GFW 01

WORLD OF WARCRAFT ASSASSIN'S CREED NEW!
THE ULTIMATE
Games
PC GAMING
AUTHORITY
Formerly Computer Gaming World
TM for Windows
ISSUE 01 I DECEMBER 2006 I THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE
®
WORLD EXCLUSIVE
DRAGON
AGE BIOWARE IS BACK!
THE GENIUSES BEHIND BALDUR'S GATE
AND KOTOR RETURN WITH THEIR
MOST AMBITIOUS GAME YET
PREVIEW SPECIAL
TOP 10 PC
GAMES
OF 2007
WHAT YOU'LL BE PLAYING NEXT YEAR
INCLUDING BIOSHOCK,
CRYSIS, AND MORE!
SPECIAL REPORT
SECRET HISTORY OF
RELIGIOUS GAMES
THE BUSINESS BEHIND
GOD GAMING
DECEMBER 2006 ISSUE 01
Display Until December 12

$4.99 U.S. $6.99 Canada
PREVIEWED REVIEWED TECH

OBLIVION SAM & MAX: NEW HOLIDAY
EXPANSION CULTURE SHOCK GAMING GEAR
NEW PC SCREENS! THE LEGENDS RETURN! WHAT TO BUY (AND AVOID) GFW.1UP.COM
Visit http://emgz.blogspot.com for more
Contents
WTF is in this magazine
DEPARTMENTS
14 Editorial
Say hello to the knucklehead
who runs this crazy operation.
16 Letters
Hey, who left this sack of old
Computer Gaming World mail
here? Let’s open it!
20 Start
The first issue of Games for
COVER STORY
Windows: The Official Magazine
kicks off with a look at 10 of
2007’s biggest games—and what
the world doesn’t know about
68 Dragon Age
them (until now). We’ve also got BioWare is back! The once-and-future RPG king never gave up on mak-
the goods on Assassin’s Creed, ing PC games…and this month we’ve got the exclusive scoop to prove
Rogue Warrior, the World of it. Dragon Age is the spiritual successor to the classic role-playing game
WarCraft trading card game, and Baldur’s Gate. And by the end of 2007 or early 2008, you’ll be playing it.
the first retail Oblivion expansion.
TOP 10 2007 20 WOW TCG 28
ASSASSIN’S CREED 30 PLAY TO PRAY 44

10 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE
Contents Sections
DEPARTMENTS (CONT.)
84 Reviews
Sam & Max returns to PC screens
after 13 long years, Mage Knight
goes from your tabletop to your PC
desktop, and Company of Heroes
shows us that RTS games still have
something new to offer. Get the low-
down on all that plus DEFCON, Age
of Empires III: The WarChiefs, Lego
Star Wars II, and more in our inaugu-
ral Reviews section.
110 Extend
The ever-competitive Tom Chick and
Bruce Geryk go 1-on-1 in Company
of Heroes in this month’s installment
of Tom vs. Bruce, columnist Robert
Coffey discusses casual gaming su-
persites, and we take a second look
at The Battle for Middle-earth II.
SAM & MAX 86
126 Tech
Some mags put together a holiday
shopping list of what you absolutely
need to buy—we’re gonna tell you
what to avoid. Also: a peek at what
DirectX 10 will do for games, and a
chance to win a new gaming notebook!
GAME INDEX
COMPANY OF HEROES 90 WARHAMMER 40,000 92 93
105
Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs
Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales
25 Alan Wake
30 Assassin’s Creed
22 BioShock
89 Caesar IV
114 Ciao Bella
58 Clive Barker’s Jericho
26 Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
90 Company of Heroes
26 Crysis
98 DEFCON
68 Dragon Age
24 Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
DEFCON 98 GTR 2 100 118 Eve Online
91 Faces of War
100 GTR 2
23 Half-Life 2: Episode Two
24 Hellgate: London
106 Joint Task Force
108 King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human
108 King’s Quest Collection
54 Knights of the Nine
107 Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
108 Leisure Suit Larry Collection
116 The Lord of the Rings:
The Battle for Middle-earth II
88 Mage Knight: Apocalypse
TOM VS. BRUCE 110 TECH 126 94
104
Microsoft Flight Simulator X
NBA Live 07
104 NHL 07
XTRAS
THIS MONTH ON 40
106
Overlord
Paraworld
GFW01.1UP.COM 25
108
Pirates of the Burning Sea
Police Quest Collection
See video of our Top 10 2007 games in action, enjoy 48 Rogue Warrior
bonus goodies from our BioWare visit, and follow
editor-in-chief Jeff Green’s exploits in WOW: The
86 Sam & Max: Culture Shock
Burning Crusade on his blog (GFWJeff.1UP.com). 108 Space Quest Collection
22 Spore
25 Supreme Commander
23 Team Fortress 2
92 Warhammer 40,000:
Dawn of War—Dark Crusade
28 World of WarCraft

Staff
NEW DAY RISING

Or, GFW:TOM FTW!
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Editor-in-Chief Jeff Green
Managing Editor Sean Molloy
Senior Editor Darren Gladstone
Editor Ryan Scott
Editor Shawn Elliott
FileFront Liaison Logan Parr
DESIGN
Art Director Michael Jennings
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Hi there! My name is Jeff Green, and you might know me from Loyd Case, Tom Chick, Robert Coffey, Jason Cross, Bruce Geryk,
Eric Neigher, Matt Peckham
such magazines as Computer Gaming World, where I served as ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA GAME GROUP
President Scott C. McCarthy
editor-in-chief for the past five years. In fact, until just a few weeks Senior Vice President and General Manager, 1UP Network Ira Becker
Senior Vice President and Editorial Director John Davison
ago, the magazine you now hold in your hands was Computer Gaming Senior Vice President of Publishing Scott McDaniel
Vice President of Sales Marci Yamaguchi
World. So, if you always hated that magazine and bought this one Vice President of Marketing, Research and Events Rey Ledda
Group Creative Director Simon Cox
instead as an alternative, well, ha-ha! We tricked you! COPY DESK
Copy Chief Jason Wilson
But whether or not you loved us, hated us, bothered reading us, or Copy Editor Kaitlen Jay Exum
Copy Editor Andrew Fitch
never even heard of us is now rendered moot, as we are, essentially, PRODUCTION
starting over. The magazine that was Computer Gaming World for 25 Production Manager Monica Brent
years—from November 1981 until November 2006—has now become, SALES

Vice President of Sales Marci Yamaguchi
starting with this issue, Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. PUBLISHING
Senior Vice President of Publishing Scott McDaniel
What does this mean? Why would we do such a thing? And what’s in
it for Microsoft? Good questions! You’re not as stupid as you look. TERRITORY MANAGERS AND ACCOUNT EXECS
Gaming Northwest Key Accounts
What it means, first, is that PC gaming as we all know it and love it is finally being taken seri- National Advertising Director Amy Mishra
Account Executive Mac O’Rourke
ously by the company that gave us the platform on which most of us play our games. Microsoft Account Coordinator Stephenie Bryant
Gaming Southwest Key Accounts
wants “Games for Windows” to be just as big as Xbox and PlayStation and Nintendo games are. Regional Sales Director Leslie C. Gelfand
Gaming—West Coast
Having an official name for the platform—and an official magazine to go with it—is a way to Regional Sales Manager Rita Kline
Gaming & Consumer—East Coast
show that commitment. For those of us at The Magazine Formerly Known as CGW, it means a Regional Sales Director Andrew Reedman
Account Executive Jessica Reback
much higher profile and a much bigger audience with whom we can share our words—which is Consumer Print & Automotive—West & Midwest
Senior Director of Consumer Advertising Sales Marc Callison
Automotive Accounts—West
all any writer or artist ever wants. California Advertising Director Richard Taw, III
Online Sales
The cool thing, and the thing I really need you to understand above all, is that Microsoft Senior Director, Consumer Online Rick Rizzo
Director, Gaming Online Brent Martyn
does not approve or even read what we write before it goes to the printer. We have complete Regional Sales Director, Consumer Online Laura Hill
Account Executive Stacy Cohen
editorial independence here, despite that big honkin’ Windows logo on the front cover. CGW Senior Advertising Coordinator Tipler Ubbelohde
Administrative Assistant Lynn Fortunato
was always known for its brutal honesty and integrity, and I promise you that’s not changing
1UP.COM
one iota. It was one of the main reasons Microsoft picked us in the first place: They knew our Editor-in-Chief Sam Kennedy
Senior Manager of Ad Operations Adam Carey
reputation was unassailable. Audience Development Manager Nopadon Wongpakdee
Advertising Campaign Coordinator LeAnne Hsu
So here we are. Issue No. 1. Does it rule? Does it suck? You won’t know until you turn the MARKETING
Vice President of Marketing, Research and Events Rey Ledda
page. So go ahead. Happy reading, and, as Research Director May Tong
always, let us know what you think. MEET THE STAFF Senior Promotions Manager Wendy Donohue
PR Manager Jason Freidenfelds
Marketing Coordinator Vanessa Alvarado
SEAN MOLLOY Marketing Graphic Designer Drew Hathaway
Promotions Coordinator Tiffany Orf
Jeff Green MANAGING EDITOR Promotions Graphic Designer Robyn Uyeno
To contact Sales & Advertising, please call (415) 547-8000
Editor-in-Chief Sean spends far too much time in Azeroth
and answers every question with, “How ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA, INC.
Games for Windows: The Official Magazine Chairman & CEO Robert F. Callahan
appropriate. You fight like a cow.” Chief Financial Officer Mark Moyer
Executive Vice President & Chief Content Officer Michael J. Miller
Executive Vice President, Licensing and Legal Affairs, General
Now playing: Vanguard beta, World of WarCraft: The Counsel & Secretary Gregory Barton
Burning Crusade beta, Company of Heroes Now Playing: World of WarCraft: The PRESIDENTS
Scott C. McCarthy (Game Group)
Burning Crusade beta Sloan Seymour (Enterprise Group)
1UP.com Blog: GFWJeff.1UP.com 1UP.com Blog: GFWSean.1UP.com Jason Young (Consumer/Small Business Group)
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENTS
Kenneth Beach (Corporate Sales)
Ira Becker (Game Group)
John Davison (Editorial Director, Game Group)
DARREN GLADSTONE RYAN SCOTT Jim Louderback (Editorial Director, Consumer/Small Business Group)
SENIOR EDITOR (FEATURES/TECH) EDITOR (REVIEWS/EXTEND) Angelo Mandarano (Sales & Marketing, Consumer/Small Business
Group)
Darren was considering playing Ryan is, without question, the finest GFW Scott McDaniel (Publishing, Game Group)
Martha Schwartz (Custom Solutions Group)
Battlefield 2142 in all its PlanetSide-ish editor to ever be featured in this space on Michael Vizard (Editorial Director, Enterprise Group)
glory. That is, until he read the adware this page in this issue. He wishes to thank VICE PRESIDENTS
notice packaged in the box. Ultima Online, Oregon Trail, and pre-1996 Aaron Goldberg (Market Experts)
Barry Harrigan (Internet)
Sierra for making it all possible. Kristin Holmes (International Licensing)
Now Playing: Dark Messiah of Might Michael Krieger (Market Experts)
Rey Ledda (Marketing, Research and Events, Game Group)
and Magic, Sam & Max: Culture Shock Now Playing: Guild Wars Nightfall Rick Lehrbaum (Internet)
Eric Lundquist (Editorial Director, eWEEK)
1UP.com Blog: GFWDarren.1UP.com 1UP.com Blog: GFWRyan.1UP.com Chris Maginn (Internet)
Jim McCabe (PC Magazine)
Paul O’Reilly (Event Marketing Group)
Priscilla Ng (e-Events)
Beth Repeta (Human Resources)
SHAWN ELLIOTT LOGAN PARR Thomas Rousseau (Corporate Sales)
EDITOR (START) FILEFRONT LIAISON Chris Stetson (Research/Market Intelligence)
Stephen Sutton (Audience Development, Consumer/Small Business)
Buggy, borked, and badass by turns, Now that Sam & Max has made a Stephen Veith (Enterprise Group Publishing Director)
Monica Vila (Event Marketing Group)
Battlefield 2142 is…eh, call it a rewarding comeback, Logan is hoping Grim Marci Yamaguchi (Sales, Game Group)
dysfunctional relationship. Shawn’s still Fandango and Day of the Tentacle are Randy Zane (Corporate Communications)
IT West Coast, Senior Technical Analyst Bill Schmelzer
addicted to Company of Heroes as well. next. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Desktop Administrator Nick Kalister
Contact anyone on this masthead via e-mail using
Now Playing: Battlefield 2142, Company Now Playing: Phantasy Star Online, [email protected]
of Heroes Sam & Max: Culture Shock PERMISSIONS
Copyright © 2006 Ziff Davis Media. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in
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1UP.com Blog: GFWJennings.1UP.com Yo La Tengo, and the snooze button

Letters
Where The People stick it to The Man
NATIONAL
LETTER OF THE MONTH PRIDE
I just read Bruce
Geryk’s review of
WHAT’S IN A NAME? the Civilization IV:
Now all those people running Warlords expansion
Windows 98 and Windows ME can get in the October 2006
the hot reviews of Solitaire for 2000 and issue of Computer
previews of Minesweeper for Vista. Once Gaming World (page
they pick up their new e-machines from 88). I am glad to see
Best Buy, they might even be able to run that I was not the
online Boggle, and Games for Windows: The only one who found • Goofy caricatures take
the sting out of any
Official Magazine will be right there for the inclusion of genocide.
them. December will be a very important Joseph Stalin in that
turning point. I hope the changes your expansion to be of “questionable taste.”
name implies do not occur. • A special sneak peek at next month’s cover As a Russian-American whose family was
story. (Note: We’re kidding.)
Steve directly affected by Stalin’s purges, frankly I find
Stalin’s inclusion as a leader of the Russian civiliza-
tion to be patently offensive. I was glad that Stalin
Well, the proof is in the pudding, and you’re holding the pudding, so make sure you wash and other Bolshevik leaders haven’t been pres-
up afterward. But hopefully once you’ve leafed through this issue, you’ll figure out that, ent in recent incarnations of Civilization, which
yes, there’s a lot more to “Games for Windows” than Solitaire. makes sense anyway, considering that under the
Bolsheviks, Russia ceased to exist as an indepen-
dent state until it regained independence in 1991.
WHAT’S IN A NAME? (REPRISE) especially for some- So not only did Stalin not lead “Russia” as such,
So what should we call you? Games for Windows: one who used to but he wasn’t even Russian—he was Georgian.
The Official Magazine? GWOM? GFWTOM? considered a moni- I understand that, given the expansion’s Warlords
Or TMFKACGW? tor a “computer.” name, Firaxis Games wanted to include a leader
Ernesto Duran Summer block- who could be considered a “warlord.” But as Bruce
busters wax and pointed out, they wisely didn’t include Adolf Hitler
Call us Games for Windows: The Official wane, yet we still for Germany—so why include Stalin, who was no
Magazine if we’re out at a formal dinner, GFW find solace and better than Hitler? If they wanted a Russian war-
if we’re just hanging out watching Veronica questioning in lord, Firaxis could have included one of the Russian
Mars. And yes, we know the letter “W” has Lawrence of Arabia. Grand Princes like Alexander Nevsky or Dmitri
more syllables than the word “Windows.” New York Times Donskoy, whose names aren’t associated with the
As for TMFKACGW—yes, indeed, as of last best-sellers sweep deaths of tens of millions of people. I wouldn’t
month, all the folks who make this magazine the nation, and still have had a problem if this expansion was specifi-
were working on The Magazine Formerly Hugo’s hunchback climbs those lonely towers. cally devoted to WWII, in which case the inclusion
Known as Computer Gaming World. We’re not For all of today’s glitter, I can’t help but think of Stalin and Hitler would have been accurate for
gonna pretend we weren’t. Just to prove it, of the gold I have yet to discover, even though historical reasons, but having Stalin as the leader of
we’ve still got a big sack of mail with the old computer gaming may not have quite the same Russia in an overall context is irresponsible—and
address to sort through…. established history. I certainly won’t be buying that expansion unless
If nothing else, the final issue of Computer Firaxis issues a patch to remove Stalin.
NOSTALGIC YELLOW Gaming World inspired me to want to dig deep- Ivan Roman
Reading through the November issue made me er than I have before and try in earnest to slow
realize just how late I entered PC gaming. It’s down my twitch-happy mouse finger. There’s a Lest we forget, Stalin also made an appear-
true that this is a matter of when I was born, substantial portion of strategy to be planned, ance in the original Civilization, too—but we
but seldom has the true weight of what I’ve foreign seas to explore, and mile-high soaring agree that it’s a tad bizarre to allow players
missed out on landed so heavily. I was born to be done, and I want to try and taste it before the ability to play one of history’s greatest
a console child alongside the straightforward I grow old and sore and start distressing how monsters but not another. We’d love to see
hardware conventions of Power, Reset, and the we’ve lost those good ol’ Battlefield 2 days. the balance spreadsheets and white boards
A and B buttons. It was accessibility at its best, Jesse Hebert where Firaxis weighed that decision. >
MAIL BYTES
Like the humble hummingbird acts as a sexual Why don’t more developers make story-driven Where is today’s version of Star Control? Where is
intermediary for flowers (I think), you deliver the FPS games (such as F.E.A.R. and Half-Life 2) with my new Starflight? Where is my 21st-century ver-
game information I so lust for. co-op modes? sion of The Ancient Art of War at Sea? Why did
Daniel Soliman Kdawg they screw up Master of Orion 3?
Eric J Mascorro

Letters Re:
LESS IS MORE? ending. It’s just that some of us find the

I don’t get it. How could so many cranially chal- “process” of dying due to unfair situations
lenged people think axing game ratings is a good or poor level design over and over and over
idea? Removing information is good? Really? If again patently unenjoyable.
you don’t like the scores, look away. If you don’t
have time to read the full reviews, look at the I think that you have just expressed some of the
scores. What’s the problem? Isn’t everyone happy? biggest distinctions between “mature” gamers and
The star rating doesn’t substitute for a written actual n00b gamers. Like the benevolent martial-
review; it complements it. I’ve bought games I arts masters of so many cheesy films circa 1970,
never would have considered if the rating hadn’t gamers like me (I’m almost 37 and have been gam- • Oh no they didn’t. Oh yes they did.
enticed me into reading the full review. ing since I was 14) are somewhat tired of repetitive
Jeff Packer clichés when it comes to formulas for gaming. WAR!
I want to be able to play a game any way I WTF! Halo Wars is only for the Xbox 360? It had
The great thing about magazine redesigns is want to, not the way the designers intended, even better not be! How could Ensemble Studios do
they let you hit the reset button—and when more so when the game design is full of artificial this to us? After all those Age of Empires games? I’ve
you flip to the Reviews section about two- devices and unflexible gimmicks. played Age of Empires since I was, like, 6 years old.
thirds of the way through this magazine, you’ll I bought Doom 3 and after one hour found Tim Camey
see that’s exactly what we did. The Computer the cheat codes and played through. For me,
Gaming World Viewpoint section was a grand the enjoyment came from the physics and the First of all, thanks for making us all feel really,
experiment, and we think it was a success- lighting effects, not so much from shooting the really old. Second of all, we shared your moment
ful one. We learned a ton. And the Games for demons. My game consisted in walking the map, of panic and frustration when we first heard that
Windows: The Official Magazine Reviews and appreciating what the designers did. The same the guys at Ensemble, mavens of PC real-time
Extend sections reap the rewards. goes for Far Cry and many more. strategy, were making a new RTS game for the
So I subscribe to your war cry! Do you want Xbox 360. So we asked Ensemble what’s up…see
GAMING FOR DUMMIES me to play your game? Challenge my skills, don’t what they didn’t tell us on page 34.
Yet again another computer-game magazine make me think like a game designer and figure
back-page writer admits to playing games on out what the designer intended to do. Give REIN IT IN
easy mode—first Robert Coffey and now Jeff me hours of gameplay, not reload screens and In the October issue, Mark Rein blames Intel for
Green (see Greenspeak, CGW #267, page 110). already walked maps! the proliferation of moderately powered com-
I know that you magazine editors actually have Juan Pousada puters that “suck for playing decent games.”
to finish games to write about them—however, Nonsense. Decent games don’t necessarily need
for many of us, playing a game is more about THE DEVIL YOU KNOW high-end rigs. Didn’t Mr. Rein consider that the
the process then the conclusion. For those of My friend told me that Diablo III is coming out problem lies with publishers constantly focusing
you who remember, it used to be that the only in November of this year. Of course, I don’t on games with bleeding-edge graphics?
place to play a decent video game was at the believe him, and I have heard that Diablo III You don’t need cutting-edge graphics—or even
arcade. Back then, if you died, you didn’t start was already created but Blizzard didn’t like the 3D graphics—for great gameplay. Any longtime
from your last save—you started from the very end result so they are redoing it. So is there any gamer knows that. Instead of repeatedly selling us
beginning of the game. Yet you kept putting chance that Blizzard will get it together and get more of the same with fancy new window dress-
quarters in that one one-dimensional game so Diablo III finished? ing that requires a graphics card upgrade, why
that you could finally get to the part were the Tom Goldrick not create something original that puts the game-
alien ships were no longer a boring rectangle play before the eye candy?
and instead became a cool octagon. You were right not to believe him—about Samhain
I know we live in a culture of instant gratifica- the release date, anyway. Blizzard’s got to
tion, but the more I have to strain my rational get World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade We review one such game in this issue, you
and creative faculties to beat a level, the more out the door first. But it’d be foolish to think crazy Celtic holiday you. Check page 98.
satisfied I am with the result. And I personally Blizzard’s not working on Diablo III or whatever
play all my games on hard mode—not because they’ll call it in some secret hole in Irvine, CA— WEIRD AL, IS THAT YOU?
I want to show how cool I am, but because I it’s only one of the most lucrative and critically Maybe it’s just me, but looking at the characters
want to keep playing the really good games acclaimed franchises in PC-gaming history. But in Team Fortress 2, especially the engineer, I keep
for many years to come. I still have games on don’t be too surprised if you’re not playing it waiting for them to break into a Dire Straits song.
my hard drive from over five years ago. While until 2008. Or 2009. Or 2010… I want my…I want my…I want my TF2
some you cruise through the best games of all In the meantime, a big band of ex–Diablo II See the little ****** with the sniper rifle
time, just to say you finished them, people like developers (including former Blizzard VP Bill That little ****** tried to head-shot me
me are still blissfully anticipating the thought of Roper) founded a new studio called Flagship That ain’t playin’, that ain’t the way to do it
playing them. to make Hellgate: London, a sort of 3D “spiri- Concussion jumpin’ crossing klicks for free
Colin Maicher tual successor” to Diablo II. Read about it in We got to invade enemy bases
our “Top 10 2007” article on page 20. Blue-flag delivery-y-y-y-y-y-y
How lovely for you that you yearn for days I got to heal my hurtin’ teammates
when a rectangle becoming an octagon was The medic class is the one for meeeeeee.
considered cool. We, however, like to think Jeff Clineff
games have evolved since then—games these
days tend to be much more rich and complex, We used to hate that song. Now we hate it
with a lot more variety. And we’re over- slightly less. Thanks!
whelmed by the tons and tons of good games
in our libraries just sitting there left totally
unplayed. Which brings up another issue: WRITE US!
Games are just too damn long these days. But You love us. You hate us. You think you could
that’s a rant for another time. sew the most exquisite pants suit out of our
But gaming for all of us is about the •The phrase “spiritual successor” is real popular skins. Whatever’s going through your head,
“process,” not the conclusion…otherwise, these days. See how many times you can spot it email [email protected] today.
in this issue!
we’d just input a level-skip code to see the

Start
News, Previews, and Pert Opinion
EA T URE om-
IEW F
m o st pr 07.
PREV push
e
ed th ell into 2
0
ys sw d
Dela C release outs an f
P a n d se o
ising ist of st
ILLUSTRATION BY SCOTT HANSEN
r l a l t h y do
’s ou a he ot.
Here ers, with sis to bo
p aly
stum hing an
n c
unfli

INSIDE
PREVIEW CULTURE INTERVIEW
Assassin’s Creed Play to Pray David Cage
Murder in the Middle The secret history of Indigo Prophecy maker
Ages—from the makers Christian videogames. muses on emotionally
of Prince of Persia: The engaging games.
30 Sands of Time. 44 50
GFW TOP TEN

ONLINE POLL:
We picked our faves, you put ‘em
in order. Which of the following
’07 releases are readers most
amped for?
BioShock (23%)
Half-Life 2: Episode Two/Team Fortress 2 (22%)
Spore (21%)
Crysis (8%)
Alan Wake (8%)
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (5%)
Hellgate: London (5%)
Command & Conquer 3 (3%)
Supreme Commander (3%)
Pirates of the Burning Sea (2%)
SOURCE: POLL CONDUCTED ON CGW/GFW FORUMS ON 1UP.COM, OCTOBER 2006
GFW.1UP.COM • 21
Start Top 10 2007
r
Person Shoote
s GENRE: First-
PER: Irrational Game
Games DEVELO
PUBLISHER: 2K
BIOSHOCK
WHAT’S PROMISING: Irrational creative ing with the impromptu A.I. At heart, Levine’s a between static A.I. scenarios (disconnected from
director Ken Levine describes the underwa- storyteller first and a technician second, so we’re each other) or wow you with killer water effects.
ter city of Rapture in BioShock as an emergent predicting all the pimp-mapped visuals and A.I. We’re not expecting Grand Theft Auto, but
world that listens to you. Rolling your eyes? goodies in the world won’t trump the narrative when we see that scrawny Little Sister emerge
Don’t, unless your two least favorite games were surprises his team’s brewing for this one. from an air duct and climb onto the shoulder
Thief and System Shock 2. Instead of narrow POTENTIAL PRATFALLS: Calling BioShock “a of a hulking Big Daddy, we want to believe she
mazes or vacuous open areas with at best cos- stake in the heart of run-down-the-corridor continues to exist long after we’ve silently crept
metic interactivity, BioShock presents a free-form [shooters]” is well and fun, but we’ve heard that by to other places.
A.I. ecology modeling desperate mutant factions sort of tough talk before, and we’ve already WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW: “BioShock will
scrapping for footing in the debris of a failed seen elements of it in horror-shooters like redefine what people expect from a first-person
utopia. The world “listens” by subtly respond- F.E.A.R. With up-and-comers like Crysis—anoth- shooter. I know that sounds ambitious. So,
ing to how you play, whether that’s shooting, er FPS touting ecological A.I., but in a massively we’re either really ambitious or really stupid.”
using genetic powers, hacking machines to craft open-ended and deformable environment— –Ken Levine, president/cofounder, Irrational
items, taking over security systems, or just mess- BioShock needs to do more than step you •
Games Matt Peckham
ht.
NRE: Yeah, rig
PER: Maxis GE
Games DEVELO
PUBLISHER: EA
SPORE
WHAT’S PROMISING: You’re traveling to complement your personality and skill level. of monster bashing and pony expressing around
through another dimension, one not only Wright calls Spore a “massively single-player game,” its world. Spore needs to transcend the “conquer
of sight and sound, but of mind, a journey into a which means it can dynamically integrate content everything” convention if it’s after more than the
wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imag- built by other players based on play-style similari- usual RTS kudos.
ination—you’ve just crossed over into…the Will ties. (We deny responsibility for the platypus-that- WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW: French writer
Wright zone. If there’s one game in 2007 that’s on can-kiss-its-own-ass species that’ll be popping up Honoré de Balzac once said, “Bureaucracy is a
our minds, it’s this one. You start as a single-celled postrelease.) giant mechanism operated by pygmies.” As the
thingamabob, then “evolve” into a multicellular POTENTIAL PRATFALLS: Three words: Black & potential cash windfalls for game IP explode,
thingamabob, and eventually spread your thingam- White. Listening to Robin Williams go gaga dur- big-dog publishers are clamping down on the
abob civilization across the galaxy. Features include ing Spore demos is great (note: Williams loved flow of information between development
Pixar-style animation tools, socialization and mating Black & White, too), but turning a geeky biology studios and the press. Call it PR or just “Pretty
models, and even in-game creature data stats you demo into something as intuitive as The Sims is a Ridiculous,” in Spore’s case, what we didn’t
can print and play as an independent card game whole other ball of assembly code. Then there’s know was that the new game in gametown is
(can you say franchise?). What’s more, the game the Oblivion question—big and beautiful and pro- called “hide the designer.” The rules? Six-month
actually redesigns itself as you play, transforming cedural as Bethesda’s mega-RPG is, it’s still a lot •
info blackout. MP

Top 10 2007 Start
Person Shooter
iplayer First-
st-Person Shooter/Mult
VELOPER: Va
lve GENRE: Fir
lve/EA DE
PUBLISHER: Va
F-LIFE
HAL DE TWO/2:
EPISO R ESS 2
• Team Fortress
Classic’s Dustbowl
map redone for TEAM FO RT
Team Fortress 2.
WHAT’S PROMISING: Unlike Episode character classes that move as though hand- POTENTIAL PRATFALLS: Valve invented
One—perfectly paced though ultimately animated, grip hiccuping guns, airwalk at the FPS as series of carefully controlled encoun-
linear, satisfying though an insatiable cannibal apex of rocket hops, bang turrets into place, ters, but can it dial down scripting and still
of Half-Life 2’s settings—this second epi- and more. Painterly environments complete deliver? (We’d wonder about Vortigaunt allies
sode frees players from path following…and the campy sci-fi/spy-themed picture: Farm and who now fight alongside Freeman and amp
itself of old trappings. Now outside Eastern industrial facades on each team’s fortress give his HEV suit if Episode One hadn’t already
European–ish City 17, Gordon Freeman wends way to high-tech underground facilities. proven Valve’s handle on partner A.I.)
his way through an Antlion larder and the TF2 builds on Team Fortress Classic’s nine Team Fortress 2 isn’t especially worrying,
White Forest. “Some maps are massively trademark classes, notably tweaking Medic, either. Curb Team Fortress Classic’s overabun-
nonlinear,” says engineer Josh Weier, and the Spy, and Demo Man kits to reflect today’s dant explosives and tendency to stalemate,
episode’s woodlands provide ultimate objec- physics technology and address cocreator tweak underdeveloped classes (Valve’s already
tives (say rendezvous with resistance scientists Robin Walker’s dissatisfaction with dated announced it’s rejiggering the Pyro and Demo
in a silo somewhere) while leaving proximate mechanics such as the Medic’s inability to eas- Man), and the game’s good to go. Of course,
tactics up to players. The idea is more choice, ily assist allies and ability to infect foes. (“‘Stay hardcore fans have their own ideas, and even
moment to moment: Instead of predicting away from teammates; they might hurt you,’ the slightest change to the TFC template will
when the Combine will appear, we suss out isn’t exactly a good signal to send,” Walker provoke vocal online opposition.
where they’re concentrated and plan one of says.) No word yet on which modes, other than WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW: “Episode Two’s
several possible approaches. A buggy/dozer capture the flag, are coming back, although vehicles include an old refrigerator, retro-
hybrid adds frontal assaults and fast getaways Walker hints at new uses for the Demo Man’s fitted to serve as a cargo container. Plus,
to the agenda. environment-obliterating detpacks, as well as remakes of Team Fortress Classic maps
Team Fortress 2, part of the Episode Two/ the Engineer’s construction kit. Expect a com- Well and Dustbowl are in the works for
Portal package, stuns on sight. Shadows and prehensive commentary mode to explain the TF2.” –Doug Lombardi, marketing director,
stark shapes—more so than fine detail—define whys and hows. •
Valve Shawn Elliott
• Also in the
package: first-
person puzzler
Portal.
• Almost always
visible wherever
you’re hiking.
GFW.1UP.COM • 23
Start Top 10 2007
: QUAKE
tivision
WARS
VELOPER: Splas
DE
h Damage/id
GENRE: Mult
iplayer First-Person
Shooter
PUBLISHER: Ac
RITORY
ENEMY TER
WHAT’S PROMISING: A top five within a whereas HUD pop-ups alert medics when allies fall. that such snafus are indicative of ETQW’s work-
top 10, if you will: 1) ETQW hails from the Naturally, pursuing objectives nets more points. 5) in-progress status, plain and simple, and that the
same Bromley, England blokes who brought us the Maps serve as story beats, adding motive to the developer’s “done when it’s done” MO affords time
fire-hot and for-free Return to Castle Wolfenstein: mayhem, by chronicling the Quake series’ offscreen to nip, tuck, tune, and balance as needed, although
Enemy Territory. 2) Borg-like Strogg battle flesh- battles. One, for instance, involves an effort to beating the potentially sexier-looking and conceptu-
and-blood humans; because extraterrestrials hinder the development of the hyperblaster, while ally similar Crysis to market could become crucial.
and earthlings aren’t equally equipped, 32-man another explores how humans reverse-engineered WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW: “Id’s brought back
matches differ depending upon the faction you Strogg slipgates to strike at Stroggos in Quake II. veteran game, TV, and film composer Bill Brown
join. 3) Megatexture tech created by id cofounder POTENTIAL PRATFALLS: As of QuakeCon ’06, it for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars’ music needs. Bill
John Carmack lets artists “add 10 million tiny little still seemed difficult to determine which direction goes back with the guys to Wolfenstein: Enemy
touches to levels.” 4) Micromissions make lone- incoming fire was coming from, as well as precisely Territory, and even Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
wolf play tactical: Servers identify targets of oppor- who or what, in a world of 1,000 possible deaths, Plus he did the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars trail-
tunity from radar arrays to field guns, as well as did us in—dangerous frustrations for a shooter of ers, too.” –Kevin Cloud, creative director and co-
the nearest soldier with the means to smash them, ETQW ’s sort. Id co-owner Kevin Cloud assures us •
owner, id Software SE
GENRE: RPG
PER: Fla gship Studios
Games DEVELO
mco Bandai
PUBLISHER: Na
LG
HEL NATE:
LONDO
WHAT’S PROMISING: It’s the spiritual POTENTIAL PRATFALLS: Hook up with your emphasis on all the reasons you’ll want to go
successor to Diablo…and, with former buddies in a centralized online lobby and sally online—from the specialized community ele-
Blizzard superstar Bill Roper at the helm of forth in search of adventure: It’s a tried-and- ments, to [our support of ] a worldwide econ-
Hellgate developer Flagship Studios, that’s true format that Diablo vets were psyched omy, to specific game modes. We’re playing
no surprise. The game features an intricate about when Hellgate was first announced. with each other in the office all the time now,
loot system, randomized levels (all set against Since then, competing action-MMORPG Guild and it’s been great to start the initial balance,
a hellish modern-day England backdrop), Wars stole a bit of Hellgate’s thunder, making gameplay tweaking, and making the different
engrossing multiplayer functionality, and three this sort of multiplayer dynamic yesterday’s character classes play well with each other.
unique character factions: the sword-wielding, news. But more than this, we’re concerned We’ve got some big surprises in store that
hack-happy Templar; the spooky, demon- with waiting forever to play the game, given are going to make our MMO experience very
summoning Cabalist; and—this just in—the Flagship’s persistent “when it’s done” attitude. different from any other RPG you’ve tried.”
Hunter, who fills the ranged combat slot for WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW: “Our multiplayer –Bill Roper, CEO/cofounder, Flagship Studios
FPS-crazed players. plans are really falling into place, with an • Ryan Scott

Top 10 2007 Start
ler
inment GENRE: Thril
: Remedy Enterta
ios DEVELOPER
t Game Stud
PUBLISHER: Microsof
ALAN WAKE
WHAT’S PROMISING: This atmospheric world, but one that will get increasingly sur- it has still got it. And open-world designs are
thriller is being made by folks who know real as the game progresses, pulling the rug tough to pull off. Only the GTA games have
how to make a thriller—Finnish developer out from under the player. The game’s graph- ever truly nailed it.
Remedy Entertainment, the company behind ics are incredible—truly next-gen lighting WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW: As we went to
Max Payne 1 and 2. And while the Payne and shadow effects that will play a key role in press, we learned that Alan Wake’s release
games drew inspiration from film noir, Alan gameplay as well. date is still to be determined. So while we’re
Wake takes its cue from modern-day hor- POTENTIAL PRATFALLS: It’s been a while hoping for 2007, there’s no promise yet. But
ror classics like Twin Peaks and The Shining. since Max Payne 2, and not everyone was too maybe making our list here will inspire them
Remedy is promising a GTA-styled open fond of that game, so Remedy needs to prove •
to work harder. Jeff Green
MORPG
are GENRE: M
ing Lab Softw
SHER: N/ A DEVELOPER: Fly
PUBLI
TES O F THE
PIRA ING SEA
BURN
WHAT’S PROMISING: A complex player-driven economy; character customization on the
level of City of Heroes (“That’s what we’re shooting for,” says producer John Tynes); nonin-
stanced PVE and PVP adventure sites that pack dozens of players in for ship-to-ship combat and
sword fights. Think massively multiplayer Monkey Island.
POTENTIAL PRATFALLS: We live in a World of WarCraft world, with rough waters ahead for com-
paratively small-fry MMOs like Pirates. If its unique features hold up, we’re hoping it can eke out a
modest-but-successful Eve Online–caliber existence, as success on WOW or Final Fantasy XI’s level is
a serious long shot.
WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW: “We’re working on an epic storyline that involves the supernatural—
the kinds of myths and legends that sailors of 1720 believed in. You can play through this experience
and learn all kinds of secrets, including why it’s called the ‘Burning Sea.’” –John Tynes, producer,
Flying Lab Software RS •
al-Tim e Strategy
mes GENRE: Re
s Powered Ga
PUBLISHER: TH
COMMANDER
Q DEVELOPER:
Ga
SUPREME
WHAT’S PROMISING: Total Annihilation reliance on strategy as opposed to tactics ent play styles like ‘rush’ and ‘turtle.’ We’re also
loyalists, stop with the clamoring—your (that is, “big-picture planning” versus “cir- working on a method to blend various arche-
sequel arrives next year. Supreme Commander cumstantial course of action”). Our worry types, and what we have almost completed
dishes up more of lead designer Chris Taylor’s plays more on the target audience than is what we call the ‘balanced’ archetype. This
unique vision of real-time strategy, this time the game itself: Just how many people are opponent will both ‘tech up’ and send out the
with mammoth, multiscreen units and structures. gonna notice the difference? occasional invasion force, which keeps you off
POTENTIAL PRATFALLS: Taylor’s made WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW: “We have these balance a lot more.” –Chris Taylor, CEO/creative
some pretty bold promises about SupCom’s personality ‘archetypes,’ each with very differ- director, Gas Powered Games RS •
GFW.1UP.COM • 25
Start Top 10 2007
IBER
Games DEVELO
IUM WARS
PER: EA LA GE
NRE: Real-Tim
e Strategy
PUBLISHER: EA
ONQUER 3: T
COMMAND & C
GAME
XTRAS
VIDEOS
Once you’re done reading about ‘em,
see video footage of our Top 10 2007
games in action at GFW01.1UP.com.
WHAT’S PROMISING: Well, it’s a new to both modernize and fix the core gameplay Ultimate bad guy Kane is back and is being
Command & Conquer game, for one thing. (yay pathfinding!) while preserving the spirit of played by Joe Kucan, the actor who played him
So that’s (usually) something to be (moderately) the old games. in the old games. But now we’re also going to
happy about. But this one genuinely brings out POTENTIAL PRATFALLS: The C&C series has meet his right hand in the Brotherhood of Nod,
the rabid fanboys in us. Why? Because it finally been out of the spotlight, and out of develop- Killian Qatar, played by none other than Tricia
marks the return to the series’ original sci-fi set- ment, for many years now, and with games like Helfer, the nerd It Girl who plays Number 6 on
ting—the epic battle between the Brotherhood Company of Heroes and the upcoming Supreme Battlestar Galactica. And she’s not the only Cylon
of NOD and the Global Defense Initiative—for Commander now in the spotlight, C&C 3 is really babe in the cast: Grace Park (Sharon Valerii)
the first time since 1999’s Command & Conquer: going to have to pull out the stops to compete. plays a character on the GDI side. And to round
Tiberian Sun (and the 2000 Firestorm expan- And are those full-motion video cut-scenes out the geekathon, Josh Holloway (Sawyer from
sion pack). The new game’s graphics, using the going to be cheesy good, or just cheesy? Lost), and Billy Dee Williams (Hi, Lando, duh!)
engine from EA’s stellar Battle for Middle-earth WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW: The cast for those slum it, too. Do all these actors have overdue
II, look good so far, and the team has promised FMV cut-scenes is turning into a geek’s dream. house payments, or what? JG •
Perso n Shooter
GENRE: First-
PER: Crytek
Games DEVELO
PUBLISHER: EA
CRYSIS
WHAT’S PROMISING: Crysis developer or fracture ice floes to sink annoying earth- to fabricate sea-, land-, and aircraft in an econ-
Crytek wants what’s onscreen to issue the lings. Crytek, of course, boasts that flexible A.I. omy-focused campaign? Topping Battlefield in
opening statement. Jaws unhinged and hanging, behavior complements the shooter’s far-out principle is one thing (and that with only one
technophiles finger the razzle-dazzle there as playspaces while capitalizing on changing con- part of an off- and online package), but tuning
depth of field, dynamic deforestation, subsurface ditions—spacelike zero-grav settings included. army-vs.-army shooters is notoriously tricky.
scattering, soft shadows, and such. But before POTENTIAL PRATFALLS: Your skepticism WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW: “We got to
we’re able to wonder whether, you know, a meets ours on more than a few points: Will it meet Robin Williams at the Electronic
game exists behind the graphics, we’re staring at run well on a wide range of rigs? (Some wonder Entertainment Expo. He told us what a big
an E.T. scenario unlike any we’ve encountered. whether it will run well period.) Can anything Far Cry fan he is and then proceeded to
Refrigerated rain forest and shock-frozen as technically ambitious for its time hit shelves mimic the game for us, complete with gun-
seas not only seem otherworldly, they offer on schedule where Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 shots and explosions. It was especially great
out-of-the-ordinary interaction when hero Jake couldn’t? And what of its grandstanding, 32- when he looked on as we demoed Crysis
Dunn shatters matter so that the shards fly at man multiplayer game in which teams appropri- and mimicked the player punching out a
foes; aliens do the same to create obstruction ate dry docks, motorworks, and aviation centers Trooper.” –Cevat Yerli, CEO, Crytek SE •
Start WOW Trading Card Game
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

Bringing the grind from your desktop to your tabletop
• More DOTs! The Onyxia’s Lair Raid

Deck allows several heroes to fight in
tandem against the infamous Ony.
Now for the pure evil part: Booster packs are

PREVIEW sprinkled with special code-bearing Loot Cards
that unlock rewards in the actual MMO—turn
Some of us spend more time in the World in your code to an in-game NPC named Landro
of WarCraft than in the real world. So Longshot (a member of the new Goblin Gambler
count Upper Deck Entertainment’s new World of faction) and you’ll get one of three rewards: a
WarCraft Trading Card Game as either a Paladin’s Goblin Gambler tabard to wear over your gear, a
blessing or a Warlock’s curse—a way to pull your baby hippogryph to add to your pet menagerie, • Upper Deck predicts you’ll see the ultrarare
eyes away from the monitor for a few precious or a turtle mount that can be used by characters turtle mount just a wee bit more often than you
minutes, or another silly addiction to dump your of any level and even in places other mounts do Murky, the rare dancing baby Murloc given
away at BlizzCon.
time and money into. can’t go—but adds no speed bonus whatsoever.
The game’s mechanics are similar to Magic: The Alternately, if luck’s not on your side, three other
Gathering—two dueling heroes take turns whittling rewards are available to anyone who accumulates
away each other’s hit points while playing allies, enough points through booster- and starter-pack
weapons, and special abilities against each other. purchases—grind Upper Deck Entertainment
Quest cards stand in place of Magic’s “land” faction, so to speak. Upper Deck is quick to point
(resources that accumulate over turns so you can out that all of the rewards offer purely cosmetic
perform more and more powerful attacks), and upgrades—nothing in the TCG will modify MMO
cards bear names familiar to any serious WOW gameplay—no doubt fearing the inevitable call for
player (Arcanite Reaper; Are We There, Yeti?). •
a nerf from noncard gamers. Sean Molloy
>> BOOSTER PACKS COME WITH SPECIAL

CODE-BEARING LOOT CARDS. •No Azerothian pet collection is complete
without a li’l baby hippogryph.
NOW SHOWING @
From official promos to original content, get it all at GameVideos.com. See these viral vids and more at www.GameVideos.com/GFW.
REAL-LIFE TEKKEN FIGHT RESIDENT EVIL 4 SUPER FAN MOVIE HALF-LIFE 2 “PHYSICS” SHOWCASE
High-kicking high schoolers meet on the foot- A Brit and his cross-dressing chum stage a Devious Half-Life 2–based Rube Goldberg
ball field for pantomime kung fu and post- scene-for-scene, live-action adaptation of the device clobbers a zombie in no less than 30
production “Pow!” effects. console chiller. convoluted steps.

Start Assassin’s Creed
ASSASSIN’S
CREED
“Console exclusive” plays peekaboo on PC
PUBLISHER: Ubisoft DEVELOPER: Ubisoft Montreal GENRE: Action RELEASE DATE: 2007
PREVIEW Protagonist Altair works under the sun in plain

sight. Dressing the part of some 12th-century
An apolitical Crusade story isn’t pos- superhero (presumably to pop onscreen, as
sible; still, Ubisoft insists actioner opposed to making sense in the context), the
Assassin’s Creed spins one. Set in 1191 at Assassin operates amid bustling market stalls,
the tail of the third Christian-Muslim clash mosques, and meeting places. Priests, beg-
in Richard the Lionheart–controlled Acre, gars, and prostitutes mill about in mobs of 60
Saladin’s Damascus and Jerusalem, and the or more, and Altair must compete or cooper-
cliffside fortress city of Arsuf, it follows an ate with them in AC’s crowded sets. “We want
Islamic society infamous for its policy of to achieve a degree of social realism in Altair’s
secret murder. interactions,” Raymond says. “Elsewhere, say in
And what of perception problems? (Picture Grand Theft Auto, it’s not unusual to run every-
the spin: “Videogamers slay Christians!”) where while holding a gun and have no one
“It’s important to note that, historically, the take notice. In fact, the very idea of running
Assassins had their own philosophy,” says all the time is videogamey. Thus, Altair has two
producer Jade Raymond, “quite different modes of movement: a ‘low-profile’ version,
from that of the Crusaders or the Saracens.” where all of his actions are modified for maxi-
Creative license clears the rest. “Since they mum social acceptability, and a second, ‘high-
were a sort of mystic, mythical bunch, profile’ variant, where he acts the hero, but
almost nothing about their actions or cause simultaneously becomes more conspicuous, pos-
can be confirmed. Historic ambiguity allows sibly putting his mission at risk.” In other words,
us to portray them as forward-thinkers try- it’s possible to shove one’s way past impedi-
ing to stop the war,” Raymond says. “Neither ments (push an actual button to push someone’s
Crusaders nor Saracens are the Assassins’ buttons, so to speak) or to see them as people.
true enemy. War is—as are those who According to temperament and stature, NPCs
exploit it.” might turn the other cheek or retaliate, pas-
Silent since Prince of Persia: The Sands sively/aggressively sneer or attempt to extract>
of Time, Ubisoft Montreal’s studio mem-
bers stayed keen on places east of the
Mediterranean. “It’s not enough for us to
simply set AC here,” Raymond says. “We’re
compelled to capture the experience of life in
this tumultuous time, the fusion of European
and Middle Eastern art and architecture, the
intrigue, the political machinations, and the
air of mystery that surrounds the era’s secret
societies. And, well,” she adds, “we want to
provide gamers with an unprecedented sense
of immersion, and what better setting for
interesting crowd gameplay than medieval
streets packed with merchants, Templars, and
public executions?”

Assassin’s Creed Start
• Fight and/or fly, when

and where you want.
GFW.1UP.COM • 31
Start Assassin’s Creed
>
“WE’RE COMPELLED TO CAPTURE
THE EXPERIENCE OF LIFE IN THIS
TUMULTUOUS TIME.”—JADE RAYMOND, PRODUCER
an eye or a tooth for an ego. At times, it’s smart lence and evasion, fight or flight. If surrounded,
to happy-slap your way through the throng with- Altair shifts from stealth (as well as a compact
out worrying about the hubbub forming in your crossbow and the retractable talon attached to
wake. At others, civility is the wiser way. his arm) to swordplay. Says Raymond: “Realism
Says Raymond: “As the player/Altair progresses, is the driving factor for our fighting system.
he has the option of assisting certain categories We didn’t want our characters to survive head
of people. These missions are optional, but always wounds or to shrug off sword strikes as though
impact the player’s social standing. NPCs turn nothing happened. Instead, players need to
from hindering the Assassin to helping him.” For find and create openings in their opponents’
instance, sympathetic priests admit you into their defense while covering openings of their own.
white-robed ranks to stymie pursuers. A free- Observation and proper timing matter; not mem-
loader extends a foot to trip those on your tail, or orizing preset combo strings.”
points a patrol here when, in actuality, you’re hid- When odds are overwhelming—“there’s no tak-
ing there. Other abettors might throw stones at ing on 50 foes at a time,” warns Raymond—Altair
town officials or amass in alleys, blocking passage scrams, either with the assistance of NPCs, or,
once you’ve passed. These are Altair’s “super- when previous bad behavior precludes it, via
powers,” standing in where the Prince of Persia rooftop. See the game’s destinations as a grid.
slowed, reversed, and stopped time. Eschewing Prince of Persia’s dot connecting,
Other postassassination options include vio- where platforming is all linear progress, athletics
in AC resemble “free-running” in that every ledge
and brick is a handhold, and every banister a
landing zone. Plus, independent hotkeys for arm
and leg movement permit improvisational con-
trol—vault this, hurdle that, go here, go there.
And what of the cryptic messages from the
21st century that pop up when Altair flubs his
mission? “For the moment, all I can say is that, as
you assassinate those responsible for the Third
Crusade, you also uncover a plot with farther-
reaching implications,” Raymond reveals, “a con-
spiracy that touches on subjects relevant to you
•
and me.” Shawn Elliott

Start Ensemble
• Ensemble’s next
RTS? The Xbox
360–exclusive
Halo Wars. But
the developer says
they’re not giving
up on the PC.
• We had a few big problems with Age of

Empires III when it first came out (see CGW
#257), but patches and expansions can work
wonders. Turn to page 93, and you’ll see that
we’ve since changed our tune.
ENSEMBLE STUDIOS’
BRUCE SHELLEY SPEAKS
Just not about Halo Wars (yet)
GFW: One of the big challenges with the opinion of Age III substantially and that is good to
INTERVIEW original AOE3 for you was to retain historical hear. Most, if not all, of the criticism was certainly
accuracy and respect, especially with regard valid; but a reviewer can only see so much of a
It may be a bit to Native Americans. With the new WarChiefs big game and we think some strong points were
too drama-queeny expansion, it seems you felt free to indulge in not given their due. We’d almost rather see a
of us to call it an “end a little more of the fantastic and less realistic. more carefully considered review appear later, but
of the world” moment, Why and how were you able to make this we understand time constraints.
but when we heard that come about?
Halo Wars, a real-time BS: We were very aware of the geopolitical con- GFW: If you could go back in time and
strategy game for the cerns that faced AOE3 and took a lot of care to rerelease AOE3 all over again, what’s the one
Xbox 360, was being involve Native Americans within Microsoft along big design decision you would change?
developed by PC-gaming diehards Ensemble with academics as we decided how the game would BS: We had an ambitious plan for making mili-
Studios, well—it made us nervous. We contacted work and look. I don’t recall any negative comments tary formations significant: Facing would matter,
Ensemble’s lead game designer Bruce Shelley about our approach after [AOE3’s] release, but a lot different formations would be more effective in
to see if he’d reassure us that this was all just a of people did express regret that they couldn’t play certain situations, battle would not be a swirl-
bad dream and that we’d get to play on the PC as Native Americans. Once we embraced the idea of ing free-for-all. It really made the game look
too—but he’s too smart to spill any real secrets. playing as them, lead designer Sandy Petersen and and play differently, and was close to working,
He was, however, more than willing to talk with the rest of the design team decided to add some but there were so many special cases that fix-
us about Ensemble’s current and future plans for touches of the Native American mythology. This ing it right was impossible in the time we had.
its flagship Age of Empires franchise—and to reas- took us a little into the fantastic and magical, but I would like to have seen working formations in
sure us that Ensemble has not broken up with us. we hope this helps reinforce the feeling that you are Age of Empires III.
• Jeff Green playing something different. There were moments
when Native Americans really believed they were GFW: So back to Halo Wars. We know you
GFW: OK, so you’re making Halo Wars for impervious to bullets. can’t talk about it. But just tell us this: How
the Xbox 360. Does this mean you’re done much should PC gamers worry, really? Have
with Age of Empires III for a while? Or will we GFW: Our original review of AOE3 was a bit you “given up” on the PC, as the message-
see more? Another expansion? More maps? harsh [3/5 stars, CGW #257]. In retrospect, do board Chicken Littles have been crying?
Bruce Shelley: There will be more. All of our you feel our review was unfair? Or do some of BS: Ensemble Studios is not giving up on the PC,
games have enjoyed long shelf lives and provid- the criticisms seem valid? believe me. We are taking a break from Age of
ing more [content] seems to help with that. We BS: Rather than harsh or unfair, I would use the Empires, but not forever. Some of us have been
want to keep Age of Empires going for some time word “shallow.” Our games are broad and deep working on it for 11 years. In the meantime, we
to come. We have an ES Live team that works with tons of content, and they are a challenge for have a really different PC game in the works that
entirely on improving the game and delivering a reviewer on a tight schedule. After further expe- we hope to begin talking about next year, if it
new content and features. rience, I believe your reviewer has improved his comes together successfully. •
Start Introversion
LAST OF
THE PAJAMA
PROGRAMMERS
U.K.-based Introversion deconstructs the games industry, one polygon at a time
TRENDS Morris sounds positively jazzed, like he’s the each other. Of course, no sooner had Introversion
proudest parent in the world. On September 29, pulled the trigger on the downloadable version
You’d think a hard-slaving guy who the London-based games company with which than—in classic Murphy’s fashion—its pipe to the
just spent the better part of a weekend Morris serves as codirector unleashed its third Internet went kaput.
sweating the release of his company’s brand-new title, DEFCON, a Dr. Strangelove–ian real-time “We launched and almost immediately the
game might come across as a bit more bone- strategy mash-up in which six players sneak units service fell apart,” says Morris wryly. “Someone
weary. But no, Introversion’s self-described around a vector graphics map of the world and, accidentally knocked a fiber cable in our ISP’s
creative/commercial mediator Mark when the clock runs down, lob megaton nukes at data center, so it’s this classic case of it doesn’t

Introversion Start
•Uplink, Introversion’s premier project •Darwinia’s postmillennial minimalism •Introversion: floored on the floor
matter how much you shore up your systems, you we just did what you do at college, which is, you and pals cooked up a website, added an online
just can’t predict the bloke hoovering around the know, program, go out, get drunk.” credit card processor, posted on a few hacker
server.” And though the team labored for several “And then, I can’t remember exactly when, it forums, “And all of a sudden, it just took off,” says
hours to bring the service back online as anxious might have been the second year or possibly the Morris. “We were selling something like four copies
fans endured page time-outs, the ISP collapse was third, Chris said to me, ‘I’m going to make a game on the first day, then eight on the second, then 40
only part of the problem. “DEFCON was our first about computer hacking’ and he’d mentioned that on the third, 150 on the next day, and so on. And it
online game,” says Morris. “And although we’d he wanted to have a go at the games industry,” was at that point that Introversion was born.”
done an awful lot of stress testing to ensure we explains Morris, who still has a bet with Delay for
could cope with the load, I don’t think we ever 1,000 pounds that he won’t work in the games DISTRIBUTION GAME
anticipated the demand we ended up with.” industry. “I was absolutely convinced that he’d be Rags to riches? Not quite. Despite selling numerous
Demand of a magnitude that translated to seduced and sign with the banks or something copies of Uplink and enjoying a lot of positive
over 2,000 simultaneous games hammering for more money.” Programming in his spare time, press, in the years that followed, Introversion
Introversion’s metaserver the first night alone. Delay began assembling the elements of what gradually slid into the red, to the point where
That’s quite a different tune from the one the would eventually become Uplink. Around that time, Morris and friends weren’t taking salaries. “We
company was singing in 2001, when it was Imperial College was running a competition in didn’t really know how to manage the finances
puzzling out how to sell its very first product: a which whoever submitted the best plan for a new properly at first,” says Morris, noting that while
hacking simulation called Uplink which—absent business would win 10,000 pounds. “We decided the money was coming in, they weren’t tracking
so much as a marketing penny—sold purely by we were going to write our plan for a games spending (a duty cofounder Thomas Arundel now
word of mouth. In fact, the team that would go company based around Chris’s Uplink,” says Morris. oversees religiously). “And we also sort of thought
on to win the Independent Games Festival Grand “Because to us it would have been something we the Uplink bubble would never end,” adds Morris.
Prize in March 2006 for its second game (the could use to pay off our student loans before we “You know, that Uplink would just continue selling
esoteric real-time whatchamacallit Darwinia) went our separate ways.” As they worked, Morris and everything would be rosy.” This was the long
started out as a few Imperial College computer says it quickly became apparent they were going to and arduous phase the company’s website labels
science pals having a go at a business contest. lose because the judges were (somewhat ironically) “the difficult second album years,” the period
“We all went to the same halls of residence looking for more “novel” business ideas than a between 2002 and 2004 during which Delay and
back in 1997, so that’s when I first met Johnny games company. “But afterward we still had this team were struggling to turn a clever idea—sprites
[Knottenbelt] and Chris [Delay], who were fellow business plan, and we thought, well hey, let’s all put grafted on polygons to efficiently spawn enormous
computer scientists,” says Morris. “And basically 200 pounds in and see where it takes us.” So Morris armies—into a game. Introversion finally launched >
GFW.1UP.COM • 37
Start Introversion
that game (Darwinia) in March 2005 particular direction based on their

to immediate critical acclaim, and latest sales graph, further diluting
by the end of the year the company what initially was a phenomenally
was racing forward again, signing creative and brand-new idea.” In the
a milestone deal with Valve to end, says Morris, even if you manage
distribute Darwinia via Steam. to produce something novel, the
“Steam really sort of saved marketing department might not
Introversion, I think, with the number “get it.” “Because of that, they won’t
of copies they were able to shift,” give it the same marketing oomph
admits Morris. “They have 6 million they would have were it another EA
users, so suddenly you have that Sports clone,” he says. “So games
kind of base out there that Steam that are more creative tend to
just switches on.” But while Steam slip through unnoticed. And then
brought Introversion to the masses, publishers conclude, well, you know,
it’s the company’s original, retro-style sales weren’t as good, just as we
games that have attracted an almost suspected; let’s go back to making
cultish following, a component alphabet soup.”
Morris attributes to the company’s Would Introversion consider
fierce independence. “We believe the trading its indie status for a sweet
money that goes into developing deal? “The views within the company
computer games is getting larger vary,” says Morris. “There are two
and larger, and the publishers extremes…. The first is that there’s
fronting that money are seeking absolutely no way we would sell
to minimize their risk,” he explains. out, ever, under any circumstances.
“Now an unforeseen consequence of The other is that, for the right
this is that creativity is being driven amount of cash, it would be lunacy
out of the design process.” to do anything else.” Still, Morris
According to Morris, it starts says Introversion is worth a lot to
when publishers require “design everyone because it’s a lifestyle.
documents” before creative ideas “We all grew up in the days when
have been fully thought through. computers were still really cool, and
Designers are then asked for a you’d see different things coming out
“vertical slice” (an interactive outline) with really unique topics from people
to minimize the risk. “So you’re who were able to code in their
working hard, and you’ve got no bedrooms. We see ourselves carrying
time to experiment with something,” the banner of coding from back in
he says. “On top of that, at various those old days.” So far, it’s a banner
points along the way, the publishers critics and fans are more than willing
will want to pull the game in a •Defiant: DEFCON promotional material •
to flock to. Matt Peckham
LEADERS OF THE BAND

the moment.” And then GFW: You’re very candid about the whole
we give him our views business setup.
on which of those MM: I think the people that play our games
ideas are good and have the right to know how we go about
maybe some things doing these things. They have a right to an
he hasn’t considered. insight into the way companies operate,
So it’s actually very how you’re inspired and such. So I feel sort
unprogrammed, which of obligated to let everyone out there know
is, I believe, necessary how we do what we do.
for us to be able to
produce creative GFW: Right after DEFCON’s launch, your
games. But I can tell news page read, “Much was discussed,
you it’s a real pain to wine was consumed, and the entire
manage! company was restructured.” Mind
divulging more details?
GFW: How do you guys gin up your project GFW: How is the team structured? MM: That quote was really about the finances
ideas? Is it collaborative? MM: When it was just the three of us, Chris of the company, and the manner in which the
Mark Morris: It’s very much a one-man band, was the creative guy and Tom [Arundel] was shares were divided up, salaries and things.
actually. The game ideas come from Chris [Delay], the very sort of hard-nosed businessman. We didn’t start on equal footing, and for a
and Chris takes those ideas from ephemeral And their two views needed constant long period there was inequality within the
concepts bouncing around on the inside of his reconciliation because they tend not to see company, and that didn’t serve anybody well.
brain to something tangible. So what tends to eye-to-eye on much, which actually lends So what we were able to do, and I feel really
happen is, around two-thirds of the way through us an awful lot of strength. But my role is quite proud of this, is despite any baggage we
a project, Chris starts thinking about what the to tread the middle line between the two of might have brought to that meeting, we were
next game’s going to look like. And over a few them and be a sort of trusted ear. They both able to sort of get drunk and resolve it, which
beers he’ll say, “I’ve just had this idea, this is what know that I’ll make the decision that’s in the was a real coup, so I think we’re the strongest
I’m thinking, this is how I’m quite feeling at best interest of the company. we’ve ever been right now.

Start Overlord
OVERLORD
Unleash your id (and underlings)

Overlord Start
PUBLISHER: Codemasters DEVELOPER: Triumph Studios GENRE: Action RELEASE DATE: Summer 2007
PREVIEW draw inspiration from classic comedic games sonal appearance will radically alter, and you’ll
like Dungeon Keeper or The Horde, though, be able to wield forbidden magic. Finishing
Take a scruples test sometime and you Overlord takes a page from movies such as totally uncorrupted, just for the sake of seeing
just might find that menacing despots Gremlins and Labyrinth. a different ending, is going to be tough. As Sas
aren’t actually evil—just misunderstood. Exhibit The enemies also share the same twisted warns, “Think of all the temptations you’ll have
A: the titular overlord from Codemasters’ twisted humor as your underlings. Sas points out some to pass up! The first village will see you liberate
action game. Who is he? At the game’s start, he’s of his favorite examples: “An enormously fat the people from the tyranny of some particu-
a blank slate—neither good nor evil—just a mys- halfling squashes your minions. Then there’s a larly nasty, violent halflings. The peasants will
terious figure squatting in a dark tower owned perverted paladin with his harem of succubi, welcome you as their new lord and protector,
by the previous evil overlord. Just how sinister and bloodstained rampaging unicorns.” Sas likes cheer for you, and bring goodies when you visit
things get is entirely up to you. nothing better than seeing minions getting their domain. If you start exerting some proper
“Antihero protagonists always run the risk of skewered on the end of a unicorn’s horn or feudal repression, the peasants will tremble and
alienating the audience,” says Triumph Studios walking off with a beautiful (and inevitably fall to their knees every time you pay them a
director Lennart Sas. “Not many people can murderous) succubus. visit. If you truly become a mean son of a bitch,
identify with Xemublebub, the five-legged Just because the overlord starts with a blank the poor peasants will resort to binding their
netherworld demon that eats roasted babies for slate, it doesn’t mean your conscience will stay young virgin girls on sacrificial poles close to
breakfast. Overlord gradually eases the player squeaky clean. The game remembers players’ your access portal in order to appease you.”
into their role.” evil deeds; whenever you return to your tower, Overlord promises an extensive single-player
However, a dark lord is nothing without his a jester minion announces your presence by campaign, but when it comes to practicing
toadies, obedient minions who do your bid- listing off your achievements: “Exterminator of wrongdoing in multiplayer, Sas remains coy,
ding—and set Overlord apart from other action the Elven Race, Destroyer of Lives, and Ravager promising only “cool and unique multiplayer
games. Order them to loot the local village, of Villages.” Absolute power corrupts abso- modes”—including the possibility of one
and they’ll arm themselves with whatever they lutely, or so the saying goes. As you become overlord and army versus another—“but we’ll
find in the environment before bringing back more and more corrupt, the population will leave what they are to your imagination for
your tribute. Have them slay the locals, and react differently to you; your tower and per- •
now.” Darren Gladstone
your horde will return with the townsfolk’s life
force, which you can use to build your army. Sas
expects your posse to run as large as 60-strong,
with each impish underling delivering dark slap-
stick comedy with every attack.
If you want to clear a town square, just send
in some TNT-toting peons, stand clear, and
watch the mayhem. The first time you order
your troops to molest the local sheep, well, let’s
just say a screenshot’s worth at least a couple of
words (see below). Even beyond that, minions
will harass the peasant folk, steal, belch, dress
up in drag, burn down houses, and react to the
world in some odd ways—stopping to listen to
a fiddler, for example, before bashing him over
the head.
“The humor comes from the minions doing
all sorts of crazy stuff in the situations they
find themselves in,” says Sas. Rather than
>
“THEN THERE’S THE PER-
VERTED PALADIN WITH HIS
HAREM OF SUCCUBI.”
—LENNART SAS, DIRECTOR
• Ready master?
(I’m not ready.)
GFW.1UP.COM • 41
Start Freeloader
FREELOADER
Scoring free games without the icky “pirate” aftertaste
The great philosopher Lennon once said, “The best things in life are free.” Dude, that man was wise
XTRAS
FREE beyond his years. Those are words to live by—and yet, every day, everywhere I look, I see suckers wast-
ing money. You still buying your lunch? Why, I’ve made sandwiches entirely from the dill pickles, jalapeños, and
GAMES!
Every month, our resident cheapskate
BBQ sauce packets I nab from the Quiznos condiment bar. Want to live rent-free? Just make sure you always
get home after your roommate is asleep and leave before he gets up—and if he catches you and demands you
digs up the best free games. Download “share the living expenses,” just couch surf. And games? Well, let me put it this way: You don’t need to spend
’em from GFW.FileFront.com right now! money on the megagames with the million-dollar marketing budgets to have a good time. All it takes is a little
patience and a little creative Web surfing to find some free time killers online. I should know—that’s how I
spend most of my day.
Tell you what: You keep checking back here each month, and I’ll keep you on the inside track to 100-percent-free
•
games. Deal? The Freeloader
THE GAME: Invalid Tangram THE GAME: Toblo THE GAME: Tripline
FILE UNDER: Color me rad! FILE UNDER: First-Person Geometry FILE UNDER: In-class doodler
All right, so it may look like I just blew the dust Capture the flag…with no bloodshed? C’mon, I doodle. A lot. It’s a habit I picked up in kin-
out of an old Nintendo Entertainment System Toblo is too cutesy to be fun, right? Don’t knock it dergarten and honed to a razor’s edge over
game, but I swear that Invalid Tangram is awe- till you’ve tried it. Two teams—the Cloud Kids and the next 10 years or so. Now, I’m a black belt in
some. It’s a little Galaga, a little Tetris, but mostly the Fire Fiends—are trying to nab each other’s illustration...at least, I thought I was until I tried
an 8-bit orgy of good ol’-fashioned shoot-em- flags. But instead of crawling through corridors, Tripline on for size. It’s a simple game laid out
up-ness. The concept’s simple, really. Shoot the you’re tearing the place apart. Every geometric on graph paper. The goal: Draw a line connect-
colored enemies, and when their blocky corpses shape in the world—walls and trees included—is ing identical objects. That’s it. The game starts
fall into groups, absorb their powers. Trippy, potential ammunition to clobber your enemy or easy enough, but before long, you’ll be balling
blippy music is an added bonus. Hand me some a prospective blockade to protect your turf. Our up paper trying to come up with the best ways
glowsticks, throw me in a dark room, and I’m quick test run turned into a two-hour play ses- to win each level. Hey, you got an extra sheet of
ready to party! sion. Nuff said. graph paper I can borrow?
DEVELOPER’S DESKTOP
What games do they want to play again?
Some know him ADVENTURE that I’m married and have a small child, the
as the Statesman, “I’ll never forget the first time I unlocked the Protoss, Terrans, and Zerg have to get along
the great pro- secret message in this Atari 2600 classic. I don’t without me.”
tector of City of recall any Easter eggs in a game before that
Heroes’ Paragon point; for some reason, I played that game over E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
City. Everyone else and over just to get to that end point. Heck, “I’d love to play this Atari 2600 game again if
just calls him Jack winning the game was secondary to getting only to experience, once more, the game that
Emmert, creative that darn message!” ended a company. To be honest, I played it
director of Cryptic as a kid and it wasn’t that bad…or maybe my
Studios. And the MIGHT AND MAGIC memory is that bad.”
only thing more shocking than discovering “I originally played this on my Commodore 64.
he’s working on a Marvel Comics–based I’d love to reexperience the wonder of playing CIVILIZATION
MMO is finding out that he wants to play in a seemingly endless game environment.” “I spent many sleepless nights building civiliza-
E.T. again. What else is on his play list? tions, conquering, building Wonders of the
STARCRAFT World. I was in grad school at the time; I’ll
“I lost count of how many nights I spent never forget how much fun it was to put away
playing StarCraft with my friends. But now the schoolwork and dive back in.” •
Start Play to Pray
PLAY TO PRAY
A history of Christian videogames
CULTURE played immoral or illegal content because the Bible selling series of novels set during the Apocalypse.
tells us that He is repulsed by sin. I’m sure that He If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em; instead of keeping
wouldn’t play any game that had occult or satanic videogames out of the home, why not create “fam-
“What videogames would Jesus play?” Al activity. He defeated Satan and his demons at the ily friendly” games with pastor-approved Christian
Menconi, who heads a ministry in Carlsbad, cross, so why would He want to play a defeated content? After all, if the U.S. Army is using video-
California, devoted to monitoring the effects of the foe?” According to Menconi, Jesus wouldn’t even games to recruit, can’t God’s Army do the same?
entertainment industry on Christian life, posed this want to play games like The Sims, “because they In fact, Left Behind: Eternal Forces is only the most
question in early 2005 on his blog, where he offers basically are about playing God and why would He mainstream manifestation in the long evolution of
advice to parents on how to keep the evils of the want to ‘play god’ when He is God?” Which leads indie Christian game design, a semi-underground
world out of the content of their children’s movies, Menconi to suggest that maybe He wouldn’t play movement that reaches back over a decade and a
music, TV, and videogames. His online ministry, videogames at all, or if He did, “I’m sure that He half. Long before “serious games” had become a
ILLUSTRATION BY JOSHUA ELLINGSON
AlMenconi.com, includes an archive of more than would limit His game playing time to a minimum.” buzzword for the use of videogames in education,
180 game reviews, grading each for violence, lan- Christ, and by extension his followers on earth, Christian game designers—largely of the American,
guage, nudity, “occult/supernatural” elements, and surely have better things to do with their time, like born-again Protestant stripe—were already explor-
“cultural/moral/ethical” content. But the question spread the Gospel. ing ways to encode Bible lessons into side-scrollers
of what videogames the Savior Himself would play But some Christians believe there needn’t neces- and dungeon-hunts, removing the “bad stuff” and
presented Menconi with a theological conundrum. sarily be such a strict separation of playtime and replacing it with religiously correct characters and
“I’m sure that He would never play a game that praytime, as shown by the recent flurry of media themes. If the average gamer may not be familiar
killed people or destroyed things,” Menconi writes. hype around Left Behind: Eternal Forces, the strategy with the scores of original Christian titles that
“I’m sure that He would never play a game that dis- game based on Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ best- have appeared over the years for PCs and console

Play to Pray Start
systems, that’s because, before Left Behind, the vast of a means to work around Nintendo’s “lockout Tree game, Bible Adventures, was released in 1990,
majority of them haven’t been sold through regular chip” to produce cartridges that would work with selling around 350,000 copies. The game features
game stores or even through the big boxes. Instead, the popular system. Since the games themselves three simple scenarios, based (albeit loosely)
like much other Christian contemporary music, teen were completely designed in-house, and thus on familiar Old Testament stories, with crudely
fashion, and movies, Christian videogames have didn’t overstep copyright laws, Color Dreams wasn’t drawn graphics and Mario-style gameplay. Kids
long been sold only through Christian stores, spe- technically doing anything illegal. But Nintendo did could round up the animals for Noah’s ark, defeat
cialty catalogs, and online. Christian games arose make it difficult for the company to sell its wares in Goliath by playing a sling-wielding David, or help
out of a love of gaming but a dissatisfaction with most stores, reportedly by threatening retailers that Moses’ mother carry the infant prophet out of
its nonfaith-based content. Like other products, they wouldn’t distribute official NES games to any Egypt. The game also introduced what would
Christian games continue one contingent of Ameri- store that offered unlicensed titles. become a staple of the Christian game genre: the
can religion’s desire to remake pop culture in its But Nintendo’s hold on the mass market didn’t inclusion of quotations from scripture as part of
own image, to create an alternative media universe matter for the Wisdom Tree division, which sold its the gameplay. In the case of Bible Adventures, the
parallel to the mainstream of secular society. games almost wholly through the Christian book- quotes appear as little stone tablets that provide
store circuit. Since these retailers hadn’t featured health bonuses when read.
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE videogames before, they had no problem with Later Wisdom Tree titles were merely slight
The dawn of Christian gaming begins in the early carrying Wisdom Tree titles, and for many years modifications of old Color Dreams games. Sunday
‘90s with a company called Wisdom Tree, a sub- the company had an exclusive lock on the growing Funday, released in 1995, features a Bible-toting
sidiary of the somewhat notorious company Color Christian market. “It was a concept that had never skateboarding hero who must dodge obstacles
Dreams, the best-known indie game publisher of been explored in videogames before,” former to get to Sunday school on time; the game was
the console era. Founded in 1989, Color Dreams Wisdom Tree programmer Roger Deforest told retro reworked from Color Dreams’ Menace Beach, in
produced unlicensed games for the Nintendo game site Planet Nintendo in 2004. “I remember which the skater-hero battled clowns and ninjas.
Entertainment System. Featuring low produc- when the owner presented us with the idea of mak- At the end of Menace Beach, the winner is greeted
tion values and poor coding, they bore titles like ing religious games. He was so excited with his idea. by a bikini-clad girlfriend, who in the conclusion
Captain Comic, Robodemons, and even Operation And he convinced us it’d be big.” of Sunday Funday is replaced by a more modestly
Secret Storm, an Iraq-set Gulf War tie-in featuring a Wisdom Tree did indeed prove to be a big attired Sunday school teacher. Sunday Funday also
cartoonish Saddam as the bad guy. Color Dreams’ moneymaker for Color Dreams, providing it with included a minigame sing-along set to a tune by
business model was made possible by its discovery some of its best-selling titles. The first Wisdom Christian pop vocal group 4Him. >
GFW.1UP.COM • 45
Start Play to Pray

stopping gay marriage laws, or even promoting
teen abstinence. In fact, Christian games seem to
shy away from the contemporary world altogether,
with many games taking on floridly abstract themes
filled with allegorical symbolism.
So in 3rd Day Studios’ 2004 sci-fi title Captain
Saint, a lozenge-shaped ship is piloted through
seemingly gigantic blue caverns, zapping the occa-
sional demon or releasing captives from imprison-
ment, represented by sexless figures trapped inside
glowing cylinders. “The objective of the game is to
release prisoners of sin by firing the word of God at
the sin cells [they’re] trapped in,” the game’s website
explains. “If captives listen, obey, and surrender to
Jesus they’ll be set free.” The gothic Eternal War:
Shadows of Light, released in 2004 by Canadian
company Two Guys Software (now named Xrucifix),
takes place inside the soul of John Coronado, where
a messenger from God literally battles his demons.
Should God’s messenger need backup, the game
Later, Wisdom Tree created ports of its games Adventures, the hero can pick up bits of scripture for also offers multiplayer.
for other console systems, as well as new ones inspiration, here represented by scrolls. Designer Marty Bee’s 2004 game Rev7 (Revela-
like Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, made for the With smooth, engaging gameplay, Catechu- tion 7 ) draws on what he calls the “weird” parts of
Sega Genesis, and Super Noah’s Ark 3D, a 1994 men makes clear that the concept of a Christian the Book of Revelation, creating a surreal world of
Wolfenstein 3D variant that remains the only videogame isn’t as far-fetched as it may at first floating heads, walking eyeballs, and killer clocks,
unlicensed game produced by any company for seem. After all, the supernatural beings, epic battles, based upon the allegory of the Seven Churches
the SNES. In the mid ’90s, Color Dreams left the and divine forces found in the Bible and Church mentioned in that portion of the New Testa-
videogame business to focus on producing webcam lore alike can easily match any of the Tolkeinesque ment. Bee’s follow-up, Xibalba, is based on an
hardware instead, but Wisdom Tree was purchased mythos typically used in games—especially since even more obscure source: a line in chapter six of
by a former salesperson who wanted to continue the grand moral sagas of good versus evil found Genesis, which mentions that fallen angels bred
its mission. It continues operation today, selling PC in fantasy literature partially trace their roots back with humans in antediluvian times, producing evil
versions of its older games as well as a handful of to Christian ideas anyway. And Catechumen suc- offspring. In the game, a group of scientists enter
newer games like Heaven Bound, a 3D adventure cessfully deploys that oldest of Christian strategies, caverns beneath a Mexican pyramid, where they
game based on John Bunyan’s 17th-century al- the spiritual allegory; American Christians are often encounter these monsters who survived the Flood.
legorical novel The Pilgrim’s Progress. drawn to early Church history for its underdog Bee believes his game has an anti-occult message,
resonances, perhaps because it provides a meta- though his interpretation of Christian belief may
CHRISTIANS IN THE CATACOMBS phor for their own self-perceived struggles against not square with all evangelicals: In interviews, for
By the late 1990s, Wisdom Tree wasn’t alone in mainstream secular society. example, he has expressed the belief that UFOs and
the Christian game scene. Oregon minister Ralph extraterrestrials are actually demons, a correlation
Bagley had long been an avid gamer, but had SPIRITUAL CRUSADES that may provide the basis for a future game.
been frustrated by what he saw as persistent The success of Catechumen inspired other indie
satanic themes in games. So in 1996, he began Christian developers, and a new generation of THE BUSINESS OF GOD
approaching investors to help fund a new company games emerged that likewise drew on the history Though Bee may represent a relatively fringe phi-
to produce a Christian game for the PC market. of the faith, often likewise colored with elements of losophy, recent developments in Christian gam-
His pitches led nowhere—that is, until the 1999 fantasy. In 2002, Brethren Entertainment released ing point toward a mainstreaming of the genre.
Columbine school shooting, which focused massive Victory at Hebron, based on the military exploits The high-profile release of Left Behind: Eternal
media attention on the fact that its perpetrators of the Old Testament prophet Joshua. Instead of Forces overshadowed some less controversial
played Doom. Suddenly, a number of investors saw graphic battles, however, Victory at Hebron uses Christian titles (such Christian kids’ games like
an opportunity for games Christian parents might a “hero card” structure not unlike games such as Crave Entertainment’s 2002 Jonah: A VeggieTales
approve of, and Bagley was able to raise close to a Magic: The Gathering, and its roster of “Anakites” Game, or its more recent title The Bible Game, a
million dollars in startup funds to found his devel- and “Amorite kings” sounds as exotic as anything trivia game released for the PS2, Xbox, and Game
opment company, N’Lightning Software, and create from World of WarCraft. Virtue Games produced Boy Advance last year) that have also penetrated
his first title, the Roman-themed 3D adventure Nacah (2001) and its sequel, Isles of Derek (2003), larger markets. Game design is also getting
game Catechumen, which was released in 2000. set in a Christian-populated fantasy realm with hipper: Witness Brethren’s latest, Light Rangers:
The game has reportedly sold over 80,000 copies, puzzle-based play inspired by the likes of Myst and Mending the Maniac Madness, a children’s game
which, according to N’Lightning, makes Catechu- Riven. N’Lightning followed up Catechumen with done in anime style.
men the biggest-selling Christian PC title to date. Ominous Horizons in 2001. Set in the 15th century, Websites have also emerged to review new
Named after an ancient Latin term for convert, Ominous Horizons sets a paladin on a quest for dif- games and keep up with industry developments,
Catechumen takes place during the early days ferent parts of the first Gutenberg bible, which have including Gamepraise and Christian Gaming. To
of the Christian Church. The player must journey been scattered across the world by Satan and must bring together the burgeoning industry, Rev.
into the catacombs below a Roman compound to be returned to Johannes Gutenberg. Bagley helped start the Christian Game Developers
rescue fellow believers who have been imprisoned Compare the content of Christian games to a Foundation, which has held two annual confer-
there by their pagan captors. Though it takes its parallel rise in alternative gaming from another part ences and has begun to lobby chain stores to
cues from shooters like Doom, Catechumen is low of the world: The smaller array of Muslim games create Christian game sections along the model
on realistic violence. For weaponry, a muscular, appearing recently from Middle Eastern groups are of Christian music. How far Christian gaming can
golden angel gives the hero a “sword of the spirit” often based on brutally real, relatively recent histori- penetrate the mainstream remains to be seen,
that shoots laser-bolt-like holy energy. Though the cal events (such as the first Intifada in Afkar Media’s however—particularly at a time when the greater
sword zaps demons into red dust, Roman soldiers Under Ash, or the Israel-Lebanon war in Hezbollah’s Christian movement has become concerned with
don’t die when hit. Rather, they instantly convert Special Force). But Christian games prefer ancient retaining a younger generation of believers. But
to Christ, kneeling down to pray as a shower of struggles or fantasy scenarios to contemporary one thing is for sure—the genre will persist, since
blue sparks and golden light envelops them to the politics. So far, players won’t, for example, find any its developers are surely driven by a goal that
sounds of Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus. As in Bible games built around protesting abortion clinics, •
supersedes market concerns. Ed Halter

Start Rogue Warrior
• Don’t want to go out

with guns blazing? Pick a
different route and take
the bad guys by surprise.
•Rogue Warrior features a clean, HUD-less

interface—and you can freely switch between
first- and third-person perspectives.
•One thing’s made perfectly clear at

the start of the game: You’re a long
way from home here, soldier.
•Your squadmembers each have their

own personality and specialty, from the
wisecracking pilot to the cool-as-ice pointman.
•On multiplayer maps, each team picks its

own starting tile, and the two get connected
•Object damage is location-based. Aim for the truck’s fuel tank and blow that sucker sky-high! by a randomized central tile.

Rogue Warrior Start
ROGUE
WARRIOR
No, it’s not the sequel to Cleric Mage
PUBLISHER: Bethesda Softworks DEVELOPER: Zombie Studios GENRE: Tactical Shooter RELEASE DATE: Fall 2007
twitchy trigger fingers can go in with guns blazing,

PREVIEW while more furtive tacticians might order team-
mates into strategically superior flanking positions
Four grizzled SEAL operatives lurk to get the drop on unsuspecting targets. Plant a
in a North Korean military encampment. mine, sound the alarm, and watch the incoming
Team leader Dick Marcinko (aka “Demo Dick” or transport truck go boom—or booby-trap a corpse
“the Sharkman of the Delta,” depending on whom and let his buddies trigger the explosive treat you
you ask) has just led his four-man team through a tucked away especially for them.
And for serious armchair super-SEALs, 10 24-
SWIMMING WITH gauntlet of carefully patrolled security points, suc-
cessfully eluding and neutralizing hostiles through man multiplayer modes await, all set on various
THE SHARKMAN careful teamwork and communication, and now

joins his squadmates in staring at a fire in the sky
that—moments ago—would’ve been their extrac-
randomized maps: Each team picks its favorite
starting segment, and the two sides are bridged
with a randomized central zone. It circumvents
Rogue Warrior novelist Dick “Sharkman of
the Delta” Marcinko’s led the kind of life you tion helo. SAMs have a funny way of changing that. the usual tedium of playing the same old arenas
only see in the movies. He served two tours Marcinko scowls. “Well, ain’t that a f***in’ ad nauseam, while still offering some familiarity to
in Vietnam as a Navy SEAL, wound up as goat f***!” battle-hardened vets. Oh, and no “bunny hopping”
the commander of SEAL Team Two in 1975, This turn of events sets the stage for Rogue allowed—SEALs just don’t roll that way.
and eventually founded SEAL Team Six (the Warrior, Bethesda Softworks’ upcoming Unreal • Ryan Scott
Navy’s first counterterrorism unit) and later Engine 3–powered shooter (first- or third-person)
Red Cell (a unit designed to test the Navy’s that mixes the stealth conventions of Splinter
antiterrorism measures). Cell and its brethren with the tactical warfare
In gamer-speak, Marcinko’s a bona fide of games like Rainbow Six—all fed through the
Sam Fisher: A security expert who’s broken quality assurance scrutiny of (former) real-world
through top-of-the-line defenses, up to and SEAL operative and leading counterterrorism
including Air Force One, the U.S. Presidential expert Dick Marcinko.
aircraft. After an illustrious 30-year career, Marcinko’s actual and fictional adventures
Marcinko chronicled his experiences in his (chronicled in his Rogue Warrior novel line) form
autobiography, Rogue Warrior, followed by a the basis for the game’s story. What starts off
like-named line of fiction novels. as a “simple op” (light recon work at an enemy
We caught up with Marcinko recently and submarine base) quickly balloons into a desperate
asked him to share a few of his thoughts. fight for survival as the team—all but abandoned
by their HQ—surreptitiously treks across war-torn
On his books: ”My next novel goes into North Korea en route to the faraway DMZ.
much more detail on what’s happening in
North Korea; the game will certainly draw TEAM SPEAK
from the book—especially in terms of geog- All told, the story (let alone
raphy and geopolitical elements. Is it fic- the utterly generic title)
tion…or prediction?” doesn’t sound anything
but conventional.
On the Rogue Warrior game: ”I’m involved What sets this SEAL
to help with authenticity, and [the team] team’s journey apart
reminds me what is technically feasible. It’s from other tactical ops, though: a unique ad-hoc
a comfortable marriage, and they’re recep- multiplayer mode. While you certainly might enjoy
tive to suggestions that help make the game having elaborate control over your teammates’
more authentic.” flank-and-fire actions (all hotkeyed, of course), up
to three friends can enter—and exit—the game as
On the SEAL life: ”Being a SEAL is to live a life they see fit, jumping in to help with tense situations
of reverse engineering. If you know how to and then relinquishing control to the CPU for a
make it, you know how to break it.“ quick bathroom break.
But even alongside A.I. teammates, your choices
allegedly number in the multiples. Those with
>
UP TO THREE FRIENDS CAN
ENTER—AND EXIT—THE GAME
AS THEY SEE FIT.
GFW.1UP.COM • 49
Start David Cage
1997
Founds Quantic Dream
studio and begins work
on Omikron.
A1
1999
Produces Omikron: The
Nomad Soul (simply
Nomad Soul in Europe) B2
for Eidos. David Bowie
voices a character and
composes songs for
the game’s soundtrack.
2005 C3
Produces
Fahrenheit
(also known
as Indigo
Prophecy) for
Atari.
2006
Reveals promo
(called “The
Casting”) for
forthcoming D4
Quantic Dream
release Heavy
Rain.
THE GFW INTERVIEW:

DAVID CAGE
Engaging emotion BY SHAWN ELLIOTT
David Cage Start
INTERVIEW awkward. I’m convinced that such systems

can offer incredible complexity if used right.
the pieces necessary for a story’s assembly, it
has ended up doing the former….
The question in my mind is much more about DC: Look at it like a pair of rails between
GFW: What’s been the bigger impedi- expanding the tree’s branching system, making which the player is free. If the distance
ment to successful interactive story- it so complex that the structure becomes invis- between the rails is negligible, the game is
telling so far: inexperienced writers—in ible for the player while remaining manage- linear. If the distance is great, the player has a
terms of medium—or insufficient A.I.? able for the writer. So, sure, I still see dialogue lot of freedom. Most games, whether they’re
David Cage: Writers try to create a planned trees, combined with other elements, as the action games or adventure games, offer only a
experience, try to create the illusion of choice most accessible means of creating story- very limited gap, and a player’s main option is
for the player who, in fact, is only choosing centered conversation. how slowly or swiftly he wants to ride the rails.
between a definite set of different options. That said, it is true that dialogue in general We are progressively expanding this possibil-
With A.I., we’re talking about emergent story- isn’t often perceived as the most exciting part ity space, allowing the player not only to set
telling. Nothing is written in advance, except of a game. In terms of finding fresh solu- his speed, but also to modify the experience
the behavior of narrative agents, and storytell- tions, our industry has massively failed. I tried according to his actions.
ing emerges naturally from the rules that you a few things in Nomad Soul/Omikron and That said, providing more power to the play-
established. Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy. I’m attracted to er is not the ultimate goal. In my mind, any art
As far as I know, no title that truly uses the idea of a strong time constraint to main- form, including interactivity, is an emotional
emergent storytelling [exists]. It is, however, tain the natural flow of actual dialogue. I also experience. The pleasure it creates comes from
a fascinating angle for the future, and we will appreciate that players are able to decide to the emotions it makes us feel. As for storytell-
need not only advanced A.I. but also believ- make dialogue shorter or longer based on ing, I think that total freedom is fine and fun,
able text-to-speech and speech-to-text audio, level of interest. but it’s equally exciting to experience a story
as characters will need to generate speech on At present, I’m working on new solutions for designed by someone else, one that stretches
the fly without a preestablished script. Heavy Rain, trying to make dialogue feel as beyond one’s own imagination.
But, back to your question, it’s bad to accuse fluid and natural as possible. Take, for example, World of WarCraft. You
writers of being inexperienced. Our medium could say that players create their own sto-
still has no strongly established language and GFW: In a recent Harper’s Magazine ries and are completely free to interact in the
we’re inventing our own grammar game after roundtable, game designer Raph Koster world and with other players. Most of the
game. Once such a grammar is established, (Ultima Online, EverQuest II ) says, “Games time, however, the results are weak, to say the
writers will have all they need to make new aren’t trying to teach you to assemble sto- least. So sure, each variety of experience can
masterpieces. Some of the 21st century’s major ries; they’re trying to give you the story be interesting in a different way, but deciding
creators will come from our medium. experience. Which is why their stories are that one is best for videogames would only
like really, really bad movie scripts.” Your limit the medium’s scope.
GFW: What types of experiences might thoughts?
Turing A.I.—that is, A.I. capable of carrying DC: I cannot disagree more. It’s difficult to GFW: In the same Harper’s story, writer
on a humanlike conversation—enable? tell good stories in games for several reasons. Steve Johnson argues that, “Narratives
DC: Well, we aren’t anywhere near that point First in my mind is that most games are based tend to be a vestigial part of games that
at the moment. Giving A.I. the capacity to on repetitive patterns, whereas storytelling has been carried over from earlier forms
generate meaning and emotion is an extreme hates patterns. What kinds of stories can we [….] I doubt that games are capable of
challenge. tell when our heroes can only accomplish the dealing with psychological depth at all…
same 10, almost always physical, actions? [the games] are about external systems
GFW: In a recent CGW interview (CGW I also take issue with the idea that the ulti- and rules, and interiority is something they
#266, pg. 24), BioShock creator Ken Levine mate goal of games should be to allow gamers just don’t do very well.” Meanwhile, you’re
called dialogue trees “the most broken to create their own stories. It’s a very interest- emphasizing emotional states….
thing in gaming.” Agree? Disagree? Are you ing proposition, but I’m not sure that all gam- DC: Again, I cannot disagree more. Telling
attempting to work out alternative ways to ers want to become storytellers per se. stories is one of the oldest human activities.
create conversation? Humans have tried to tell stories with every
DC: I disagree. Dialogue trees are virtually GFW: Whether or not it’s the medium’s busi- single medium we’ve created, from paintings
unexplored; [existing] attempts are shy and ness to provide story, as opposed to offering on cave walls to theater, literature, movies, >
>> “INTERACTIVITY IS ABOUT TO FINISH ITS ADOLESCENCE, IN WHICH

IT INVESTED MAINLY IN PRIMITIVE AND INTENSE EMOTIONS.”
—DAVID CAGE
GFW.1UP.COM • 51
Start David Cage

or television. Why should interactivity be an DC: I wouldn’t say we’ve invented anything so GFW: Do you suspect you might feel less
exception? far, except maybe the strange way we try to disconnected from your projects compared
Videogames are capable of creating the allow our audience to modify the story through to some American directors?
same diversity and stirring the same depth of action. The tendency to track multiple characters DC: I don’t know about American directors,
emotion as any other medium. Interactivity is definitely common in games, but we didn’t but I live and breathe my projects on a daily
is about to finish its adolescence, in which it invent it. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a classic basis. I think about them every minute, from
invested mainly in primitive and intense emo- example of a similar structure in literature. the second I open my eyes in the morning
tions. Cinema experienced a similar period. It is true, though, that today’s directors until I close them. I’ve also been lucky enough
Now, reaching adulthood and maturity, we’re [have] played videogames since they were to benefit from complete creative freedom
able to offer deeper and more meaningful children and that this is a major part of their from my publishers. And, I’ve never done a
experiences that stir subtle emotions. culture. Sometimes I’m surprised to see the project for money; [I’ve worked on games]
One of the main difficulties is that interactiv- types of camera shots we use in games—even only because I believed in what I was doing. I
ity is always about physical action as opposed with the inherent technical imperfections due hope American directors are in the same situ-
to more abstract processes. I’m especially to our constraints—appear in movies. ation, because it’s the most exciting way of
interested in exploring how we can represent [But it works back and forth]; we’ll try to working in this industry…feeling free to invent
and interact with emotions. How can we make copy more exploratory works from other and innovate.
you endure pain in a torture scene, for exam- media until, ultimately, we create something
ple, and make it a true challenge for you to truly original and unique of our own. At the GFW: How much can happen in a single-
resist and not reveal what you know? How can same time, I’m tired of seeing 50 games per room setting such as that in Heavy Rain’s
we re-create pain/resistance/relief? year about the Second World War, about “The Casting” clip? Say if, instead of find-
trolls and goblins, not to mention urban out- ing the flashing drawer with the password
GFW: Fahrenheit became Indigo Prophecy laws shooting motorists to steal their cars. In inside, we must sort through and scan
when it was introduced in the U.S. Was that matter, I’m often impressed with some someone’s personal effects in order to
that Quantic Dream’s doing, or Atari’s, or Japanese creators who seem more inclined to decide whether or not we trust them….
Michael Moore’s, and why? invent new worlds. DC: When we presented “The Casting” at
DC: Atari’s marketing department in the U.S. the Electronic Entertainment Expo, I feared
made the decision without consulting us. The GFW: What, if anything, characterizes that we went too far. Most stuff there would
term “Indigo Prophecy” is never used as such in French games? show epic battles in which entire cities were
the 2,000-page design document. In troubled DC: I don’t think that anything characterizes destroyed, and meanwhile we’re presenting a
political times in the U.S., they feared possible French games anymore. This industry is world- woman talking in her kitchen for four minutes.
confusion with Michael Moore’s [Fahrenheit wide, and one in which America represents 50 But so much happened in this kitchen. Several
9/11] movie. I personally think it was a terrible percent of our sales expectations. We have a people told me that this was the first time
decision and I was totally against the name great history with adventure games (Delphine, they’d experienced such a strong emotional
change. They thought they knew what they Infogrames, and so on), but these aren’t response to real-time 3D. It’s definitely far
were doing, and they didn’t. I had the same representative of French production any- from perfect, but we’re starting to open the
experience with my previous game Omikron, more. Nowadays, you’ll find FPS, RTS, racing, door to a different type of experience. For me,
called Nomad Soul in Europe. It seems that sports—almost all styles are represented. it demonstrates that games might generate an
some mistakes have to be made several times I don’t like to be treated like a teenager. I endless range of emotions. And that was my
for some people to understand them…. don’t think that destroying stuff is cool in and intent with Fahrenheit, too—trying to move
of itself. I need a context, I need to know why from obvious physical interactions to a more
GFW: Johnson also argues that we’re now I’m doing what I’m doing, and I like video- abstract and also richer psychological model.
seeing traditional forms of storytelling, games that encourage emotional involvement. In a nutshell, I meant to move the center of
such as TV’s almost Myst-like Lost, borrow These are the types of experiences I try to interest from deciding where I want to shoot
elements from games. What, if any, story- create. I don’t know how French you need to to deciding how I want to treat an ex-girl-
telling elements in general are indigenous be to want gaming to evolve, but I have the friend; if I should trust a character and tell
to games? feeling that I’m not the only one…. •
him the truth, or stay secretive.
>
“HOW CAN WE MAKE YOU ENDURE PAIN IN A TORTURE SCENE,
FOR EXAMPLE, AND MAKE IT A TRUE CHALLENGE FOR YOU TO
RESIST AND NOT REVEAL WHAT YOU KNOW?” —DAVID CAGE

Start Knights of the Nine
• What you can’t see here is that we’re actually several

thousand feet in the air, directly over the Imperial City.
(Sorry, Supes fans—we didn’t get there by flying.)
• Horse armor
is pretty, but it’s
useless for fast
travelers. And
see that Wizard’s
Tower? It’s all
yours—and the
view from the top
is spectacular.
KNIGHTS OF THE NINE:

THE DOWNLOADABLE
CONTENT COLLECTION
All of Oblivion’s official plug-ins, plus a brand-new faction quest
PUBLISHER: 2K Games DEVELOPER: Bethesda Softworks GENRE: RPG RELEASE DATE: November
reacted by releasing broader (and, frankly, cooler) Umaril, then sends you on a quest for the oh-so-
PREVIEW content plug-ins for roughly the same price, mak- tasty-sounding “Relics of the Crusader.” I’ll leave
ing amends for Mr. Ed’s Really Not-So-Amazing off there to save spoilers, but suffice to say, our
Quiz time: What do The Elder Scrolls IV: Technicolor Coat and, to date, raising the down- hands-on with this plug-in didn’t disappoint—it’s
Oblivion and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief loadable content tally to seven. Make that eight substantial, fully produced with voiceovers, and adds
History of Time have in common? Many owners, few with “Knights of the Nine” this November, a an estimated 10 hours of hunt-and-brawl (if you’re
completists. Getting through most (much less all) mega-plug-in you can download stand-alone for a up for more of that, anyway).
of Oblivion is one of those things they ought to sell few extra bucks or find on store shelves as part of As for the others, they’ve been out for several
T-shirts for...like rounding up a matching set of leg- Bethesda’s “downloadable content collection,” which months at www.obliviondownloads.com. Horse
endary items in World of WarCraft—or, heck, climb- packages the whole lot for $20. Armor? Check. Spell-granting Spell Tomes? Check.
ing Mount Everest. For those with appetites like Compared to its smaller peers, “Knights of the An Orrery that tweaks your stats? Check. An under-
black holes, Bethesda has even more love in store Nine” (not “Knights of the White Stallion,” wherever ground crawl through one of Cyrodiil’s “deepest and
for the medieval province of Cyrodiil, but unlike that silly rumor came from) is a meaty 150MB quest most challenging dungeons”? Check. The coolest
Morrowind’s hefty add-ons, Oblivion’s first collection sporting a brand-new faction with its own character three are probably the Wizard’s Tower, Thieves Den,
turns out not to be a real expansion at all. sheet tag and ranks. It kicks off when you hear of and Vile Lair, which offer magical, stealth, and vam-
Remember the horse-armor brouhaha? Bethesda’s an attack on the Chapel of Dibella in Anvil, and a piric hideouts, respectively.
first plug-in for Oblivion cost $2 and amounted “mysterious” prophet preaching (and occasionally Worth 20 bucks? Probably, but we hope Bethesda
to a tiny 6.2MB download that basically pimped snoozing) nearby. Grill him, and he tells you about has at least one real expansion in them before they
your pony-ride. Fans were not impressed. Bethesda the latest Big Bad, an Ayleid sorceror-king named •
shift into full Fallout 3 mode. Matt Peckham

Start Gladstoned
GLADSTONED
Senior editor Darren Gladstone challenges you to “Beat the Geek”
4. Based upon a famous strategy text, this is
COLUMN one of the earliest—if not the first—RTS games.
Name it.
I know what you’re thinking: “Who the
hell is this Gladstone guy, and why does he 5. Who are the Two Guys from Andromeda, and
rank his own monthly magazine column?” Buddy, with which game are they associated?
I’m about to become your worst nerdly night-
mare. I started writing text adventures with a 6. The first game id Software created was...
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A back in 1981. I broke a. Dangerous Dave
up with my first girlfriend over the phone while b. Commander Keen
playing Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar. (I had my c. Doom
priorities straight even back then.) Think you got
the chops to take me on, punk? Prove it. I’ve
d. Wolfenstein 3D YOUR
assembled 10 questions spanning 25 glorious
years of computer games. Let’s do this!
7. What infamous full-motion videogame helped
spark the videogame violence congressional
SCORE
1–3: Sorry, you
hearings in 1992?
have too much of a
1. Which classic Japanese shooter did Sierra a. Night Trap
life. You probably
On-Line introduce to the United States? b. Corpse Killer
actually talk to girls
a. Gradius c. A Fork in the Tale
in bars and stuff.
b. 1942 d. Phantasmagoria
c. Silpheed
4–5: Not bad…get
d. Turrican 8. Which IPs came first: Blizzard’s WarCraft and
your geek on.
StarCraft, or Games Workshop’s Warhammer
2. Both a 1997 graphic adventure game and 1999 and Warhammer 40,000 game series?
6–7: You have
ILLUSTRATIONS BY DARREN GLADSTONE

role-playing game featured wisecracking skulls as
graduated well past Minesweeper, but you’ve
sidekicks. Name the games. (Add one bonus point 9. True or false: There was a rumor that you
yet to unlock all the gear for Battlefield 2 or
for each skull’s name.) could access a secret cow level in Diablo II by
get your first mount in World of WarCraft.
socketing Wirt’s Leg with a perfect Topaz gem.
3. The Duke Nukem series started as…
8: Überpwnage. U r teh l337.
a. …a first-person shooter 10. Who is Iolo FitzOwen?
b. …a 2D platformer
9: You’ve achieved nerdhood. Embrace your
c. …a graphic adventure *EXTRA: Got a tough question for me? Best
inner Darren, grasshopper.
d. …a role-playing game submission gets something off my desk.
Tome of Town Portal in the Horadric Cube; 10. A famed bard in the land of Ultima’s Britannia 10 or more: Friggin’ cheater! Using
Diablo, but there really is a secret cow level in Diablo II. You need to transmute Wirt’s Leg and a Wikipedia (or turning the page upside-
7. a; 8. Games Workshop’s Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000; 9. False. It was a rumor in the first down) doesn’t count.
4. The Ancient Art of War; 5. Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy, creators of the Space Quest series; 6. b;
Answers: 1. c; 2. The Curse of Monkey Island (Murray) and Planescape: Torment (Morte); 3. b;
Darren Gladstone
>>
What most called “dorky,” senior edi-
ARE YOU READY TO MATCH WITS WITH tor Darren Gladstone called “career
training.” How’d you score? E-mail
A COMPUTER GAMING HALF-WIT? [email protected].
THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY: DECEMBER 2006

Our take on the gaming’s Wild West
THE GOOD THE BAD THE UGLY

CHILD’S PLAY GREATEST MISSES NBA DEAD 07
CHARITY Want to play Sierra’s classic An angry group of NBA
Since 2003, the world- King’s Quest, Space Quest, Live fans, upset at NBA
famous webcomic duo Leisure Suit Larry, or Police Live 07’s awfulness (see
at Penny Arcade has run Quest adventure games on pg. 104 for our review),
Child’s Play, a grassroots charity committed XP? Do yourself a favor and load up your own recently published an open letter to publish-
to providing games, toys, and money for sick copies on DOSBox. Just don’t shell out for the er EA to speak their minds on just how low
children around the world. With the holiday half-baked budget compilations currently clut- the franchise has sunk: “NBA Live 07 is the
season coming up fast, they need all the dona- tering the local Wal-Mart. The shoddy imple- final straw. Until this release, we overlooked
tions they can get. You can donate at various mentation and flimsy packaging show little [the] flaws.... But this release has ignited
children’s hospitals or via PayPal—hit respect to some of the most beloved classics feelings that EA doesn’t care about its fans.”
www.childsplaycharity.org for details. in computer gaming history. Read the full letter at www.nbalive.org.

Start Jericho
CLIVE BARKER’S JERICHO

Oh, the horror
• Pentagram-branded
biomechanical monsters,
compliments of Clive Barker.
PUBLISHER: Codemasters DEVELOPER: Mercury Steam GENRE: First-Person Shooter/Adventure RELEASE DATE: 2007
PREVIEW psychological disciplines” (think: clairvoyance,

exorcism, and so on), and players are able to
play as any and all of them when and where
ON ORIGINS
Call it convergence: Steven Spielberg they want. Alvarez is quick to point out that
sleeping with Electronic Arts, Peter Jericho isn’t “survival-horror” per se. “Resident
Jackson opening an interactive studio and Evil 4 brought survival-horror closer to straight
partnering with Microsoft, and now, Clive action; Jericho brings action gaming closer
Barker clasping hands with Codemasters to to survival-horror—tons of ammo, fast-paced
create his own horror videogame. action, gruesome enemies, and the like.”
“I think top talent is attracted to videogames The mayhem takes place in Al-Khali, a mod-
because our art is becoming better at telling ern Middle Eastern city built atop the ruins of
stories in an interesting and interactive man- previous conquerors, from which an evil (at
ner,” says Enric Alvarez, project lead on Jericho, least as ancient as Poltergeist) is threatening So why the small screen instead of the sil-
Barker’s new foray into the interactive arena. to spread across the earth. Players lead the ver one, Mr. Barker? “I know that Clive has
“Games aren’t turning into movies, but games Jericho team into the flaming ruins of the city, always been interested in games because
are maturing the same way movies did way moving block by block toward the dimension- he sees the increasing narrative potential
back when. We’re entering an exciting era—a al rift. “With tensions already running high in and recognizes the level of immersion that
time to explore and try new things.” the region, this is the sort of thing that could only games can provide,” says Jericho proj-
Any relation to F.E.A.R. may or may not be trigger the Apocalypse,” reads the game’s ect lead Enric Alvarez. “When conceiving
coincidental: Players take the reins of a seven- info sheet; whether players will encounter Jericho, as Clive puts its, the idea just ‘felt’
man Special Forces strike team tasked with pro- some sort of civil/religious war along the more like a game, than, say, a book, movie,
tecting U.S. interests from paranormal threats. way remains unclear, but such an intersection or TV show.” Only time will tell if this par-
Apparently, each squad member is an expert would offer interesting fodder for a horror ticular prophecy rings true.
in modern warfare and “different para- •
game…if handled properly. Evan Shamoon

Start Random Access
RANDOM ACCESS PIPELINE Save some cash for these

10 things we’re into this month upcoming games
NOVEMBER 2006 PUBLISHER
1701 A.D. Aspyr Media
Agatha Christie: DreamCatcher
LION KING
5 UNDER FIRE
It’s the spring of 2003.
During an American bomb-
ing raid, lions escape from the
Murder on the Orient Express
Battleground Europe:
World War II Online
Bionicle Heroes
Matrix Games
Eidos Interactive
Charlotte’s Web Sega
Baghdad Zoo—true story. But
Deal or No Deal Take 2 Interactive
what do the animals make of
Eragon Vivendi Games
what’s happening? The graphic novel Pride of
EverQuest II: Echoes of Faydwer SOE
Baghdad tells the tale through their eyes.
The Fifth Disciple Cenega Publishing
Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising SOE
PARLEZ-VOUS
1 HAWAII FIVE-O
We’re still waiting for Test Drive
Unlimited to show up on the PC, but we
found a new use for the console game—a mini
6 “OUCH”?
Within the
first five minutes of the
French-wrought near-
Gothic 3
Great Invasions
Left Behind: Eternal Forces
LOTR: The Battle for Middle-earth
Aspyr Media
Strategy First
Left Behind Games
Electronic Arts
vacation. On rainy days, fire up the Xbox 360 II—The Rise of the Witch-king
game, and it’s like you’re living large in Oahu! future action flick District
Medieval II: Total War Sega
B13, you’ll see moves you
once thought were only Rayman Raving Rabbids Ubisoft
ATARI
2 KEYCHAINS
If you have tiny
hands and a burning urge
possible in the Prince of
Persia games.
BATFAN
Star Shatterer: Gathering Storm
Star Trek: Legacy
Warhammer: Mark of Chaos
World of WarCraft:
Tri Synergy
Bethesda
Namco Bandai
Blizzard
to play classic Atari games,
go to thinkgeek.com and
get this $15 game “system.”
It dangles on your keychain
7 Hey Hollywood, start
paying attention!
For all the lame comic book-
based movies you shovel out
The Burning Crusade
DECEMBER 2006
Call of Juarez
Monopoly Here and Now
Ubisoft
Encore Software
when not plugged into a TV.
each year, this short Batman JANUARY 2007
Just don’t expect HD.
fan film from a couple years Alan Wake Microsoft
back still shows all you guys up. If you Anarchy Online: Lost Eden Funcom
BARK AT
3 THE MOON
Kit Whitfield’s
Benighted isn’t your usual were-
haven’t seen Batman: Dead End, head to
www.collorastudios.com right away.
SEXYTIME!
Earache Extreme Metal Racing
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Heart of Empire: Rome
Sam Suede: Undercover Exposure
Metro3D
THQ
Paradox
iBase
wolf book. It’s a thriller with
detective-noir flavor and some-
thing to say about…racism?
99 percent of the population is werewolves.
Lola Galley is a downtrodden “bareback” who
8 Never heard of crack
(or maybe we should
say “on crack”) Kazakh docu-
mentarian Borat? Brit comic
Storm of War: Battle of Britain
Supreme Commander
Surrender? “Nuts!”
Ubisoft
THQ
Kudosoft
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes SOE
tends to strays during full moons. Sacha Baron Cohen travels War Front: Turning Point CDV Software
across America in character,
WINTER 2007
spouting politically incorrect comments to real
FLY ME TO
4 THE MOON
If id’s John
Carmack can build a real-
world rocket when he isn’t
people, catching everything on camera. You
need to see the awkwardly titled flick Borat:
Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit
Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Age of Conan:
Hyborian Adventures
Command & Conquer 3:
Tiberium Wars
Crysis
Funcom
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Dead Reefs DreamCatcher
helping with Enemy Territory:
ROAD RULES
Quake Wars, why can’t you?
Thinkgeek.com’s hydrogen-
propelled rocket ($40) blasts
200 feet into the air using
a combination of citric
9 Use a public PC, and some fool will
wind up with your PIN and embar-
rassing list of movie rentals. The Memorex
TravelDrive U3 ($25, www.memorex.com) is
Genesis Rising:
The Universal Crusade
Haze
Huxley
L.A. Street Racer
DreamCatcher
Ubisoft
Webzen
Groove Games
acid and water. Too bad an encrypted flash drive and antivirus/anti- The Lord of the Rings Online: Midway
spyware security suite that travels with you. Shadows of Angmar
cars can’t run on it.
Maelstrom Codemasters
Patriot National Guard DreamCatcher
NERDWEAR
10 Let your dork flag fly with awe-

some World of WarCraft–centric
threads from jinx.com. Our personal favorites: the
quest-giver “!” and “?” caps. Unfortunately, we’ll
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl THQ
Shadowrun
Test Drive Unlimited
TimeShift
Microsoft
Atari
Vivendi Games
have to start handing out rewards. Fortunately,
we only rate as a low-level quest.

Cover Story Dragon Age
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAX DOLBERG, MAXDOLBERG.COM

DOCTORS
& DRAGONS
BioWare returns home to PC roleplaying with Dragon Age

Dragon Age Cover Story
EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK

“Who are you here to visit?” asks the dowdy 60-year-old cus-
toms official at the Edmonton International Airport.
“BioWare. They make videoga…”
“Oh, BioWare, eh?” the agent interrupts, inking his passport stamp.
“They’re the hottest gamemaker in North America, ya know.” He can’t
wait to get his hands on Mass Something-or-Other for the Xbox 360.
Up here, it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t recognize the name
of BioWare, a company founded by two University of Alberta med
students looking for more out of life than just a cure for cancer. The
blip on BioWare’s life-sign monitor traces a bizarre course from medical
science to hard science fiction, from Gastroenterology Patient Simulator
to Baldur’s Gate and some of the finest PC role-playing games ever. But
when the developer detoured into console territory with Knights of the
Old Republic, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect, it left the PC faithful wonder-
ing whether their beloved BioWare was leaving them behind.
So now it falls to Dragon Age, the company’s first PC-only RPG since
2002’s Neverwinter Nights, to set things right. Join us now for the
world’s first look at this spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate; then hear
what BioWare cofounders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka have to say
about roleplaying’s past, present, and future. >
BY DARREN GLADSTONE
AND SEAN MOLLOY
GFW.1UP.COM • 69
• Blue is beautiful.
This is private property!” and…well, let’s say she

escorted us off the premises.”
It’s only 10 in the morning, but Dragon Age THE ITERATION GAME Greig and Santos show off the fruit of their
project director Scott Greig has already bled for Some recurring themes in our BioWare loiterous LARPing in an early prototype of
his game today. tour: Dragon Age’s Eclipse engine tools are Dragon Age’s tactical combat system. A player
“I managed to slice my hand on one of the built to iterate, iterate, iterate; good games character in ratty armor with a shield and sword
practice swords,” Greig says, pulling the culprit require a lot of back-and-forth at the back comes across three ugly orcish things in the
from its sheath, taking care not to disturb the end…without having to worry too much street. At first, the camera is behind the player’s
fresh bandage between his thumb and index fin- about production time; and if a level, game, shoulder—“Explore Mode,” Greig calls it—but as
ger. “Who would have thought they’d be sharp? or section is just not fun, it’s just not done. the enemies take notice and move in to attack,
But it’s nice having doctors on the premises…and Most of Dragon Age’s production efforts till the camera swings up to a nearly top-down,
it’s, um, interesting that you can send out an IM now have focused on creating powerful tools, parkade-inspired perspective. Greig explains
to one guy in the company and the next day but Greig says the content will come together that you can issue commands to your party (four
your office is filled with swords and giant axes.” quickly enough for a winter 2007/early 2008 characters all told, at least for now) in real time,
Greig has been with BioWare for nearly 11 release. The tools will be made public in some pause the action, and queue up spells and spe-
years—the first official employee of the company form, but don’t expect the ease of use of cial attacks—comforting words for anyone who’s
cofounded by doctors/game geeks Greg Zeschuk Neverwinter Nights’ construction kit. ventured through Baldur’s Gate. As the quartet
and Ray Muzyka (see interview, pg. 76). Raised “It’s going to take more time for the basic trades blows, swords clash against swords, and
as lead programmer on Baldur’s Gate and Nev- user to make levels,” says level artist Andrew weapons don’t just whoosh through the enemy’s
erwinter Nights, Greig is no stranger to BioWare Farrell, demonstrating advanced techniques polygons—they react. When the deadlock
role-playing games—or the complex process of such as the ability to create overhangs in the breaks, the hero raises his shield to block the
making them. And today isn’t the first time he’s terrain. “But there’s a lot more power, and the foe to the side, and then swivels to the third to
taken up arms for Dragon Age’s cause. levels will be a lot better.” knock him to the ground with a shield bash.
“When we started concepting what Dragon “We wanted to make sure that when you look
Age’s combat would be, we wanted to get a tight visual reference for the at a fight, it’s not just swing, swing, swing…we want to make it look like
combat team,” he says. “So myself, [lead animator] John Santos, and a these guys are actually fighting and reacting. And we’re making sure group
couple others got a bunch of swords and shields and sticks and stuff and combat is really cool—it’s not just two guys fighting; you can actually have
went to the parkade—the parking lot of one of Edmonton’s malls—and synchronized attacks with the people around you, too.”
set up a video camera on the second floor, looking down, so we could “Instead of people standing toe-to-toe,” adds Santos, “you’re actually see-
film it from the game point of view. We were out there hitting each ing people duck and move and attack. Every time they get hit, you feel for
other and going, ‘I think the shield bash should be like this!’ as a bunch them because they just got bashed in the head with something really heavy.
of people across the street watched from their balcony with binoculars. “Have you ever seen that HBO series Rome? Take a look at the gladiator
Then a woman in a pickup truck came and said, ‘What are you doing? fight in episode 11 and you’ll get a good idea of what we’re thinking of.”

is for Dragon Age. [Back then], we were still working on the Aurora-engine
level—NWN, KOTOR, and even Jade Empire were part of that technology
chain—and realized that it wasn’t gonna cut it. So we went back to the
drawing board and started working on the brand-new engine, the Eclipse
engine that’s gonna be in Dragon Age.”
While BioWare is loath to spoil the specifics of its world or characters,
they’re open about their influences—we hear George R. R. Martin’s A
Song of Ice and Fire series spill from more than one pair of lips, and the art
direction takes a note from Frank Frazetta’s Conan paintings. Folks utter the
word “dark” at least four dozen times; “mature,” “realistic,” and “sophisti-
cated” aren’t far behind.
“‘Dark heroic fantasy’ really captures what the world is all about,” echoes
Large-scale combat is also on the top of Greig’s mind—no surprise for a Greig. “The grittiness, the horror elements, blood, dirt—it’s going to be a
game where here, one naturally assumes, there be dragons. “Remember the lot darker than anything we’ve done in the past. We still wanted to capture
cave troll fight in The Fellowship of the Ring? That’s what our large creature the high fantasy elements. There are heroes, villains, obviously dragons—it’s
combat is going to be like. You’ve got the party guys running out, one guy called Dragon Age, after all—but it’s more than just your standard ‘take
jumping up on the back and stabbing, the other guy ducking between fantasy elements and toss them together’ game. We wanted to make a liv-
the legs.” Objects in the environment can be manipulated in your bid for ing, breathing world that actually had a realistic feel to it. If people actually
tactical supremacy: Knock over a table to fire arrows or shoot fireballs from had magic, how would they react to it? If someone could walk into a room
behind cover, but only where it makes sense—emergence be damned, in and point a finger and turn you into a fireball, this isn’t something anyone
BioWare’s reckoning. “There will be a lot of ways of going through combat, would take casually. If this were history, and we had these situations with
and lots of different ways to interact with the environment…but our phi- magic and monsters and creatures, how would this work out?” Even the
losophy is that handcrafted is always better than random stuff.” name of the game is meant to ground the fantasy in history—this is the
Dragon Age, meant to stand in a line tucked amidst the Bronze Age, Steel
DRAGON YEAR ZERO Age, and Industrial Age. >
Step back in time to E3, 2004 AD, when BioWare teased PC RPG fandom
with a brief glimpse of Dragon Age for the first (and for the past two-plus •system,”
“There’s a world map travel
says Greig, “You’re in
years, only) time. “That,” explains Greig, “was our proof-of-concept test. We
a huge world. But within an area,
had just finished Neverwinter Nights and were thinking we needed to do we’re trying to minimize things
something that’s gonna be Baldur’s Gate, only next-generation—with all that take you out of the game,
the in-depth story stuff, all the characters, only much more cinematic and like load screens.”
visceral. We had the idea to put together the exploration view of Knights
of the Old Republic and capture the party-based action-packed combat of
Baldur’s Gate, only in 3D and advanced, so [that demo] was really a test to
put that together…we knew it was early, but we wanted to make sure fans
knew we were working on PC games, too. We’d just done KOTOR, Jade
Empire was coming out, we knew Mass Effect was about to be announced
[all for the Xbox or Xbox 360], and we just wanted to reassure our PC fans
we hadn’t forgotten them.”
A lot has happened since then. “We’ve spent the last two to three years
just having artists and writers put together what the world is, what the story
>> “REMEMBER
THE CAVE
TROLL FIGHT FROM
THE FELLOWSHIP
OF THE RING?
THAT’S WHAT OUR
LARGE CREATURE
COMBAT IS GOING
TO BE LIKE.”
—SCOTT GREIG, PROJECT
DIRECTOR, BIOWARE
• You run around in a behind-the-shoulder “Explore Mode.” When you fight, you
switch to an overhead “tactical” perspective (with the option to opt out, of course).
GFW.1UP.COM • 71
As in any BioWare game, characters—and moral choices—tower over stories.” Rather than just offer multiple endings, Dragon Age offers multiple
everything, though Greig says it isn’t as simple as light-side points and beginnings, too.
dark-side points, open palm and closed fist. “Yes, you’re the hero, or the an- “Say, for example, you want to be a dwarf—you’ll have different choices
tihero, depending on how you play, but it’s going to be a lot more organic. for what kind of setting in the dwarf environment you start in. So if you
You basically have to save the world, but what the world is like when you’re pick dwarf noble, then you’re part of the royal family in one of the dwarven
done—that’s totally up to you and the choices you make throughout the cities, and that’s where we start you off. And you spend the first hour or
game. You’re literally going to decide the fate of nations, who’s becoming two of the game interacting with that world. You get to learn all about the
king, what nations are actually around after…what races are around. You’re dwarves and the plots that are going on, and major things happen to you
going to have to make some hard choices in the game, but we want all the personally. We also introduce at that point a nemesis for you—not the main
choices to be clear. The player’s gonna know if he does this, there’s a really villain in the game, but someone who’s going to be dogging your footsteps
horrific consequence. Decisions are gonna be hard…and sort of shocking.” throughout Dragon Age, and eventually you’ll have to come face-to-face
But before you get to the who lives and who dies, one of the first deci- and deal with him. Your nemesis will be different depending on your origin.
sions you need to make is just what kind of character you want to play— “One of the other options is a dwarf commoner—pick that, and you start
and Dragon Age wants to make sure that, whatever your preferred poison, off working the sort of dwarf underclass. The nobles have their honor, but
it’s got you covered. “We use a class-based system that has levels—we’re you start off down in the gritty and real dwarf environment, and you have
staying that close to our D&D roots. You start off with three basic classes, to struggle through the street stuff…you have to work to forge your place
the wizard, fighter, and rogue, just to get you started. Very quickly, you in the underworld of dwarf society. And it’s a completely different story—
get access to advanced classes, and even within those classes you get to you’ll run into some of the same characters [that] you would as the dwarf
customize abilities, stats, and talents—you buy points, build it up, and after noble, but they’ll treat you and react to you differently.”
a short while you’ll be able to pick even more advanced classes. If you want Once you’ve played through your chosen origin, world events intersect,
to have a fighter-type character with magic-like abilities, there’ll be a route and you’ll find yourself pulled into the same plot as all the rest—with
•descends
Dragon Age’s real-time tactical combat
directly from Baldur’s Gate.
Queue up commands for your party of
four (for now), and pause the action
whenever you need to be pensive.
you can take for that. If you want to be a barbarian berserker, you can do different twists and side quests based on your roots. “If you go back into
that, too…there’s a route for everyone so players can build their character the dwarf city, depending on whether you were a dwarf noble or a dwarf
the way they want. There’s a stupid number of class abilities and special commoner or an elf or human from one of the other stories, the NPCs will
abilities…I think it’s more than in any other BioWare game.” completely react to you differently with different subplots and different
stories that open up for you.”
THE WRITERS’ RIDDLE “We’ve basically covered all the major fantasy archetypes,” says Greig.
While character customization is grand, it poses a conundrum for writers “Each race has a classic, traditional origin story, and then we’ve got one
striving to build a better, stronger character-driven narrative: How do you that’s a lot more edgy. We’re finding in testing that the unusual ones are
write a story appropriate for both a beer-swigging, meat-inhaling dwarven the ones that people like the most.”
soldier and a holier-than-thou high elf—without resorting to prison cells,
amnesia, or fresh-from-the-boat strangers in a strange land? “We’ve WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
watched how people play our games,” Greig says, “and found there are a Behind every good hero stands his chums—and BioWare RPGs are nothing
few common archetypes people like to play. They’ll always play the same without followers. “Every character will have access to the full set of NPCs,”
character in different settings—if you’re the ‘elf archer guy,’ you play that says Greig. “They’ll treat you differently depending on the origin story, and
kind of character in every game. So we looked at the common archetypes when you get them is dependent on origin story too.” Characters follow
and said, ‘OK, we’re going to let you play your character in the world, and behind you in Explore Mode, and BioWare is strongly pushing the idea of
it’s going to make sense. So one of the big things we’re doing is origin party banter. Greig compares it to Saving Private Ryan: “There’s a part [in

