movies Online (and some of that stuff is pretty fantastic). If, however, you’re one of those who tried the game out but found all the micromanagement and sometimes awkward controls were putting you off, Stunts and Effects only compounds the issues. Better stick with uploading videos of your cat to YouTube. Applelinks Rating Buy The Movies: Stunts and Effects Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Appletell review - Jeopardy! Deluxe and Wheel of Fortune Deluxe for Macintosh

Section: Software + Apps, Games, Mac + Computers, Software, Features, Review Genre: Quiz/Game Show Format: Download or CD Developer: Encore Publisher: Freeverse Minimum System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.3.9, PowerPC G4/G5 or Intel Mac, 256MB RAM, 50MB hard disk space Review Computer: 2GHz 20” Intel Core Duo iMac, 1GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon X1600 Network Feature: No Processor Compatibility: Universal Price: $19.95 each ($24.95 for CD versions) ESRB Rating: E Availability: Now Demo: Jeopardy! Deluxe, Wheel of Fortune Deluxe Official Website: Jeopardy! Deluxe, Wheel of Fortune Deluxe One of the perils of being a fake Mac journalist is that if every four or five years you have to review new versions of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. Together, they’re the death and taxes of Macintosh gaming. Now it’s Freeverse’s turn with them, and I’m afraid they’ve gone all ironic on us. Freeverse games, you see, are normally all about personality. Well, not all about, but the personality of the Freeverse cast of characters is often enough to drive fans to purchase one of their games even if they have no interest in the genre. So, it’s ironic that Freeverse would be the company to publish the most personality-free versions of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune to date. And this isn’t just because Alex Trebek, Pat Sajak and Vanna White are nowhere to be found. The video snippets of Alex and Vanna killed the MacSoft versions of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, respectively. The load times were annoying, and the live motion video overtop of the computer animations were disjointed and kind of creepy. Even though technology has progressed since then, I’m still quite certain I wouldn’t want live video of these people in the game, but CGI characters or even voiceovers could work. Instead, we get nothing. As I mentioned, though, that’s not the real problem here. The problem is that the games are just dull. With no money to actually be won, the focus falls mostly on the puzzles, with the remainder shifting towards the characters. I’ll deal with them, first. In both games, you get to customize your character, to a certain extent. You get a few options for shirt color, hair style, complexion, etc. The choices fall short of what you see in other games, but I’m not sure they should be more robust. These are casual games, after all, and most casual gamers aren’t interested in tweaking character skins. Once this is done, you can choose to play a few different single player or multiplayer games. In single player Wheel of Fortune Deluxe, for instance, you can go against computer opponents or just play by yourself, solving puzzles without competition. It seems odd, but considering the fun in Wheel of Fortune is doing just that, computer opponents can actually get in the way if you’re playing by yourself. There’s no such feature in Jeopardy! Deluxe, and there shouldn’t be. Jeopardy! without opponents is just trivia; at least Wheel of Fortune offers the random luck of the spinning wheel. So, the Jeopardy! version is more cut and dry, and having at least one other person to play with is pretty much key to enjoying the game. Yes, you can track your progress and save your scores and so on, but considering there’s nothing you can do with this information other than...well, have it, these features really don’t bring anything to the game. So, we look specifically at the games themselves. Both play exactly like their TV counterparts: Wheel of Fortune starts you off with a couple quick puzzles before getting to the wheel, offers the same style of gameplay, and places the same style of rewards/traps on the wheel itself. It’s familiar and it’s fun and fans of the show will have a good enough time. In fact, even if you don’t watch the show, Wheel of Fortune Deluxe can be a pretty fun time killer or party game with the right crowd. Because it’s played in turns, for the most part, you don’t have to crowd three people around the computer for 15 minutes. But Jeopardy! Deluxe...oh, man. Jeopardy! is easily my preferred show of the two, but the developers here made a decision that kills—absolutely kills—this game. The problem with Jeopardy! games of the past, you see, is that you had to type in questions, and the games were never very forgiving. If you misspelled a word or phrased something differently from what the computer wanted, you’d be considered wrong even if you were right. It was very annoying, but Encore’s method of removing this problem is just terrible. Rather than force you to type in your question, they present you with multiple choice options. That’s right. Multiple choice Jeopardy! It’s not just that you’re no longer rewarded for actually knowing stuff, which is the main appeal of Jeopardy!, it’s that multiple choice totally kills the gameplay and strategy. With multiple choice, there’s absolutely no reason to not immediately buzz in on every single question. Don’t even read it, just buzz the moment you can. It’s multiple choice. You’ve got a 25% chance of being right on everything...possibly higher, considering many of the questions couldn’t possibly be right. And so, Jeopardy! becomes 80% speed, 10% luck, and 10% knowledge. It’s exactly what the show isn’t, and that makes the game somewhat pointless. A better solution would’ve been to just offer a manual override. If the game thinks you’re wrong, but you and your opponents know you’re not, you should just be able to hit a button to tell the game that one misspelling doesn’t make a correct answer wrong. It may slow things down, but at least it wouldn’t strip away Jeopardy’s very soul. Also, why has nobody figured out how to add online multiplayer to these games? You’d think the networks would be able to offer these games online, throw in some commercials, make some real prizes available, and watch the money roll in. Instead, we get games that look much prettier each time they roll out, but that really offer nothing that wasn’t in the versions we played back in the late 80s on the Apple IIGS (aside from more content: over 2,000 puzzles in Wheel of Fortune Deluxe and 3,000 clues in Jeopardy! Deluxe). Wheel of Fortune Deluxe is serviceable; fans of the show will be entertained and casual gamers in general will be able to kill some time with it. But Jeopardy! Deluxe is best left alone. You’ll have more fun just watching the show, and you’ll feel better rewarded for having done so. There. I’m done with these games for another five years. By then, maybe the developers will finally get them right...or perhaps bring us something new. The Gong Show, maybe? One of those crazy Japanese game shows? Perhaps not. Appletell Rating for Wheel of Fortune Deluxe Buy Wheel of Fortune Deluxe Appletell Rating for Jeopardy! Deluxe Buy Jeopardy! Deluxe Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »