Rewrite history with Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Bat

Do you enjoy rewriting history? I know I do! Are you familiar with a little Battle in Belgium called Waterloo? Have you been waiting for a decent computer portrayal of this pivotal campaign of Napoleon’s? Then perhaps your wait is over – Strategy First is going to be bringing us BreakAway Games’ rendition of this famous Napoleonic conflict for use on your PC! A couple of things to start off this preview: I was playing the Beta 4 version of the game (which means that it will only get better!) I am not impressed with lineage, designer’s names or use … Continue reading Rewrite history with Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Bat

Blue is an Artistic Dog

Blue’s Art Time Activities is the latest offering from Humongous Entertainment in conjunction with Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr. It features the popular characters from Blue’s Clues. The game is for children 3 to six-years-old and teaches the basic tenants of art while providing several areas for different types of creative play. The overall theme of the CD-ROM is that Blue is having a really big art show and the child needs to help various characters finish their pieces in time for the show. The child can, of course, create his/her own works for the show as well. Steve, Blue’s live human … Continue reading Blue is an Artistic Dog

The Longest Journey is Paradise Found

The Longest Journey has been the top selling adventure game in Europe for sometime, but only recently has started to make inroads in the United States. I can tell you this right off the bat: you will not find a better looking game anywhere. Adventure games have gotten a bit of a bad rap lately, but not so much because people do not like them as much as folks have just sort of lost interest in them. Back about five or 10 years ago they were all the rage, but now seem encompassed by shooters and real-time strategy games. The … Continue reading The Longest Journey is Paradise Found

Escape from Monkey Island Has Appeal

Yes, friends, your old pal Guybrush Threepwood is back for his fourth appearance, but this time he’s in 3-D! Guybrush, now married to the beautiful but dangerous Governor Marley, returns to his old stomping grounds on Melee Island(TM) (all of the islands in the game series are trademarked for some reason) to find most of the pirates gone, and his wife declared dead. You must help save her mansion from being destroyed, and sail forth to try to find lawyers to help your plight. Of course, nothing is that easy, as you must figure out how to accomplish necessary tasks … Continue reading Escape from Monkey Island Has Appeal

Tower of the Ancients is Puzzle Psychosis

Tower of the Ancients is a puzzle game that might be best described as a cross between Tetris and Connect Four. The objective is to line up the blocks that fall from the sky to create horizontal, vertical, or diagonal rows of identical symbols. Get three or more identical symbols in a row, and they disappear. When the blocks stack up too high, you lose. This isn’t the most polished game I’ve ever played; the graphics aren’t terribly sharp, and trying to improve the resolution somehow changed my system’s color settings as well. The game has also frozen up during … Continue reading Tower of the Ancients is Puzzle Psychosis

The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea Has Girl

Return to the Sea is part of the Disney Princess series of games aimed at girls ages 5 and up. And this is a good game. It isn’t as sexist or simple as some of Disney’s other titles aimed at girls. There is a choice of five games or activities to play in Return to the Sea. Melody, the daughter of the ever-popular Ariel from The Little Mermaid, is the central figure in all the games. Melody’s Daring Dive has Melody diving for gems in the ocean. Girls have a choice of three different ocean scenes and game play has … Continue reading The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea Has Girl

Sheep is Wild and Wooly Fun

Empire Interactive’s game Sheep is a puzzle/strategy game that allows us to pull the wool away from over our eyes and seek the truth. Those seemingly innocent little lambs grazing out on the open fields are exposed in this game as being former genius beings from another planet. The story goes that originally these highly intelligent aliens were sent here in disguise long ago to observe the earth’s inhabitants. Only over time these sheepish aliens lost sight of their mission and made a self-fulfilling prophecy into metamorphosing into the passive seemingly mindless creatures we think of today as sheep. The … Continue reading Sheep is Wild and Wooly Fun

Mushkin Can Revitalize Your PC

I admit that when it comes to computer memory, I don’t know much about it. All that matters to me is that it makes all my programs run faster. However, last summer I was having trouble with my computer. With the old PC100 memory I had installed, I was having trouble getting my brand new Athlon 700 to run properly. Seems that every time I tried to run Windows 98, that hideous blue screen of death greeted me. Fortunately, Colorado-based Mushkin Enhanced Memory Systems came to my aid. Providing me with one of their new PC150 HSDRAM memory chip, I … Continue reading Mushkin Can Revitalize Your PC

Homeworld: Cataclysm is a Stunning Sequel

As a brief disclaimer, I do not play all that many RTS games (the exceptions being the ubiquitous Age of Kings/Conquerors and Starcraft) favoring instead more traditional strategy games. Consequently, I did not play the original Homeworld entry, and will focus solely on the second installment. Homeworld: Cataclysm (hereafter, H:C) has a rich storyline, well set out by the extensive manual. The focus of the game is the single player campaign, of which there is unfortunately only one. As a relatively minor member of a race attempting to rebuild their homeworld (the arrival at said homeworld being the basis for … Continue reading Homeworld: Cataclysm is a Stunning Sequel

Swimmer’s Ear Puts Rune in Ruins

Make sure to have plenty of beverages and snacks high in sugar and caffeine if you’re planning on playing Rune–after the first battle in the initial ten minutes of the game, it gets a little boring for a while. Early on the game turns from a unique third person sword game to the 21st century version of pitfall for the Atari 2600. Our hero begins the main part of the game by being brought back to life by Odin, one of the good Viking Gods from about the same time period as Atari, to battle and defeat the evil Viking … Continue reading Swimmer’s Ear Puts Rune in Ruins