• Customization is king, even for NPCs. “In sci-fi,” says Greig, “you can put a stormtrooper
helmet on everyone and it looks great. In fantasy, you need uniqueness to pull it off.”
>> “MULTIPLAYER
POSSIBILITIES?
THERE ARE ALWAYS
POSSIBILITIES.”
—GREG ZESCHUK,
COFOUNDER, BIOWARE
• Tailor-made terror: Each character’s origin story

comes with its own unique arch-nemesis.
SPR] when they’re just walking though the area not doing anything, but covered “dwarven war golem” named Shale. “This is one of the NPCs that
the banter going on really brings them to life. We’re trying to capture that.” joins you…. The dwarves used to make these guys for their wars, but the
As for A.I., “It’s not just me and three meat Popsicles,” Greig continues. art of creating them has been lost. But you run into one of these guys and
“These are living, breathing characters…all the NPCs that join you have he gets to join up with the party—and as the prime mover of the world,
different agendas. If you say, ‘I’ll side with this faction,’ that’ll obviously you have influence over how this guy turns out. You can explore his past
please some of your party members, but others will say, ‘I can’t believe and get into the details to make him a living, breathing person—as far as
you just did that.’” Morally driven banter is one thing (party members dwarven war golems go—or you can turn him into a blind follower who’ll
in Knights of the Old Republic would often chide you for your dark-side basically kill at your every whim.” A Dragon Age analogue to Knights of the
decisions while blindly following your innocent-slaughtering orders) but Old Republic’s space-age HK-47, it seems. “You’ll also be able to upgrade
morally driven behavior is another—and Greig hints that NPCs might even him—carve new dwarven runes into him to gain new powers. You’ll be able
go so far as refuse to fight if they feel you’re way out of line. to customize every one of the party members in some way.”
NPC management is similar to that of KOTOR 2; every major area you Down the hall, Greig shows off a “visual fidelity” test—an impressive
enter has a “base camp” with activities that change depending on location, blue-tinged torture chamber where stained glass windows pour colored
and selecting the appropriate NPC for the location will be important. light on the wall and sunlight flickers on the floor in distorted waves.
“When you go into the city, it’s probably not the best idea to bring the 9- “The art philosophy is ‘fantasy painting come to life,’” says Greig, invoking
foot-tall war golem with you,” says Greig, pointing to a character modeler’s Frazetta once again. “It’s dark. It’s gritty…it’s all about dirt and texture
monitor where a large rock creature is on display—an imposing, rune- detail.” Over by the in-game wall, he points out “the best barrels you’ll >
GFW.1UP.COM • 73
see in a videogame…running on a high-end PC, you’ll see the level of

detail…[we’re definitely thinking about] DirectX 10 and beyond.”
A giant disfigured blue demon plays bouncer at the door. “The artists
went a little bit overboard with him,” says Greig. “You can actually see a
reflection of the room in his eyes. They also actually went down and did
scrollwork on the [treasure] chests,” he says, zooming in ultra-close to reveal
detailed elvish runes on thin strips of metal. “One of the reasons for this test
was to figure out how much is too much.”
But when it comes to character close-ups and conversation, detail can
make or break the deal. “There are two ways to go in the game industry
for cinematics,” says Steve Gilmour, director of animation and cinematics.
“You go can go the sizzle, prerendered cinematic route, but because we’re a
story-driven game company, and because we allow you to build characters
however you want them to be dressed and with whatever weapon that
you’ve given them, we focus on in-game cinematics.” Even now, in-game
cinematics often means blocky figures with triangular mouths and cut-rate
lip-synching—but BioWare is way ahead of the curve when it comes to
crafting convincing digital actors.
Dragon Age uses a modified version of the Mass Effect conversation
system, much lauded at last year’s E3, in which characters’ facial expressions
speak at least a hundred words, lips synch convincingly to speech, and
dialogue trees are distilled into bullet-point “ideas” and “tones” rather than
complete sentences to make conversations flow at a more natural pace.
“Ours is customized to do just what we need it to do,” says Greig, “and
we’ve got some ideas on how to make it Dragon Age–specific and work
for the mouse and PC. The writing in a fantasy game is different from [that
in] science fiction. In Mass Effect, they’re going for a 24-ish, modern type
of dialogue. The language is much richer in texture in a fantasy game. The
voice actors are going to be busy, that’s for sure.
“Back in Baldur’s Gate, if a character needed to be angry, the writers
had to write angry words. Then we got to voice acting, and so the words
themselves didn’t have to be angry; you could just have the actors read in
an angry voice. Now we actually have a lot more options—you can say an
angry word, you can have an angry voice, or you can have the character just
sitting there glowering.”
“A level of storytelling fidelity with digital actors that we’ve never really
had before,” says Gilmour. “That’s what I’d say ‘next generation’ really is.”
CRITICAL HITS
BioWare tends to roll 20s. “We’ve had the opportunity to work with some
of the best licenses, IPs, and world settings,” says Greig. “We worked with
D&D, Star Wars…and those have been great. The license holders have been
good about letting us create stuff in their worlds. But no matter what you
do, someone else actually owns it, and you have to respect their wishes and
desires. And we’d come up with killer ideas that just didn’t fit into those
world settings. If you’re building your own, it gives you a chance to explore
those themes.
“There’s been a great tradition of D&D; a lot of our fans grew up playing
it, [and] we’ve grown up using it, but we wanted to do something more
in line with a modern audience…like the old Battlestar Galactica series
compared to the new one—how they’ve taken the same themes, characters,
setting, and brought it to modern sensibilities.”
For Greig, that’s something worth bleeding for. •
>
RATHER THAN JUST OFFER
MULTIPLE ENDINGS, DRAGON AGE
OFFERS MULTIPLE BEGINNINGS.

Dragon Age
• Shale the war golem: one of

the NPCs you get to mold and
Cover Story
abuse in Dragon Age.

The RX
Ray Muzyka: The PC community has always Mass Effect—releasing first for the Xbox or
INTERVIEW been very important to us. The PC is one of our 360, did the PC community give you any flak?
favorite platforms and we’re going to continue RM: Not really. I think people know and trust
Dr. Raymond Muzyka and Dr. Gregory making games for it as long as there are PCs to that BioWare is going to continue to support Win-
Zeschuk have an alphabet of letters following play them. As for making a fantasy RPG, many dows. And we are. In the case of Jade Empire we’re
their names (BMSc, CCFP, MBA, and of course, MD) folks in the community have wanted to see us actually adding content to it, making it better and
and no less than three titles each for both BioWare make another epic fantasy game…. learning from what we did on the Xbox. We’re
and BioWare/Pandemic. By all rights, the good Greg Zeschuk: Dark heroic fantasy we’re calling balancing the combat, making numerous tweaks
doctors could have big cars and cavernous corner it. We’re pulling together the best of the fantasy and, of course, improving the graphics. Players get
offices with the attitudes to match. But they don’t. genre that we’ve seen in the past 10 years. There an experience improved from the original game.
They are the creators of some of the most memo- are always the classics, but The Lord of the Rings GFW: What do you perceive as the differ-
rable role-playing games of all time, and yet they movies, visually and story-wise, tell us a lot, and we
ence between a console RPG and a PC one?
slip on ID lanyards and wedge into shared offices think George R.R. Martin’s books show that it’s not RM: We look for the best in breed for all plat-
just like everyone else. To the BioWare employees, just for kids—that there can be serious and mature forms. We see exciting things on console that you
they are just “Ray and Greg.” How do they feel stories as well. I think that the fantasy genre hascan bring to PC and vice versa. From our perspec-
about returning to the PC to make a Windows- just become “cool” again—not that we ever left it. tive, a great game is a great game. We have a few
only RPG? GFW: You were still making mods for Never- pillars that need to be in every BioWare game in
GFW: Dragon Age is your first Dungeons winter Nights…. order for it to be successful. It’s gotta have great
& Dragons–ish fantasy IP without the D&D GZ: Yep, and we had Dragon Age in our road story and characters, great exploration, progres-
license. How does it feel going back to that af- map for quite a while. sion, customization, conflict, and tie all those
ter all these years—and going back to making GFW: With your past few games—Knights things together. The methods employed may differ
a PC-specific game, for that matter? of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, and now between platforms, but in many ways, the best
>
games on both platforms
“WE THINK THAT GEORGE R. R. MARTIN’S BOOKS are very similar. A lot of it
is the interface and how
SHOW THAT IT’S NOT JUST FOR KIDS. THE FANTASY the player is interacting
GENRE HAS JUST BECOME ‘COOL’ AGAIN.” with the game—whether
sitting on the couch or
—GREG ZESCHUK, COFOUNDER, BIOWARE leaning forward in front

MASSIVELY
AMBITIOUS
BioWare Austin tries to put the RPG
back in MMORPG
In March, BioWare announced its new Austin
studio was working on a massively multi-
player role-playing game. Details are still top
secret—but the team was willing to sit down
with us and talk philosophy.
On BioWare: “We want to bring what
BioWare’s famous for to the online space. And
BioWare is famous for its storytelling.”—James
Ohlen, creative director
On impacting the world: “You can’t have
a story that involves saving the world from
the dark lord Sauron—not that we’re making
a LOTR game—but you can do a lot of things
that are personal to your character.”—JO
On quests: “We don’t want NPC Pez dis-
pensers. We want to make sure you listen to
NPCs, because choices matter.”—Rich Vogel,
co-studio director
On repetition: “The grind is not attractive.
Killing the same dragon over and over again
is not something I want to do. Putting more
weight on storytelling experience points is
a good way to fix that. Make sure your story
is good, the presentation is exciting, and the
player has motivation to move forward in his
personal story.”—JO
for RPGs
BioWare’s founders find the cure for the common role-playing game On classes: “It’s important to have roles. If
you understand your role in the world, and
others understand your role, you get group
dynamics and social behavior.” —RV
On the endgame: “We don’t want play-
ers to be stuck grinding through the same
content over and over again. I know when I
hit level 60 in WOW, I pretty much quit. So
whatever endgame model we have, it’s not
of a keyboard—but the emotions we want the Nights we learned how to do modules and postre- going to be that.”—JO
player to feel are the same. lease content. With Jade Empire we learned how On World of WarCraft: “We’re not looking
GZ: We want to drive the depth of our games to combine everything into a polished experience to kill WOW. It’s not a zero-sum game out
more in both emotion and customization. When and now we’re exploring how to take that polished there.”—Gordon Walton, co-studio director
we look back at what we did, Dragon Age is very experience and add more breadth to it—exactly On player-created content: “If we’re go-
much the spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate what we’re hoping to do with Dragon Age. ing to create immersive, epic stories that are
series with a dash of Neverwinter Nights tossed in. GFW: Does that mean Dragon Age will use believable, that really goes against having a
It wasn’t hard to get started, but man, you could modules and be open for fan-made content? simulation-type world. Those two things don’t
go deep in those games. I think that’s what we GZ: We’re still nailing down the exact details of go together well.”—JO
try to capture on a variety of platforms, no matter how that is going to work, but there’s definitely On writing: “We want to create more story
what we’re making. going to be some kind of customization. You content than in any other BioWare game be-
RM: You’ve got to appeal to different audiences make these tools where thousands of people fore. The world is huge and has tons of paths.
on both platforms. Some want an easier, more make modules, but at the end of the day, the We started a writing team earlier than in any
accessible experience, maybe play a half an hour number of modules that are actually good is pretty other BioWare project; we’re going to have
a night, while others will think nothing of sitting finite. What you want to do is find a nice balance nine writers total.”—JO
down for 100 hours to really explore. Regardless between making tools that some folks use, but not On when: “Anything worth doing well is
of the system, we have to appeal to different types [making] an everyman’s tool. That said, that part is worth taking the time. Everyone who’s tried to
of players and make everyone feel like they are still being worked out. cram [an MMO] into a ship date has had issues.
getting their money’s worth. That’s their choice. RM: We’re definitely committed to the idea of Been there and done that a couple times.”—GW
It’s their game. For the hardcore BioWare game postrelease content, though. We want to continue On long-term goals: “I just want to be on
players, there is always going to be a deep, rich to support our fans online and provide an ongoing South Park.”—RV
story and a huge open world to explore. We’re go- experience for all our games.
ing to continue to push emergent behavior, party GFW: You said that one of your pillars of it all. The customization is core to how we design
combat, and customization in new ways. And we’re gameplay is customization. How is that evolv- our characters—and not just the player character,
always going to try and learn from things that ing with Dragon Age and beyond? but the NPCs as well. Dragon Age is a party-based
work—and don’t work as well. GZ: With every new game, another wave of game, after all. It’s not just you. How you choose to
GFW: Such as? technology happens. What we sat down and use them is part of the fun.
RM: We want to add even more depth for longer thought about with Dragon Age is the fun of GFW: What are you doing to explore karma
games that can inspire players. With Neverwinter mixing and matching your armor. Y’know, seeing this time—”light-” and “dark-side” choices? >
GFW.1UP.COM • 77
•cofounder
Above: BioWare
Greg
Zeschuk. Right: A
Dragon Age ugly.
Below: The Dragon
Age team gets ready
for battle. Or work.
RM: We droid sidekick from Star Wars: Knights of the Old games we want the players to dig and see the
developed that really Republic] is another one of my favorites. deep world that exists. We’ve spent a couple of
well in some of our past games, but GZ: Yeah, I’d like to see a platformer with HK-47 years creating this world for Dragon Age. We
we’re now trying to take that to an even higher [Holds up hands, mimicking a robot jumping, brought in a linguist to create languages used in
level. The personal choices you make need to points and says in a monotone voice], “Take that, this world, even though you only see them for
have momentous impact in the overall world. meatbag.” small periods. If you make everything consistent
One of themes we’re using in Dragon Age is that RM: [Laughs] What’s fun is seeing players and true, the player feels it.
“History is written in blood.” Your choices really explore the rich world that we created. Jade Empire GZ: When we started on Jade Empire, we created
make a big difference in how the world unfolds. has this story and the more time you spend with this hardcover sourcebook for everything. We had
Who you bring with you will be a different NPCs, the more you learn about them and the this huge thing detailing every bit of the world
experience on the micro level in battle and also world. You can get extra quests and other things and only used a small slice for the game.
the game’s outcome. get unlocked as a result. RM: If you can have any game with that layer of
GFW: As long as we can bring along some- GZ: In Jade Empire, my favorite character is detail and you just keep going down more levels,
one like Minsc [from Baldur’s Gate]. the Bunmaster. You really can’t go wrong with it’s awesome. It’s a living, breathing world. That’s
GZ: [Laughs] A different universe, but maybe him. Henpecked Hou is another. He was hilarious. what we try to create.
one day. That’s actually one of the fun things of There’s this interesting story if you pursue any GZ: With Dragon Age, we prototyped the story
doing these games. Each time we go out and make of these guys. Everyone has favorites, though. first. We actually had done a lot of the story even
a new set of characters and you never know who is Apparently, Carth [of Star Wars: Knights of the Old before focusing on the game. Too many games
going to catch on. Republic] was a hit with the female gamers. There’s have a technology, build a couple levels, and then
GFW: You’ve created an interesting roster a lot of fan fiction dedicated to him. say, “Hey, let’s make a story that fits here.” For us,
of characters over the years. Who are some of GFW: Uh-oh. But you build enough detailed we do it the other way around.
your favorites? backgrounds so that people can do that. RM: Our artists do concepting while our writ-
RM: Minsc is one. Minsc and his pet miniature RM: Let’s just say we’ve got great writers here ers use one of our older engines to build up the
giant space hamster, Boo. HK-47 [the homicidal and that is one of our core focuses. With our game story, and then it all comes together.
>
”IN MANY GAMES, THAT’S ALL THERE IS—THE FEAR. WE ALWAYS
STRIVE FOR ALL THE OTHER EMOTIONS THAT CREATE POWERFUL
TIES BETWEEN THE PLAYER AND THE GAME.”
—RAY MUZYKA, COFOUNDER, BIOWARE
1995 1996 1998

Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk On their first press tour With its absurd 100-plus-hour
create their first “game,” promoting the mech war game playtime, sharp dialogue, and
the Gastroenterology Patient Shattered Steel, Ray and Greg tons of side quests, Baldur’s
Simulator, while still medical wear “Nerd Power” T-shirts Gate throws BioWare into
students at the University of Al- and meet with “power brokers” the spotlight as one of PC
berta. You don’t want to know like then–Computer Gaming gaming’s top developers of
what the cheat codes are. World editor Jeff Green. role-playing games.

JADE EMPIRE:
SPECIAL EDITION
BioWare’s Xbox action-RPG finds inner PC
We liked Jade Empire for Xbox well enough—really, we did—but two

things Eagle Clawed and Drunken Monkey Fisted the experience to
death: One, the game pushed the poor console just a wee bit too far,
and the framerate was, to put it nicely, inconsistent. Two, the game’s
infamously long load times disrupted our chi—and made us give up our
quest long before reaching enlightenment.
A wise man—or maybe a fortune cookie—once said: Fate rewards the
patient. And Jade Empire has journeyed across vast planes of harmony to
arrive on the endless sea of Windows XP. True to their word, BioWare has
buffed up Empire with new stuff that didn’t make the Xbox version. •
A new Jade demon
emerges fresh from the
Shout at the devils. New demons torture you, including a rhino-headed cutting-room floor.
monster and a Cthuluian tentacle thing. No, those aren’t the official names.
The karate, kid. Two new fighting styles arrive, including the sumo- little rickety—even with increased screen resolutions—but good BioWare
based Iron Palm and the Viper Style, which was inspired by the classic titles tend to transcend time.
kung fu flick Five Deadly Venoms. Keyboard controls seemed intelligent enough, especially considering
The art of war. Victory isn’t given, it’s earned—and thanks to a smarter the action-heavy tactics in Jade Empire, but the only thing that really
A.I., you’ll be fighting for every inch. Foes will be more elusive and a new felt “off” when playing was the camera control. You can now play from
difficulty mode will tax those finely honed martial arts skills. a first-person view, but only when not in combat—and the third-person
Enter the dragon. Monk Zeng, the special Xbox Limited Edition–only camera feels annoyingly limited by today’s PC standards. Would we still
character, comes along for the ride. It’s a good thing. He’s our favorite. play the game and get past the infamous Arena area now that we don’t
We had a chance to play a late preview build of Jade Empire, and the have to suffer through painfully long load times? Absolutely. And if
game’s Xbox ancestry is obvious. Yeah, it’s two years old and looking a you’ve never tried the original Xbox version, there’s really no excuse.
GFW: Surely there’s a lot of story tweaking like it’s fantasy, but it can also be real. Like our still thinking about it. That is one of the amazing
after that initial part as well? other games, we’re trying to build a bond between things about games that trumps all other forms of
RM: Continually. We spend a lot of time on the players and the world. entertainment—it’s experiential. When you make
final polish. Our people are so passionate about GZ: It’s like the follower stories in Jade Empire. a choice and an emotionally charged event occurs,
making a great game and everyone here spends Many people never found them, but it’s really you’re a part of it. That’s what we’re going for in
a lot of time caring about that quality. Even worth it because these are some of the best parts our games. You do something selfless and sacrifice
beyond the prototyping and design phases, even of Jade Empire. If you spend the time to talk to yourself or do something dastardly and watch
when we’re pretty much done, we spend extra people, you unlock completely new areas. We want what results from your actions. I still remember
time tweaking things to try and take games from you to believe that the world is real, that the NPCs feeling a little strange the first time I did some-
“good” to “great.” are real people you can connect with. thing dark in KOTOR.
GZ: When it comes to world building, there GFW: When it comes to emotion, why do so GFW: You’re experimenting with a new
aren’t that many people left doing that level of many other developers rely on only fear? dialogue system for the upcoming Xbox 360
craft. The way that the industry has gone with RM: In many games, that’s all there is—the fear. game Mass Effect. Is that going to carry over
licensing IPs, it’s something that the developers get We always strive for all the other emotions that into other games as well?
free with the license. create powerful ties between the player and the RM: We always try to take what works in one
RM: Really, that’s what a license is all about, game. I think it’s incredibly important to be able game and implement it in others. We actually have
permission to use a rich body of work that people to make an emotional attachment with charac- a low turnover rate here. There are a lot of shared
already know. ters—whether it’s in a movie, book, or game. The ideas and technologies on projects. It’s a fertile
GFW: A lot of your success stems from best games are the ones that send a chill down cross-pollination between all the projects, so if it
licenses—D&D and Star Wars. Now, you’re your spine. turns out that the conversation system in Mass
off creating your own world…. GFW: KOTOR was a poster child for that. Effect really resonates with the fans, we will carry
GZ: We’re having a lot of fun building the world RM: Exactly. Those 30 seconds at the end of it forward.
of Dragon Age, but we also want to go in a differ- the game—even though I knew what was com- GZ: Jade Empire and KOTOR set the stage for
ent direction. One of the earliest discussions we ing—sent a chill down my spine. We knew we had that with digital actors and cinematic storytelling,
had was, “What kind of world do we want?” That’s created something special. That’s the moment you but you can always trace it back further. Back in
where this darker fantasy is coming from. remember later. Baldur’s Gate we had pixelated characters and a
RM: It’s a fusion of common themes. You’re a GZ: There are certain things you remember even whole two lines of voiceover. That was crazy stuff
knight in shining armor, a darker knight, but you 10 years later. I was just at Microsoft’s X06 event back then. Technology has come a long way. We
can continually feel this sinister element in the and I was talking to someone about Baldur’s Gate can put so much up on the screen now with full
background. There’s tension, something oppres- II. “I couldn’t believe it when Yoshimo betrayed voiceover, music, and high-resolution graphics,
sive, but an aspiration to rise above it. A feeling me,” he said. That’s a few years ago, but he was and we can cue up these powerful moments >
2000 2002 2003

Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Catering to aspiring game Star Wars: Knights of the Old
Amn ships, and 200 produc- developers and dungeon mas- Republic sets new standards
tive hours evaporate into the ters alike, Neverwinter Nights for RPGs—and twist endings.
ether. The game’s engine goes lets players create their own And, really, if you haven’t
on to power other developers’ modules. It also opens the door played KOTOR yet, stop read-
classics like Icewind Dale and to episodic module content for ing this article and just go play
Planescape: Torment. years to come. it already.
GFW.1UP.COM • 79
2004 2005 2007

Anxious to share their latest PC BioWare forms an alliance with By the end of 2007,
game with editors, Greg and Pandemic Studios funded by we expect to be play-
Ray unveil an extremely early Elevation Partners. Two notable ing Dragon Age (and
first glimpse of Dragon Age members of Elevation: former maybe Mass Effect
during the Electronic Entertain- president and COO of Electronic on the Xbox 360, for
ment Expo. Those teases. Arts John Riccitiello and Bono good measure).
(that guy with the sunglasses).
WHAT’RE THE ODDS?

