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A game review plus some new games to try

© Wayne Dawe

(Note: The Internet is a dynamic place and web sites can come and go quite quickly. This is one of my older and some of the links may not work anymore. If you find that this is the case I invite you to look at some of my more recent articles. My links section has my favorite links from past articles and is checked regularly for non working links. Wayne)

This week I have a game review plus some Java games that you can try on the Net.

Foe the last couple of weeks I have been playing with Microsoft's Age of Empires trial version. This game is the same style as the very popular Warcraft.

In this type of game you control a civilization which is generally at war with someone else. You must develop your technology and economic base to prevail over your opponents. The battles are done in a semi-realistic manner with your animated troops fighting the other sides animated troops. These games really come into their own when you play in multi-player mode. Players can connect over a network or the Internet and compete with one another. Age of Empires captured my interest because I had grown bored of the simplistic strategy alternatives in Warcraft. Age of Empires has a more sophisticated economic model and many more options for developing your society. The game societies are modeled on ancient civilizations in the Middle East, the character animation is quite good, and there is a richly detailed map on which to wage your campaign.

Even if you don't decide to buy this game the trail version, which includes six canned scenarios, is still worth the download. The downside is that the trial version is 24 megabytes which is going to place it out of reach for those with slow modems. The full version is slated for release on Oct. 30. If your kids have tired of Warcraft, this may be the next game to capture their interest. The realistic battle scenes and sophistication required to keep you civilization alive make this game unsuitable for small children.

If the 24-megabyte download above scared you off you might want to try out BattleTank from Media SuperCollider. This game is a multi-player Java game that pits your tank against other tank on a virtual reality playfield. No fancy economic model - just plain old shoot'em up. I found the game takes quite a while to start up but after that, response was quite smooth and quick.

I never found the instructions on how to play the game so I'll tell you here. Arrows move your tank, space bar fires your weapon and pressing w

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