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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5286817" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 197: September 1993part 3/6The role of books: The element of fire by Martha Wells mixes magic and swashbuckling, in a world where they are suitably balanced in power to make for stories full of derring-do and political intrigue. Combined with strongly written main characters, this one is pronounced a success. Knights of the blood by Katherine Kurtz and Scott MacMillan wants badly to be the first book in a long series, but won't be if the poor plotting and worldbuilding doesn't improve sharpish. Vampire knights trying to remain honorable down the centuries certainly isn't a bad idea. But as ever, it's the implementation that's crucial. McLendon's syndrome by Robert Frezza tries to meld sci-fi and comedy in a manner reminiscent of the Xanth books, only less irritating. The tendency of the characters to be full of quips and puns doesn't destroy the credibility of the worldbuilding or drama of the plot. You could have far worse guilty pleasures. The ghatti's tale book 1 by Gayle Greeno feels like a blatant formulaic attempt at replicating the successes of several other recently popular novelists. John can trace the elements easily to certain other specific books, and does not feel they've ben integrated well here. The literary world equivalent of Menswear or Republica. On basilisk station and The Honor of the queen by David Weber see Honor Harrington unleashed upon the world at high speed. These sci-fi age of sail pastiches have done pretty well for themselves over the years, and it looks like the praise is justified. The biggest danger, as for Star trek captains, is being promoted out of the adventuring life. The shadow of Yserbius is a MMO that only costs 57 cents an hour at off-peak times. Isn't that a bargain? (5/6ths cost reduction in 4 years, the joys of exponential computer advancement.) Don't you want to play it now?! Eye of the monitor: So welcome to the new computer column. As is often the case, the change in ownership also means a name change, to allow the new guy to draw a line in the sand and stamp their personality more firmly on things. Still, it's not all bad news. Sandy Petersen! Creator of both Call of Cthulhu and rpg.net! The hobby certainly owes a lot to him. This might be fun for a bit after all. He certainly seems more enthusiastic to be here and less formal than the Lessers were by the end of their run. On we go then. Wolfenstein 3D does very well indeed. The look is strong, the difficulty is well-graded, the AI makes the enemies both clever and realistically dumb, and there's plenty of hidden bits to unearth and tricks to figure out. The fact you can download it for free on the web really is the icing on the cake. Despite that, the makers still probably made a healthy profit with console conversions and the like, giving the laugh to corporations who panic over piracy. Commander Keen takes a slightly different tack to shareware, giving you the first installment for free, but then you've gotta pay up. Combining overhead map with side-scrolling action sections, it has a decent sense of humour and requires puzzle-solving abilities as well as reflexes. The computer format means you can have lots of similar games based off the same main character easier than you could with consoles, where you need a full-priced new cartridge for each game. Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure also tries the trick of giving you the first bite for free. However, with the actual gameplay slow-moving and repetitive, Sandy can't recommend it. Even free stuff can be a waste of your time. Waxworks gets a mixed review for being a bit too tricky and brutal for it's own good. Get used to saving after every encounter and dying frequently as you work your way through 1st person 3D horror. You'll certainly be scared regularly, if maybe not for the right reasons. We don't seem to have a tips section anymore. However, Sandy does offer numbered hints for the games at the end of each individual review, which is probably the biggest format change. Whether he makes more as his confidence increases or not, we shall have to see. Join the electronic warriors: Jim Ward does a second piece of pretty odious pure promotion, this time concentrating on their quite substantial number of computer games out now. Along with the large number of adverts for their own products, this is rather tiresome, and makes me wonder if they're getting enough external advertisers in to pay their bills properly. Still, they do seem to be expanding the scope of this department, with games for new campaign worlds, plus a generic one planned as well. Hopefully we'll at least get some good games out of this promotional dross, so they can make some more money. But they do need to cut down a bit on this kind of crap. Show, don't tell. Basic rule, you know. Along with the one against railroading, they're slowly forgetting it in their attempts to be more sophisticated.</blockquote>

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