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A L S O__T O D A Y
- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Are you mad for consumer electronics? Discuss your favorite gadgets and brands in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Rags for Net richies Let's Get This Straight Consciousness dethroned Hands off that data -- I'm European! Baring your soul to the Web - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE - - - - - - - - - -
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___________[ 2 1 S T_R E V I E W S ] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ___Shoot to thrill
"Unreal" takes the first-person shooter game to the next graphic level. But is that enough? BY GREG LINDSAY | In the software industry, singling out the top dog and gunning for him openly more often than not leads to a messy death. (Unless you're Microsoft.) Keeping this in mind, Epic Megagames deserves credit for doing something no other game company has done since before Doom -- release an id-killer. Id is the game company co-founded by John Carmack, the technical genius behind Doom and Quake. The software engines that propel his titles were generally regarded to be the most elegant and most powerful in the industry. Then Epic released Unreal. Unreal is the latest, greatest "first-person shooter," following the well-worn trail that Carmack blazed. The game play is similar to Quake's -- you are looking through the hero's eyes with a gun protruding in front of you -- but the graphics, monsters and sound are souped way up. The game was released just over a month ago to universal praise. The editors of Next Generation magazine, which is regarded as the gamer's bible, were so awed that they decided to launch the magazine's first series of awards -- just so they could hand the first prize to Unreal. But no box blurb better described the point of Unreal than the one that says "R.I.P. Quake II." For almost everything that Quake II does, Unreal makes it a point to do better. From the opening screen's fly-by of an ominous-looking castle, it's obvious you're witnessing a new peak for graphics. Unlike the Quake knock-offs that used a licensed version of Carmack's engine, the engineers at Epic spent years building their own -- which, when run with enough 3-D acceleration, has richer colors, more fluid movement and more realistic textures. Clouds float by, water ripples, limbs spatter messily and the flies buzzing over corpses look startlingly real. Gore is the point of Unreal, and there are plenty of monsters to provide it. The story line is simple: Your character (who, in a Tomb Raider-ish twist, is a buxom bad-ass named Gina) was being transported to a prison colony when the ship crashed on an unknown planet. When you come to, everybody on the ship is either already dead or screaming from around the corner. Gradually, you learn you've landed on a planet occupied by the Skaarj -- aliens who look like they might well be the species of malicious hunters from the "Predator" movies. They and their allies are oppressing the natives of the planet, the Nali, and you're just trying to escape that rock. As backstories go, it's more cogent than Quake's or Duke Nukem's, but it still isn't vital to playing the game. In most ways Unreal plays just like its predecessors: You punch every control button you find in hopes of triggering secret doors, and the floors are littered with random packs of ammo and medicine. At least the monsters are smarter. Unreal's highly touted Monster AI (artificial intelligence) -- designed by Stephen Polge, who wrote the AI for Quake's Reaperbot -- features creatures that run when you hurt them, chase you when you're hurt, call for reinforcements when outnumbered and even lay ambushes for the unwary player. - - - - - - - - - - - -
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