Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5272536" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993part 4/6The role of computers: Quite an interesting introduction this month, as they wax lyrical over their new sound card. We're not quite at the stage where full CD quality Analog/Digital converters are available to regular consumers cheaply, but we're still making regular quantum leaps, and most of them can at least manage coherent speech. You can even record stuff through the line in, although hard drive space (and write speed) will still be a pretty big limiting factor unless you get a full pro tools rig, and quantisation distortion'll still be a real problem at that bitrate. I'm geeking out, aren't I. Oh well, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the obsessive geekiness of doing all this in the first place. Back to the main topic. Night Trap takes full advantage of the new sound and video specs to fill up it's length with grainy low res movie stuff. You have to watch the video screens, and try to ensure people don't get eaten by zombies. This'll probably take a few goes round to get right, and it's long enough that it won't be completely lacking in replay value. There are far worse examples of this kind of game. Dungeon Master moves from Amiga to PC, with corresponding increases in speed, graphics and sound while maintaining the good gameplay. Nothing much to say here. Empire Deluxe is a sequel to Empire. (see issue 142) Among the updates include multiplayer online connections, a scenario editor, and the expected graphics and sound upgrades. This gives it pretty near infinite replayability, presuming you have someone who likes building maps and so forth. Games with an active mod community can survive for years. Road Avenger, on the other hand, doesn't have much replay, due to it's linearity, and only takes half an hour to finish. Only for those who really want to show off the graphic capability of their new system. Star Control II tries to take on Elite's mantle for a new generation of computers, with reasonable success. Collect minerals across hundreds of planets, deal with all sorts of alien races, and try to save earth from the evil Ur-Quan Hierarchy. You'd be disappointed if it wasn't ridiculously huge and open-ended, and this is very much the case. Who Killed Sam Rupert? is another one that's good while it lasts, but doesn't have much replayability. Seems far too many games these days are concentrating on graphics over interactivity, trying to squeeze in FMV cutscenes that eat up tons of memory, forcing them to keep the overall thing linear. This sounds rather familiar. I remember complaints of developers favoring graphics over gameplay at the time as well. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Role-playing reviews decides to go for the small press stuff again, see if they can find some diamonds in the rough. Legendquest definitely qualifies as one of those, with it's home-press origins pretty obvious. But Lester is quite pleased by the system, which packs a lot into it's page count, and has pretty good, not totally derivative rules. Looks like your basic point buy system with a few idiosyncrasies to me, particularly in the magic system. You're only going to break, break my break, break my heart. Monsters & Slayers, on the other hand, just gets a painful review. It's amateurishly written, edited & drawn, doesn't do what it says it's going to do on the cover, and is frequently so stupid it's funny. (volcanoes in wales? Bendover the hobgoblin necromancer? ) Avoid, if you ever see it. Legendary lives is from the Lost Souls team, and puts just as skewed a view on generic fantasy as they did on the afterlife. Fun races, elegant mechanics that emphasise speed over realism, it treads a path many indie hipster games will follow. The art is rather dubious though, and they could do with more spells. Don't hesitate to add to it.</blockquote>

Verification