Jimmy the Geek’s Vegas odds on
BioWare’s MMORPG.
Ay, so what if BioWare isn’t ready to spill just
where or when their MMO takes place (see
“Massively Ambitious,” pg. 77)? We’ve cooked
up some betting lines for the mystery game
that BioWare Austin is busy making.
2:1
Knights of the Old Republic Online
>>
Star Wars Galaxies doesn’t seem long for this uni-
WE MISS THE verse. BioWare’s an obvious choice to try it next. It
almost makes too much sense.
NAÏVETÉ, BUT
THE INDUSTRY 5:1
HAS CHANGED Jade Empire Everywhere
Everybody loves a good kung fu game. Jade Empire
FOR THE BETTER.” was a hit on the Xbox, and there’s still a ton of rich
backstory left unexplored. Could be.
—GREG ZESCHUK
8:1
World of SomeOriginalFantasyThing
where we can affect the player in a very personal has come since you were on the cover of Cigar BioWare’s big on doing their own thing these days
and emotional way. We see that possibility on Aficionado? (“original IPs,” they call ’em), but World of WarCraft
is the big dog. You don’t pick fights with a big dog.
the horizon and getting closer with every game GZ: Well, we miss the naïveté, but the industry
we make. has changed for the better. It’s now something
RM: It’s funny. One of moments I remember viv-
idly from playing games was back in Wizardry. You
impactful and important. When we started, it was
still this very nascent thing, but it’s fun.
15:1
Massively Effected
go down to the bottom of the dungeon and find GFW: Now, after allying with Pandemic and The Xbox 360 game Mass Effect is getting a ton of
Werdna. You’d hear these three beeps. That was Elevation Partners, you’re an independent buzz. Battlestar Galactica means sci-fi is hot, and the
holy word “trilogy” hath been spoken…but nobody
it, just three beeps to let you know he was close. I über-developer. How does that feel? takes chances on the new kid (or in this case, new IP)
still get creeped out when I think of that. It was a RM: Pandemic is a great studio, and we share these days.
powerful moment for a 10-year-old. the same values. They focus on more action-
GZ: You know, we have this arcade machine heavy open-world games while we are obviously
loaded up with all our old games on it. You big on roleplaying and story. We can learn a lot 10,000:1
can actually play Baldur’s Gate with a trackball. from each other. Gastroenterology Patient Simulator Online
Dream on, doc! Good luck getting permission
It’s interesting to see this cross section of all GZ: It’s a positive thing for us and, for a large from cocreator Augustine Yip to resurrect this
the games and you start seeing some of those part, the industry. It shows one of the potential pre–Shattered Steel franchise. Scary thought, the
storytelling traces. routes you can go as a development studio. It’s idea of a massively multiplayer surgery.
RM: You just need a stool after a while. also great to have incredibly smart people to talk
GFW: That’s probably not a very lucrative to and we’re excited to see those first few joint
arcade. Unless you charge a quarter for every games come out as partners. GFW: And [U2 front man] Bono? He’s a
time you want to save. Still, looking back at all RM: It’s great to have a boss and mentors [at partner in Elevation. Is he a gamer as well?
those games you’ve done… Elevation] that know the business, and great being GZ: He is, actually, and he has good comments
GZ: Yeah, we were pretty naïve in the begin- able to turn to Pandemic when we’re stuck to see for us on games.
ning. Around 1996, before anyone knew us, we how they deal with [problems]—and vice versa. GFW: Huh. So he’s hands-on, then?
started making these fake magazine covers with RM: For sure. He’s an active partner in Elevation
our game and us on it. We’d send them out to •Anatomy lessons and
and takes part in all the meetings. Really, really
character modeling at
editors for PR…. BioWare’s Edmonton studio. smart. All six partners are incredibly smart. They’re
RM: One of the the kind of people that if you spend any time with
XTRAS
Want more? Listen

to Greg and Ray on graphic designers you walk away learning something.
our podcast, take a knew we loved cigars, GZ: Bono’s insights are spot-on. He’ll look at an
video tour of Bio-
Ware’s office, and so he put me on a entertainment product or game and he’ll say, “That
read our full Q&A fake cover of Cigar is good. That part isn’t and here’s why.” He’s got
with BioWare Austin Aficionado maga- unique insights, as do the other partners. Great,
at GFW01.1UP.com.
zine. [Laughs] We great mentors.
never sent it. GFW: Does this mean he’s singing the
GFW: Any Dragon Age theme song?
thoughts on how GZ: [Laughs] We haven’t worked up the nerve to
far the industry ask him yet. •
Reviews
Opinions you can trust

INSIDE
BUNNIES GUNS A-BOMBS
Sam & Max: Company DEFCON
Culture Shock of Heroes Time for some Global
Adventure gaming’s Real-time strategy Thermonuclear War!
comic duo returns! game of the year?
86 90 98
THIS MONTH
IN REVIEWS...
• Our favorite crime-solving
bunny and puppy come home Thirteen-plus years of formalized educa-
in Sam & Max: Culture Shock.
tion tell us that a “C”—an average mark,
by all accounts—translates to 70 percent…while
anything sub-60 percent guarantees a big fat “F.”
Somewhere along the way, we ironically forgot
that, according to basic math, the number
smack dab in between 0 and 100 is 50.
And unfortunately, we apply our distorted
logic to a lot of other numbers—including
review scores.
The problem with most scoring scales’
implementations is that 90 percent of games
wind up in the 7-to-9 range, with 7 signifying
the average and everything below it acting as a
poorly defined nebula for awful games. At GFW,
we do not reward bad games with good scores.
We mean what we say on that score key down
there—5’s the average, and you can trust that
anything higher is a game worth playing.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, allow
me to welcome you to GFW ’s Reviews section—get
ready for the definitive word on some of the big-
gest releases leading up to this year’s holiday sea-
son, from the industry’s most authoritative game
critics. And try not to get too upset about those
•
“low” scores, OK? Ryan Scott, Reviews Editor
SCORE KEY
GFW uses a 10-point scoring scale to inform
you, at a glance, whether or not a game is
worth your hard-earned money. We strictly
enforce a score of 5 as the median, meaning
that any game receiving a score of 6+ is
above-average—and certainly worth your
time, at least to some extent. Here’s how
the numbers break down:
Editors’
Choice award
Any game scoring a
9 or higher receives a
EDITORS’ GFW Editors’ Choice
CHOICE award, signifying
Games the very best in
TM for Windows ®
THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE PC gaming.
10: Phenomenal. A hallmark for its genre.

9: Excellent. Triple-A—universally recommended.
8: Great. Admirable throughout, with minor flaws.
7: Good. Highly enjoyable, if not noteworthy.
6: Above average. ...with some notable problems.
5: Average. Only genre enthusiasts need apply.
4: Below average. Major flaws/wasted potential.
3: Poor. Serious bugs or fundamental design issues.
2: Terrible. Never should have been made.
1: Atrocious. Absolutely broken and unplayable.
0: Insulting. An affront to the entire hobby.
GFW.1UP.COM • 85
Reviews Sam & Max: Culture Shock
>
THE GAME FEATURES SOME AMIABLE SATIRE,
ALBEIT OF A SORT SO TOOTHLESS IT MAKES
MAD MAGAZINE LOOK LIKE JONATHAN SWIFT.
• Once you learn how the
logic of Sam and Max’s
world works, none of the
puzzles are all that tough.
• One particularly hilarious

sequence involves Sam’s
psychiatric evaluation.

Sam & Max: Culture Shock Reviews
SAM & MAX:

CULTURE SHOCK
So this dog and this rabbit walk into a therapist’s office….
PUBLISHER: Telltale Games/GameTap DEVELOPER: Telltale Games GENRE: Adventure AVAILABILITY: E-tail
•Holy jumping mother o’ god in a side- (www.gametap.com or snm.telltalegames.com) ESRB RATING: Not Rated MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 800MHz CPU,
car with chocolate jimmies and a lobster 256MB RAM, 230MB hard drive space MULTIPLAYER: None VERSION REVIEWED: Gold Master
bib! What horrors await Sam and Max in
this sinister-looking abode?
“2002 WAS A GREAT YEAR
REVIEW FOR CALENDARS.”
The whole thing takes about four hours to play,
In some circles, the clamoring for a sec- with only five or six small locations to explore
ond Sam & Max game began about a day and a handful of simple puzzles to solve. None
after the first Sam & Max game hit store shelves. of this will win over anyone who doesn’t already
Thirteen years and a few abortive stabs later, the like adventure games, though. Too much of Cul-
classic LucasArts adventure game finally gets ture Shock boils down to clicking on one object
its sequel. Several sequels, actually. Sam & Max or dialogue choice after another and chuckling
Episode 1: Culture Shock is just the first in a pro- at whatever smartass thing Sam or Max says.
jected series of short adventure game “episodes” Each little cartoon snippet you unlock is fun,
available for download at GameTap.com and but eventually you find yourself asking why you
developer Telltale Games’ own site. have to do so much work for them—it’s like
How exciting you’ll find this new model watching a cartoon on a DVD player powered
depends largely on your appetite for adventure by a hand crank.
games: If you can’t stand them, you won’t like Matters would be better if the writers had
a short one a whole lot more than a long one. put a little more effort into ensuring that
If you love them, you may find yourself feeling you wouldn’t have to hear certain lines over
underfed when you crave a meal and are only and over. They could also have improved the
served an amuse-bouche. But for those of you mechanics of the game: The cursor moves
in the middle, the bite-size-installment approach sluggishly, making a few timing-based puzzles
might be just right. particularly annoying, and the characters some-
times inexplicably walk to places other than
MEET PEEPERS, WHIZZER, AND SPECS where you click.
The story, such as it is, involves the crime-fighting But if you’re willing to put up with all that,
duo of Sam and Max (Sam’s the dog, Max is the hy- you’ll find some real pleasures here: the sight
peractive rabbit) investigating a rash of vandalism gags tucked away in the corners of the screen;
committed by three former child TV stars. These some bits of wordplay worthy of Abbott and
• Weird stuff aplenty resides in the duo’s office. kids—Peepers, Whizzer, and Specs—turn out to Costello; the Brooklyn inflections David Nowlin
be under the control of another former child star, (Sam) and Andrew Chaikin (Max) bring to their
Brady Culture, who hypnotized them through his roles (Sam sounds like Don Adams from Get
line of exercise videos. You have to break them free Smart! and Max sounds like Billy Crystal from
of his spell with the help of a paranoid convenience Monsters, Inc.). Yes, too many of the jokes fall
store owner and a psychotherapist who operates flat…and yes, you’ll be tempted to give up on the
out of a tattoo parlor. game the tenth time you try to shoot out a van’s
The plot’s just a thin excuse for the jokes, of tires with an unresponsive mouse or the 20th
course—which come in a nonstop rat-a-tat time you hear screechy-voiced Whizzer yammer-
stream of uneven style and quality, with lots ing on about “Brady Culture’s Eye-Bo videos,”
of bad puns, goofy non sequiturs, sarcastic but what the hell—we don’t expect TV shows to
one-liners, and put-downs (“Your ideas are ef- hit their stride by the end of the pilot. The Sam
fervescent pustules, Max”). The game features & Max developers apparently have a full season
some amiable satire, albeit of a sort so toothless in store for us—who knows, maybe they’ll figure
it makes MAD Magazine look like Jonathan out how to pull a hit out of material that, for
Swift. A reasonable fraction of the gags made •
now, is a bit hit-or-miss. Charles Ardai
me smile, but I only actually laughed a few times.
The writers clearly were aiming for something VERDICT
as anarchic and witty as The Simpsons or the
movie Airplane!…but their spaghetti-against-the-
wall approach only sporadically achieves those
Welcome return of the
sarcastic duo of gaming leg-
end; a few good puzzles.
7 10
rarefied heights. On the other hand, aside from GOOD
This time around, it’s
some regrettable bladder-control jokes, it also Games
more a cartoon you watch
rarely sinks to the level of the latest CGI talking- for Windows ®
than a game you play.

TM
THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

animal yukfest playing at your local Cineplex.
GFW.1UP.COM • 87
Reviews Mage Knight: Apocalypse
•
Different
combinations of mage
stones grant your
armor special shields
and your weapons
special attack
bonuses.
MAGE KNIGHT: APOCALYPSE

It just doesn’t click
PUBLISHER: Namco Bandai DEVELOPER: InterServ GENRE: Action-RPG AVAILABILITY: Retail Box, E-tail (www.direct2drive.com) ESRB RATING: Teen
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1.8GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 128MB videocard MULTIPLAYER: 2-5 players VERSION REVIEWED: Retail Box
more—especially given Mage Knight’s rather hard- can only bind certain skill keys to one particular
REVIEW core heritage as a HeroClix-style miniatures game? half of the hot bar; in order to unlock a new skill in
a tree you need to “level up” the skill immediately
It’d be easy to dismiss Mage Knight: ARTIFICIAL STUPIDITY preceding it, which often means totally ditching
Apocalypse as just another Diablo clone— But grand questions of game philosophy are moot an old-but-useful skill for a new-but-lame skill
that’s game-review shorthand for “action-role- when a game doesn’t even do WOW all that well. simply because the former no longer yields XP. The
playing game with five characters, three branching You start off solo, choosing from one of five char- interface is full of more unsettling quirks: You can’t
skill trees, and lots of loot with names like ‘Demon- acters—a magey dragon, hot-lady necromantic slide your inventory sack (obnoxiously stuffed full
Spackled Faceplate of the Earthen Agility Ox’”—but assassin vampire, and so on—though the four every five minutes) around the screen. If you set
it owes just as much to MMORPGs as it does that fine folks you didn’t choose eventually join you the minimap to rotate based on which way you’re
click-and-slash archetype. Concepts of crowd con- as A.I. allies when you reach their hometown to facing, the map spins, but not the N-S-W-E com-
trol and “aggro” management play big roles here, take on the native nemesis for the local MacGuffin pass marks—yes, the options menu grants you the
and most encounters come in what MMOers so in Mage Knight’s 98-percent-linear story. (Side power to shift the world’s magnetic poles.
eloquently call “pulls”—fear the orc, confuse the quests? What’re those?). The allied NPC A.I. is sad; Item customization is a saving grace, as you
minotaur, off-tank the ice monster. To drive the animate a corpse to play off-tank, and half the can BeDazzle nearly every weapon or piece
point home, quest-bearing NPCs have big golden time it just stands there like, well…a corpse. of armor with colorful stat-shifting mage
exclamation points floating over their heads. Character development works on the “as you go” stones—fun stuff—and the graphics feature
OK, fine—so it’s Guild Wars or World of WarCraft system, so if you find yourself pressing the fireball neat spell effects and lots of lovely costume
or whatever for introverts…but aren’t MMO-style key a lot, your skills will naturally improve faster in changes. The game’s really frakkin’ easy (death’s
play mechanics more a function of socialization areas friendly to the art of fireball-throwing. The merciful, and money’s everywhere), so replay
and network constraints than superior game skill trees contain some fun stuff, but the hang-up comes in the form of online multiplayer, where
design? Shouldn’t positioning and timing matter comes in the hotkeys—for reasons unknown, you you can bring your character into any chapter
or mission of the game to relive your greatest
critical hits with some friends. But really, if you
get to that point—why not just play Guild Wars
•
instead? Sean Molloy
VERDICT
More to battles than just
mindless button mashing;
lots of custom item options.
5 10
Kludgy hotkeys; feeble
AVERAGE
allied A.I.; extremely linear Games
progression.
TM for Windows ®
>> THE OPTIONS

MENU GRANTS
YOU THE POWER TO
SHIFT THE WORLD’S
• If you die and warp back to a checkpoint crystal, fallen foes don’t respawn. Victory is inevitable! MAGNETIC POLES.
Caesar IV Reviews
•
Though not
CAESAR IV
The fall of Rome?
immediately apparent
here, my religious
adviser’s accusing me
of being a godless
heathen.
PUBLISHER: Vivendi Games DEVELOPER: Tilted Mill GENRE: City Simulator AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Everyone 10+
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1.6GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 2GB hard drive space MULTIPLAYER: None VERSION REVIEWED: Gold Master
>> YOUR CADRE

OF DROLL ADVI-
SORS BEGRUDGING-
LY ALERTS YOU TO
CIVIC PROBLEMS.
ment, while the latter marks Caesar IV’s attempt
to masquerade as a real-time strategy game. In
theory, the freedom of choice presents a nice
touch—but the entire pseudo-RTS arm of the
game feels like it doesn’t quite belong. Unit A.I.
and controls don’t match the complexity of a real
RTS, and you can often win simply by maintaining
a larger army than your aggressor. And if this type
• Though the city-building aspects shine, Caesar IV ’s real-time-strategy gameplay leaves much to of gameplay does appeal to you, why would you
be desired. turn to Caesar IV for it, anyway?
But even if the combat-shy player chooses to
and happy. Trade routes give you access to the luxu- ignore the faux-RTS portions, plenty of other
REVIEW ries necessary to court the elite (and taxpaying) citi- fundamental flaws loom large. Case in point: the
zenry, and provided you can keep up with the con- interface, which—for no good reason—gobbles up
City-building simulators always seem tinual balancing act, the game’s intricate economy roughly half the screen. The clunky menu system
doomed to the ubiquitous “it ain’t SimCity” makes for a pretty rewarding game experience. forces you to navigate through multiple layers of
criticism…and in most cases, it’s a sadly valid And when you do run into (or want to avoid) building options, and the game’s puzzling lack of
argument. Take, for example, Caesar IV. The lat- trouble, your cadre of droll (and perpetually dis- hotkeys means there’s no way around it. Caesar
est game in the Caesar franchise—manned by contented) advisors begrudgingly alerts you to IV also tends to choke up on midrange systems,
the Impressions Games castoffs at Tilted Mill civic problems and keeps you appraised of Rome’s and—perhaps the most egregious tech flaw of
Entertainment—tries hard…and, if not for numer- opinions on your handiwork (just make sure you all—proves highly prone to crashes when you try
ous technical atrocities and an unfortunate case of keep the home city’s coffers filled with money and to multitask. Rome’s not burning to the ground
identity crisis, its efforts just might’ve paid off. material objects). Your own performance gets rated just yet, but it definitely looks like someone lit the
As the title suggests, Caesar IV puts you in the seat in five categories from culture to security. Once you •
match. Ryan Scott
of a Roman governor, duty-bound to ensure Ancient learn the ins and outs, it’s off to the big leagues
Rome’s expansion and prosperity. The game starts in two lengthy campaigns across the Roman Empire. VERDICT
out with some introductory scenarios that run you
through the motions of providing your demand-
ing populace with a satisfactory existence. Housing
CITY UNDER SIEGE
It’s at this point that the aforementioned identity
Decent city-building game;
a rich historical setting.
Out-of-place RTS game-
5 10
attracts more citizens (from lowly plebs to hoity-toity crisis sets in: For each campaign scenario, you can AVERAGE
play; technical faults up the
nobles); factories and fields keep them busy; markets freely choose between an idyllic trade-focused Games
wazoo; an unnecessarily
keep them well-fed; and other public services like path and a more dangerous militaristic route. The for Windows ®
large interface.
TM

prefect offices, clinics, and coliseums keep them safe former sticks closely to the rigors of city manage-
GFW.1UP.COM • 89
Reviews Company of Heroes
• Units reload
on their own and
hunker around cover
automatically, letting
you focus on squad-
level activities like
telling the whole
group where to
aim...or to use high
explosives.
COMPANY OF HEROES
Can you say “company of hallelujahs”?
PUBLISHER: THQ DEVELOPER: Relic Entertainment GENRE: Real-Time Strategy AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Mature
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 2GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 6.5GB hard drive space MULTIPLAYER: 2-8 players VERSION REVIEWED: Gold Master
REVIEW building to building and field by field with smoke

canisters, grenades, and satchel charges. Better
your next wave of high-tech fortifications. A meta
“tech tree” tallies battle points for purchasing
than anything else to date, COH captures those doctrinal powers or calling down V-1 rockets. But
The genius of Company of Heroes fundamental conceits—no throwaway flunkies, no forget ordering everything on the menu—COH
has nothing to do with its guts-and- frivolous maps, and no stupid mob rushing. pushes you into making tough choices and owning
flak atmosphere, its “Hell effin’ yes, How Relic pulled it off is no great mystery, and your tech track in battles. The best weapons, used
we earned that M rating!” audio, its you can spot the seeds in the company’s earlier traditionally (aim-and-shoot), can be overrun in
EDITORS’ uncluttered interface, or the way it Dawn of War: hold-to-hoard resource nodes, seconds by wimpier but shrewdly played grunts.
CHOICE parks your eyeballs in the beauti- capture/recapture strategic points you can build In the end, the question you should ask yourself
Games
TMfor Windows ful mud and bellows, “Take that,
®
defenses on/around, and the simple “two-thirds is: Do you play RTS games for the Lego bases and
BrothersinMedalofDuty!” That’s just majority wins” principle. Your basic goal is to rush drone swarms? Or does the prospect of viscerally
the gravy: Relic understands that Allied vs. Axis the field with infantry; capture manpower, muni- egging army men and tanks across gritty, complex
games—at their best—are really time machines tions, and fuel nodes; build defenses; then use battlefields sound more your style? If you’re of the
that take us back to scooting G.I. Joe toys around armor to assault your opponent’s strong points. latter persuasion, Company of Heroes stands sec-
our sandboxes (battlefields), through snarls of grass The more nodes you control, the faster your •
ond to none. Matt Peckham
(barbed wire), and over “minefields” jury-rigged resources tally...and the sooner you can build those
VERDICT
(unwisely) with bricks of Black Cat firecrackers.
Think of all the RTS games you’ve played over
the years. How many made you hug cover?
Leverage the slope of a hill? Drop sandbags to
lovely M26 Pershings or Flakpanzers.
The battlefields make COH exceptionally con-
vincing, though; the messy tangles of gutted build-
ings and zigzag foliage lend each map an organic
Rewards shrewd tactics;
near-perfect unit/tech bal-
ance; exceptional single-
10 10
fortify turf? WWII’s Western Front wasn’t “Nazi “war snapshot” look that perfectly dovetails with player A.I. PHENOMENAL
Infantry Pits” or “Halls of Allied Warriors” grind- the tactics. Using a color-coded system of “dots” to Performance-neuters Games
ing out peons in suicide waves; it was squads of gauge cover quality, you sneak small bands around TM for Windows ®
high-end PCs. THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE
men—aided by armor and artillery—scrabbling hoping to bleed off resources fast enough to build
>> RELIC UNDER-

STANDS THAT
ALLIED VS. AXIS
WORLD WAR II
GAMES—AT THEIR
BEST—ARE REALLY
TIME MACHINES THAT
TAKE US BACK TO
SCOOTING G.I. JOE
TOYS AROUND
• Can you hear that Axis soldier yelling “Wheeeeeeeee”?
OUR SANDBOXES.
Faces of War Reviews
FACES OF WAR
Not just another pretty…aw, you know the rest
PUBLISHER: Ubisoft DEVELOPER: 1C/Best Way GENRE: Real-Time Strategy AVAILABILITY: Retail Box, E-tail (www.direct2drive.com) ESRB RATING: Mature
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 2GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 2.5GB hard drive space MULTIPLAYER: 2-8 players VERSION REVIEWED: Retail Box
REVIEW • The graphics engine is

just as colorful (and even
more powerful) than it was
in Soldiers. Every building
A couple years back, Ukrainian developer and vehicle you see here
Best Way put out a unique “action-RTS” called can be destroyed in any
number of ways.
Soldiers: Heroes of World War II. While nobody could
figure out why it wasn’t just called “Heroes of World
War II ” (it’s not like they needed to distinguish
it from Janitors: Heroes of World War II), Soldiers
surprised all comers by serving up gut-punch game-
play, sparkling screen decor, and impressive realism.
But somehow, despite these strengths (and a good
deal of critical acclaim), Soldiers didn’t kill them
at the local EB. Nevertheless, developer Best Way
admirably decided to keep hope alive with Soldiers
sequel Faces of War.
And we’re glad it did. Sporting the same “direct
control” feature that Soldiers used, FOW combines
the large-context missions of an RTS with the
infarction-inducing action of a third-person shooter.
If you’re not familiar: Direct control allows you vehicles from all three factions, along with a But for all its (relatively minor) quibbles,
to take control of any individual unit you own at complex-yet-straightforward control system. Faces of War does one thing unquestionably
any time. Rather than point, click, and let the A.I. Translation: You get plenty of control options, right: It delivers a solid, entertaining chal-
engage the enemy, you can drive, aim, and shoot but don’t need to use them if they aren’t your lenge. In particular, the game deserves kudos
all by yourself via the mouse and keyboard. This cup of ammo. The impressive A.I. does its best to for including a robust, exciting co-op mode.
element adds a welcome “captain” level of com- mimic the behavior of real soldiers: If Jerry wings You and your buddies must use ingenuity,
mand engagement to a genre that usually keeps a grenade into your trench, the A.I. scrambles out reflexes, and teamwork to overcome impossible
you at the “general” level. of the way…and if you’re wrangling a motorcycle odds—and the cheer you’ll rouse at mission’s
through Nazi blockades à la Indiana Jones and end makes these tactics well worth the effort.
THE OLD CURIOSITY the Last Crusade, the A.I. watches your six. • Eric Neigher
The majority of the missions (some based on his-
VERDICT
torical situations) center on the final days of World
War II, rather than run you through the rusty old
El Alamein/Stalingrad/D-Day/Bastogne/Berlin
gauntlet. You can play as the Reds, Tommies/Yanks,
HARD TIMES
Consider yourself warned, though—this is a game
for expert RTS junkies only (partly because it’s
a genre hybrid, partly because it’s just freakin’
Unique action-oriented
gameplay; smart A.I.; enter-
taining co-op.
8 10
and—most interestingly—Nazis, each with in-depth, hard). The later maps require a bevy of multitask- Laggy engine; insufficient
GREAT
branching campaigns complete with bonus mis- ing, management, and planning skills along with hotkeys; frustratingly dif- Games
sions. Nearly all missions feature big, free-form maps top-drawer reflexes and titanium nerves. The ficult for RTS newbies.
TM for Windows ®
(although scripted events sometimes annoyingly brutal learning curve is exacerbated by the lack
>>
intrude on your freedom), where you command a of sufficient hotkeys—a problem inherited from
small platoon against John Wayne–movie odds.
As with Soldiers, FOW features scads of true-to-
Soldiers—and the poorly translated vagaries of the
mission briefings. Bottom line: If you want a quick
FOR EXPERT RTS
life ordnance, including numerous highly realistic wham-bam-thank-you-Wermacht, look elsewhere. JUNKIES ONLY.
GFW.1UP.COM • 91
Reviews Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War—Dark Crusade
•The Necrons have

risen from the dead to
kick your newbie ass.
WARHAMMER 40,000: DAWN

OF WAR—DARK CRUSADE
More skull-crushing time, boyz!
PUBLISHER: THQ DEVELOPER: Relic Entertainment GENRE: Real-Time Strategy AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Mature
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 2GHz Pentium 4, 512MB RAM, 4GB hard drive space MULTIPLAYER: 2-8 players VERSION REVIEWED: Gold Master
REVIEW
Whatever Relic Entertainment is smoking
these days, they need to pass it around to
the rest of the game industry—because these guys
are on fire. With their awesome World War II real-
time-strategy game Company of Heroes just barely
out the door (and a huge, instant hit with PC gam-
ers), Relic somehow managed to release a second
expansion pack for their other outstanding RTS
franchise, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War—and
it’s a great addition to the series.
Actually, “expansion pack” is something of a mis-
nomer here, as you don’t need the original game
to play Dark Crusade…just one example of the
generosity at work here. While most expansions are
content to toss you a few new units and maps and • The world map lets you plan your conquest, one territory at a time.
call it a day, Dark Crusade is essentially an all-new
game, with two new races (bringing the total up to other six races (all A.I.-controlled) do the same. If ing requirements and an emphasis on infantry.
seven) and a brand new single-player campaign. you get attacked, you can play out the battle your- One caveat with either race: Play through once on
This gives the game across-the-board appeal: The self or let the game autoresolve it. The structure is easy mode first, because on normal, the A.I. has an
new additions appeal to series vets, while newbies cool, but doesn’t match the complexity of games annoying habit of rushing right away, and if you
can jump in fresh and still get a full experience. like the Total War series, where you spend as much don’t have a grip on the new units, your ass will be
Well, almost full; if you want to play as any of the time in the metagame as in real-time battle. Dark handed to you—quickly.
five original races online, you need the original Crusade’s campaign is a comparatively low-rent Ironically, Dark Crusade’s biggest competition
game and Winter Assault expansion. affair, and frankly just feels like a way to lump a is Company of Heroes, which makes the Dawn
The new single-player campaign eschews the series of independent skirmish maps together. of War series seem a half-generation behind in
original’s and Winter Assault’s detailed story lines for terms of graphics and gameplay. Those coming
a more straightforward just-beat-the-crap-out-of- RUSH TO JUDGMENT straight from COH might be a tad spoiled, and
everyone approach. And that, indeed, is the goal: to Unlike Winter Assault’s dull Imperial Guard, Dark will long for features (like the Retreat button!) not
conquer the planet Kronus. You manage your efforts Crusade’s two new races (the Tau and the Necrons) present in Dark Crusade. Still, this is an outstand-
on a new world map in a Risk-style metagame rock, and you don’t have to be a Warhammer ing RTS. It’s a must-have for Dawn of War vets,
between your real-time battles. You start off with nerd (which I’m not) to appreciate them. I played and noobs who have skipped the series so far
your commander in one territory; each turn you the campaign as the Tau, who rely mostly on •
have a great excuse to check it out. Jeff Green
can choose to attack a territory, move to an already fantastically brutal ranged attacks, but it’s the
conquered territory, and/or fortify your existing ter- creepy Necrons who really force you into a totally VERDICT
ritories with additional troops. After you move, the different play style thanks to different unit-build-
Generous, entertaining
8 10
>
heap of new gameplay for
WHATEVER RELIC IS SMOKING THESE an expansion.

