Startopia
PC CD-Rom £29.99 Mucky Foot/ Eidos ****
As gaming enters the 21st century, and graphics get increasingly photo-realistic, it's a shame that the vast majority of titles still adhere to one of the core genres (strategy, sport, shooting etc). The search for originality seems to be focused on finding different ways to use existing genres rather than looking ahead to the development of new ones.
A good example is Startopia, a seemingly straightforward strategy game, but one set on a doughnut shaped space station and infused with a British sense of humour.
More Whitehall than worshipful, your aim is to control the entire station - segment by segment - as a civil servant rather than a deity. To succeed you will need to hire workers, build facilities and change the internal environment, while moving between the three decks; industrial, pleasure and bio.
The latter two are the most interesting: designing alien discos and playing with an entire eco-system is thor oughly entertaining. And, considering the lack of it outside the space station, there is a strong atmosphere to the action. Creatures growl, grunt or emit funny wibbly noises and there is a real menagerie feel.
Tending to your aliens' needs is a crucial and, at times, frustrating part of proceedings. It takes a while to suss out what will please who, with little help from a confusing interface that requires too many mouse clicks to utilise objects.
There is also a lack of focus to some of the levels although the sandbox section, which lets you play without parameters, is surprisingly satisfying. So are the visuals, which let you zoom in and out easily, and show off the garish extraterrestrial environment.
It takes too long to become proficient, but Startopia is an original and satisfying take on the strategy genre with only a few quirks preventing it becoming a pan-galactic classic.
Z: Steel Soldiers
PC £29.99 Bitmap Brothers/ Eon Digital ****
The Bitmap Brothers were heroes of Amiga scene, with products such as Xenon and Speedball 2 still high on many a dinosaur's list of classic games. Sadly, they never quite got the hang of the PC, with only one quality title in the past five years. Z was a very enjoyable realtime strategy (RTS) game featuring two foul-mouthed robots. The sequel is more of the same, albeit with up-to-date graphics, an overhaul of the engine and a little less swearing. So does it still work?
First signs are not promising: Steel Soldiers recognised neither my graphics card nor my mouse (both common-enough models), although the website was helpful in identifying the problem. Such oversights may have been commonplace when the original game came out, but these days few consumers are going to put up with it. However, once the bugs were sorted (and it did take several hours) everything clicked into place.
The graphics have obviously benefited most, with large 3D landscapes that can be fully rotated and zoomed, to reveal every gorgeous curve. The basic gameplay, however, remains unchanged: this is an RTS for adults, where the process of conquest is about fast thinking and counter-striking. Territory is gained by occupying key resource areas (simply find the outpost and capture the flag), which in turn allows you to build units faster. Expand too quickly, however, and you will be unable to defend these resources. Unlike Red Alert and its clones, there is not one strategy that will always win and in this respect it contains some of the best artificial intelligence of any game. Neglect to wipe out fleeing enemies, and they will regroup and attack somewhere more vulnerable. Every level becomes a scramble for survival, and as better weaponry becomes available, it feels like the best bits from Starship Troopers. Nice.
Steel Soliders is certainly original and worth checking out - if you can get the thing to work, that is. (MA)
Emperor: Battle for Dune
PC £34.99 Westwood Studios/ EA' ***
The shine is starting to wear off the Westwood legend. After inventing real time strategy with Dune 2, revolutionising it with Command & Conquer and turning Red Alert into a major blockbuster, its recent efforts have sagged under the weight of expectation and a lack of new ideas.
While the rest of the world has moved on from the tired routine of mining resources, processing them and building factories to turn them into vehicles and weapons, Westwood still seems obsessed with this production-line mentality. At least in this case the resource has a reason for being here, since the struggle over the Melange spice is at the heart of Frank Herbert's Dune books.
You begin by choosing from three factions or Houses, although the differences between each are mostly aesthetic. Each side gets its own set of video cut scenes, another typical Westwood feature. These come with a host of vaguely familiar second-rate actors plucked from TV obscurity. Thank fully, Sting was too busy saving rainforests to put in an appearance.
Perhaps the most important gameplay innovation is the option to form alliances with sub-houses, opening new tactical possibilities. The multiplayer options have also been spruced up to ensure its popularity with the online masses.
But the main difference with past efforts is the rather poor 3D engine. The boxy look of the units and the jarring colours don't help. At times the move to 3D seems just an excuse to unleash the highly impressive sandworms, those enormous creatures that burrow their way beneath the sand only to explode to the surface taking any units that happen to be in their way.
Emperor: Battle for Dune is yet another soulless product from Westwood's efficient assembly line that will sell in its thousands. When you're this successful, why bother innovating? (MH)