More variety in maps
GREAT
DAYS, THEY NEED TO PASS IT AROUND would have been nice. It’s Games
for Windows ®
TO THE REST OF THE GAME INDUSTRY. not Company of Heroes.

TM

Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs Reviews
AGE OF EMPIRES III:

THE WARCHIEFS
Ensemble brings you the new New World
• Railroad Raider Tycoon!

PUBLISHER: Microsoft DEVELOPER: Ensemble Studios GENRE: Real-Time Strategy AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Teen
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1.4GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 2GB hard drive space, Age of Empires III MULTIPLAYER: 2-8 players VERSION REVIEWED: Gold Master
play…and discarding entire sets of rules in favor Finally, the oddball Aztecs completely lack horses
REVIEW of new ones. It’s a great move. and gunpowder. Sure, you laugh now…but wait
until you’ve got a dozen Skull Knights backed by
Age of Empires III: Another of NOT YOUR FATHER’S AGE III a couple of Warrior Priests knocking at the doors
the series’ trademark straight-up Remember forts? Don’t need ’em. Cavalry? What’s of your town center.
historical real-time strategy games. a horse? Have a little invisibility to help you raid
But now, with the Age of Empires III: villages. Stalemates got you down? Control more YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION?
EDITORS’ The WarChiefs expansion, developer than half of the outposts on the map and declare Plenty of other changes litter the game. The
CHOICE Ensemble reneges on its historical rev- a trade monopoly. You might have thought the European civs get their share of tweaks, like Spies
Games
for Windows erence by adding Native Americans—
TM
® Dutch and Ottomans in the original game broke (great for killing Native American heroes and mer-
who recruit bears and jaguars, dance the paradigm. Yeah, those were the days—when cenaries) and a new, agile artillery piece. Everyone
around a magical fire, and get mighty hero units. something as simple as villagers costing gold gets mercenaries at the saloon, and new cards pep-
This pack even throws in more pirates and cowboys, instead of food was considered wacky. per the Home City screens. But these are, mostly,
and adds ninjas. No joke. Ninjas. The Iroquois are the most conventional Native the same Europeans you’ve played all along.
Luckily, Ensemble’s at its best when it cuts Americans, able to hit hard as they age up and But then you get to the Fortress Age: Now
loose. The team’s crowning achievement discover gunpowder. You might remember their you’re faced with the dilemma of going industrial
remains Age of Mythology, a giddy mix of mantlets, ideal for killing buildings from behind to continue your economy or declaring a revolu-
whimsical fantasy, reverent history, and a vet- big wooden shields. This time, the Iroquois bring tion—which essentially breaks the game. It’s the
eran developer’s years of experience with RTS along battering rams, too. Their insta-building equivalent of knocking your pieces off the board
games. WarChiefs pulls Age III closer to Age travois give them a great deal of flexibility and and replacing them with battleships and machine
of Mythology by making some bold choices unpredictability. The Sioux are excellent raiders— guns and nothing but.
for how the new Sioux, Iroquois, and Aztecs fast, elusive, and free of housing-imposed limits. The revolution choice illustrates the real thrill
here: discovering new ways to play a game you
• OK, so it’s no thought you knew. Your first reaction’s probably
Home City…but “Wait a minute, so you’re telling me the Sioux
it’s comfortable.
don’t get any artillery? None at all? How in the
name of Crazy Horse am I supposed to bring
down a French fort?” This leads to discovering
the power of a pack of villagers doing the torch
dance at a fire pit—something to the tune of
triple-plus damage against buildings. At this
point, WarChiefs turns into an exciting exercise
in completely rethinking old strategies. And this,
after all, is what the best expansion packs do: not
•
just add, but entirely revise. Tom Chick
VERDICT
Age of Empires III just
got a little bit wackier.
9 10
Age of Empires III just
EXCELLENT
got a little bit wackier. Games
TM for Windows ®
GFW.1UP.COM • 93
Reviews Microsoft Flight Simulator X
•Yes, in a select number of airports, you can

actually taxi right up to the gate, which swings
out to let passengers disembark.
•No, that’s not a photograph—you’re looking

at an actual screenshot of the Air Creation
582SL ultralight buzzing hot air balloons to
win a mission medal.
•Ground and air traffic alike receive

substantial visual updates, right down to the
dingy colored boxes stacked atop this ship.
•You can see the physical bend in the wings as

you torque up or down—in the case of the DG
•Fly low to the ground and marvel at the amazing level of detail Flight Sim X hath wrought. 808S Competition sailplane, it’s enormous.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X Reviews
MICROSOFT
FLIGHT
SIMULATOR X
AKA Microsoft “Kitchen Sink” Simulator
PUBLISHER: Microsoft DEVELOPER: Microsoft GENRE: Simulation AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Everyone
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 14GB hard drive space MULTIPLAYER: 2-6 players
VERSION REVIEWED: Gold Master
ence), pick up the basic $50 version for one or both

REVIEW of the following reasons: to gobble up the basics
of flight, from trim control to avionics; or—to heck
I once scared the hell out of my college with learning—you’d rather whip through the air
roommate by popping the shell off our and go “wow” a bunch while ogling the brand new
CompuAdd 386SX/16MHz desktop and adding scenery. Here’s the trick, though…in order to enjoy
some extra memory in hopes of running Microsoft the stunning new vistas, you need a ridiculously
Flight Simulator 4.0 faster. It didn’t help much, high-powered machine. Just ignore those silly sys-
but my keg-muddled memories include flashes of tem requirements up top; the recommended specs
Meigs Runway 36, a sky full of flat clouds, and the in our reviewer’s guide were: a 3GHz processor,
downtown Chicago skyscrapers—then primitive 2GB of RAM, and a 512MB videocard. Ouch.
gray polygons—redrawing a bit more smoothly as So why not play on low settings, then? Because
• Flight Sim X uses real- I rapped the number pad (no joystick) and tried to with the bells and whistles disabled, Flight Sim X
world digital elevation
models to make mountains tip my Cessna Skylane into the side of one espe- looks just like Flight Sim 2004, which runs pretty
and valleys, and roads and cially big boxy rectangle (it was supposed to be the darned well by comparison. Crank the detail to
rivers are placed using real-
world vector data. Sears Tower) for the heck of it. high, and yeah, it’s a veritable photo shoot…but
Seventeen years and six versions later, Flight Sim one that also runs like a photo show. I know you
returns with an “X” (like Apple’s current OS, it’s crusty diehards don’t care about pulling a smooth
pronounced “ten”) and hoo-boy, what a couple 20-30 frames, but trust me: When you’re trying
decades will buy you! Like its incremental prede- to buzz low-ground pylons with the Extra 300
cessors, the latest incarnation soups up the visuals, aerobatic plane or hit tricky target rings on moving
tricks out the world with vehicles on roads and boats with the new and incredibly cool Air Creation
animals in the wild, adds a few dozen ultradetailed 582SL ultralight, it matters. Enough said, but to
airports with baggage carts and fuel trucks, slips in see all the pretty—and that’s arguably the biggest
a few new missions and aircraft, and broadens its “woohoo!” here—bank on next year’s tech.
online networking feature set. What’s more, it’s a Or don’t. You can certainly enjoy the other new
topographical content leviathan, shipping on two features while you wait (say, if you want to go
(that’s right, two) DVDs. You thought that 14GB online with a pal and share control of the plane…or
hard drive install requirement was a joke? just offer your own personalized flying lessons).
Missions are also better and more organic, broken
PLEASE ME TEASE ME into easy, intermediate, and advanced categories
If you already own Flight Sim 2004, what you prob- ranging from basic flying lessons (more engag-
ably want to know is, should you upgrade? That ing than Rod Machado’s—which are still here, but
depends—are you the sort scanning www.faa.gov forklifted in and a bit dated) to Red Bull racing
daily and building your very own ultralights from sprints…and slow, thoughtful African safari hunts.
kits? Then you’re a shoe-in unless I say something No, it’s not the significant leap 2004’s Century
like “they dumbed down the flight models,” which of Flight was, and performance—usually
of course they haven’t. So off with you, then—and unworthy of mention—is the big sinker here.
be sure to pick up the $70 deluxe version, which Otherwise, Flight Sim X is a solid, if not quite
includes 24 (versus 18) airplanes, 45 (versus 40) spectacular, 10th iteration. Here’s hoping the
fully modeled airports, 38 (versus 28) realistically inevitable Flight Sim 11 offers the same visual
represented cities, 50-plus (versus 30) missions, and breakthroughs without beating your PC to a
a special Tower Controller feature that lets you play •
quivering pulp. Matt Peckham
air traffic guru with your friends online.
•Even on the highest settings, you can still On the other hand, if you’re an armchair aviator
occasionally see a bit of ugly in the texture maps VERDICT
(stand by for modders to fix this up properly). (which I’m guessing describes the majority audi-
Tons of aviation-related
6 10
>
tools; more of everything
IT’S A TOPOGRAPHICAL CONTENT from the 2004 version.

Turn up the detail and
ABOVE AVG.
LEVIATHAN, SHIPPING ON TWO you need a PC that doesn’t Games
(THAT’S RIGHT, TWO) DVDS. for Windows ®
exist to run it.

TM
GFW.1UP.COM • 95
Reviews DEFCON
DEFCON
5…4…3…2…kiss your ass goodbye
PUBLISHER: Introversion Software DEVELOPER: Introversion Software GENRE: Real-Time Strategy AVAILABILITY: E-tail (www.everybody-dies.com) ESRB RATING: Not Rated
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 600MHz CPU, 128MB RAM, 60MB hard drive space MULTIPLAYER: 2-6 players VERSION REVIEWED: E-tail Download
select), but using the WASD keys for scrolling games half as elaborate. Game of the year mate-
REVIEW frees up your pointer for faster clicking. Played rial? You decide, but DEFCON already has my
in real-time “stages,” the clock ticks down from •
vote. Matt Peckham
In Chris Crawford’s 1985 geopo- DEFCON 5 (the unit placement phase) to 1 (all-
VERDICT
litical Cold War sim Balance of Power,
if you—oops—triggered a nuclear
war, the screen would go blank (pfip!)
EDITORS’ and whip out the wagging finger:
out war). You have nine types of land/sea units
in quantities of less than a dozen each: radar
dishes for intel; airbases for fighter surveillance
and bombers; silos for air defense or launching
Ridiculously cheap; de-
ceptively simple; runs
on almost any PC.
9 10
CHOICE “You have ignited a nuclear war. And nukes; and naval vessels ranging from battleships Map can get pretty clut-
EXCELLENT
Games
for Windows no, there is no animated display or a
® and carriers to subs. At DEFCON 4, radar kicks in, tered during frenzied activ- Games
for Windows
TM

mushroom cloud with parts of bodies and from 3 through 2 you’re hashing out land ity periods.
TM
flying through the air. We do not reward failure.” As and sea battles. When you finally hit 1, it’s “nuke
>>
if body parts would “fly” in the wake of a 50 mega- ‘em if ya got ‘em” and launches—which begin
ton yield (much less be a reward). Introversion’s
global thermonuclear war sim DEFCON (DEFense
as arcing missile salvos and culminate in blotchy
white explosions—are broadcast globally to the
THE ENTIRE
CONdition) is also 100 percent body-part free…and gut-wrenching blare of Klaxons. SYSTEM’S REN-
with a similar sense of cautionary dualism, it rewards
you as much for preserving your own population as
The reasons all this works: Each unit has a distinc-
tive foil, every strategy can be trumped (no two
DERED WITH THE
nuking the living snot out of the other side. matches play alike), all six countries have geo- GRACE AND SIMPLIC-
If you’ve seen the 1983 film WarGames, all I need
say is “that scene at NORAD where the nutty com-
positional pros and cons, friendly backstabbing is
nowhere else this joyous, and the entire system’s
ITY OF BOARD GAMES
puter wigs out,” and “you essentially play that,” and rendered with the grace and simplicity of board HALF AS ELABORATE.
“yeah, it’s the cat’s pajamas,” and we’re done here.
Go download it for $17.50. See ya online. Everyone
else, buckle up: DEFCON’s a real-time strategy sim
of global thermonuclear war for up to six players
(A.I. or online), and—I said “buckle up,” now—it
barely uses your 3D card (I can’t confirm it’s even a
requirement). Take that, all you “next-gen games
need Hollywood budgets” bozos.
“IS IT A GAME…OR IS IT REAL?”

Load up and DEFCON automatically plugs your
presence online (offline play is optional). Other
players can jump in alongside A.I. bots—pick
sides, ready-up, and the game begins. Your goal’s
simple: FUBAR the population centers and units
of other countries for points while protecting your
own. The player with the highest score when the
timer expires “wins.”
Matches transpire on a flat map of the globe,
with the outlines of all six countries etched in
colorful neon against sweeps of blue and black. • Losing (everybody loses, at least a little) involves lobbing big, tube-popping nukes. And hey—
everybody loves nukes!
The mouse handles everything (pan, zoom,

Reviews GTR 2
GTR 2
How real do you want it?
PUBLISHER: 10tacle Studios DEVELOPER: SimBin GENRE: Racing AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Everyone
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1.3GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 2.5GB hard drive space, driving wheel (recommended) MULTIPLAYER: 2-24 players VERSION REVIEWED: Retail Box
The game initially grabs you with its beautifully “deconstructive” than its predecessor’s.
REVIEW rendered car models and such wow-factor vehicle Returnees and rookies benefit from GTR 2’s all-
details as high-resolution cockpits, liveries, and new Driving School, a practical hands-on tutorial
Last year’s phenomenal GTR proved wheels. It then takes you on an environmentally comprising 20 general and track-specific lessons and
that someone still cares about hard- sensitive journey through no less than 34 authenti- over 100 “challenges.” Moreover, by dropping the
core road-racing sims…and in GTR 2, cally reproduced tracks and variant courses, where difficulty level and tweaking various settings in the
Swedish developer SimBin remains it soaks your windshield with incoming rooster game’s deep, intuitive menu system, drivers of any
EDITORS’ true to the high-end GT-sports-car tails when the weather is wet, forces you to endure ability can hop in and get a feel for the basics.
CHOICE racing formula and sophisticated the challenge of incrementally drying pavement,
Games
for Windows real-world physics it so masterfully
TM
® and serenades you with all the guttural roars and BREAK OUT THE POCKETBOOK
portrayed in the original, but adds strained groans of a real cockpit. The dusk and dawn The downside to all this complexity: the demands
more vehicles, more tracks, and perks that enhance ambient and artificial lighting effects of a 24-hour GTR 2 places upon your hardware. If you want
an already first-rate experience. Moreover, SimBin race are particularly spectacular. smooth visuals, ignore the minimum requirements
manages to make the game newbie-accessible completely and look instead toward a 2.3GHz CPU
without compromising its ultra-authentic stance. YOU DRIVE ME NERVOUS and 256MB graphics card as a good starting point.
But GTR 2’s strong suit is undoubtedly its realism. Fortunately, the game still looks quite acceptable
Whether you’re out-braking your peers into a turn, even when run with minimal detail. Ultimately, I’d
ZERO TO 60 impatiently waiting in the pit lane, selecting one
of the 140 available cars (with 40 unique models
consider GTR 2 one of the finest examples of sim
•
road racing—it’s that good. Gord Goble
among them), or hunkered down in the most
VERDICT
comprehensive garage facility in recent memory,
SimBin’s knowledge of racing’s subtleties remains
obvious. The physics engine isn’t altered appreciably,
but it’s nevertheless so good—and so reactive to
Sophisticated physics;
tons of distinctive cars and
tracks; superb presentation.
9 10
issues like vehicle degradation and warming tires— Minimal car physics up-
EXCELLENT
that you can never relax. And if you crash, beware: grades from GTR; the game Games
GTR 2’s damage modeling is substantially more is a resource hog.
TM for Windows ®
If you want to get serious about GTR 2, you

need to drop any ideas of using a gamepad
or (gasp!) keyboard. An accurate joystick such
as CH Products’ Flightstick Pro USB works
far better, though the physical characteristics
of any stick prohibit advanced driving tech-
niques. Wheel/pedal sets are highly recom-
mended, and one of the finest mass-produced
(and affordable) systems is Logitech’s MOMO
Force. Set the gas and brake to separate axes
in Windows’ Control Panel, take full advan-
tage of the game’s Driving School component,
judge your braking speed by the superim-
posed turn markers, and remember that a
calm, steady racer is a winning racer. • A.I. racers battle
hard in every turn.

Reviews NHL 07 NBA Live 07
NHL 07
Game misconduct
• The Avalanche’s
perennial All-Star
“Burnaby” Joe Sakic.
PUBLISHER: EA Sports DEVELOPER: EA Canada GENRE: Sports AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Everyone
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 2.4GB hard drive space, gamepad (recommended) MULTIPLAYER: 2-4 players VERSION REVIEWED: Gold Master
mode, and a player model that more closely

REVIEW mimics individuals’ real-life traits and more believ-
ably obeys the laws of physics. But it’s otherwise
When the NHL decided to shake up its NHL 06 revisited, flaws and all. Pucks still do the
flagging game last year, it legalized the strangest things, and the A.I. still suffers frequent
two-line pass, eliminated oversized goalie pads, brain cramps. Commentator Jim Hughson, a vet-
and replaced ties with shootouts—big stuff, for eran hockey broadcaster, repeats himself (often
sure. When EA Sports decided to shake things up wrongly) ad nauseam and the game incorporates
for this year’s iteration of its NHL series, it was just a fraction—passing only—of the Xbox 360’s
almost as bold and just as beautiful. Yet if you wondrous Skill Stick capabilities.
play the PC version, you’ll never know. Make no mistake: NHL 07 is a reflex-mad,
NHL 07 ’s Xbox 360 version is stunning: Its feature-packed title that should rightfully
innovative “Skill Stick” system truly revolution- impress anyone new to PC hockey. But longtime
izes maneuvering, dekeing, and shooting; its patrons deserve significantly more than another
revamped engine eliminates the archaic speed rehash, particularly when it’s already on display
boost function and captures the flow, the •
elsewhere. Gord Goble
nuances, and the real-world speed and grappling
VERDICT
of hockey like no prior edition; its players look
incredible; its commentary is fresh, deep, and
rarely annoying; and its gameplay is awesomely
authentic.
Tons of play modes; great
animations; the best (and
only) PC hockey game.
5 10
• Between-play animations Typically minimal EA
AVERAGE
Conversely, NHL 07 for the PC does barely
are spectacular. Here, J. S.
enough to warrant the “sequel” term. It introduc- Sports updates; PC version Games
Giguere gets lonely. for Windows ®
gets short shrift.

TM
es a European component, a salary cap in Dynasty THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE
NBA LIVE 07
A year older, but not wiser
PUBLISHER: EA Sports DEVELOPER: EA Canada GENRE: Sports AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Everyone
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1.3GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 3.7GB hard drive space, gamepad (recommended) MULTIPLAYER: 2-4 players VERSION REVIEWED: Gold Master
Comparatively, the good points are

REVIEW far too few. The X-Factor—which allows
nonstud players to go into superstar
EA’s latest PC hoops game calls zones when they get hot—is great, the
itself Live, but chat rooms will player movement’s improved (charac-
refer to it as Instant Replay. A rehash ters no longer slide around like Michelle
of last year’s game, 07 fails in the Kwan on ice), and the commentary
same ways as its predecessor. The abil- sounds much fresher than that of last
ity to pull down defensive rebounds year. But there’s one more monster dis-
remains next to impossible; it’s frus- appointment: Once again, Live doesn’t
trating to play lockdown defense, only bother to give its fans online leagues.
to be repeatedly beaten on the glass. It’s a huge letdown…but really, why
The result: tip-ins and easy layups for make the effort? With no basketball
your opponent, severe agitation for competition in sight, EA can simply
you. Another issue is that point guards update the game’s rookie crop, sit back,
absolutely dominate the game. Quick and watch its flawed, uncontested game
point guards—and most of them are •
fly off the shelves. Todd Zuniga
quick—cut the defense to rib-
bons. They navigate into the VERDICT
paint by shouldering past the
defense…then lay the ball in.
Repeatedly. And if they miss?
No defensive rebound for
The X-Factor; improved
player movement.
It’s effectively a
4 10
wholesale repeat of last
BELOW AVG.
you. Clog up the lane to keep
• Love that beard, them out, and they sink the year’s game; still no online Games
for Windows ®
Pau Gasol. open shot. It’s misery. leagues in sight.

TM

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales Reviews
AGE OF PIRATES:
CARIBBEAN TALES
A long walk off a short plank
PUBLISHER: Playlogic/Atari DEVELOPER: Akella GENRE: Action-RPG AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Teen
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1.5GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 4GB hard drive space, 128MB videocard MULTIPLAYER: 2-16 players VERSION REVIEWED: Gold Master
offer simple pleasures when sailing; fighting

REVIEW off a tropical tempest adds bursts of excite-
ment; and once the game shifts away from
Age of Pirates is a total waste of a looting and more toward establishing colonial
great idea. The balance of roleplay- outposts, leading a fleet of ships rewards the
ing and seafaring, which should have been player with a sense of accomplishment.
the deft trick that pulls in gamers, stumbles. But the real nail in the coffin is the code:
Developer Akella manages to screw up both: Whoever certified this as “finished” must want
Slow-paced combat is further handicapped PC games dead. Unsolvable missions, random
by terrible controls, and the melee requires crew and cargo disappearances, broken alerts
nothing more strategic than an itchy mouse- and conversation trees, and corrupted save
clicking finger. The story line provides a thin files plague the player. Throw in the invasive
veneer of narrative polish for the grindingly StarForce copy-protection program, and you
repetitive missions that comprise the bulk of have a product we wouldn’t wish on the scur-
the game mechanic. The pace fails to engage, •
viest of scallywags. Jane Pinckard
with unforgiving difficulty for novice
VERDICT
sailors. So much in this game is left over
from Akella’s previous effort, Pirates of the
Caribbean—including many flaws—that Age
of Pirates comes off as lazy and uninspired.
A cool idea with lovely
scenery and some fun ex-
ploration.
4 10
Grinding combat, a thin
BELOW AVG.
In spite of all the criticisms, some ele-
ments manage to compel. Incredible weath- plot, clunky controls, and Games • Die, you scummy,
bugs galore.
TM for Windows ®
teal-wearing sea dogs!

er effects shimmering on Caribbean waters THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE
GFW.1UP.COM • 105
Reviews Joint Task Force Paraworld
JOINT TASK FORCE

Bumpertanks, bad voiceovers, and busywork
PUBLISHER: Vivendi Games DEVELOPER: Most Wanted GENRE: Real-Time Strategy AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Teen
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 2GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 2.5GB hard drive space MULTIPLAYER: 2-8 players VERSION REVIEWED: Gold Master
REVIEW them in and out of vehicles and buildings,

and individually fire AT rockets at targ—oops,
too slow. All your guys are dead because you
Everything that Joint Task Force does didn’t futz enough.
some other game does better. And The game attempts to spark a bit of “Is
most of the things Joint Task Force does it too soon?” controversy by plunking you
it doesn’t even do very well. Its greatest down in modern-day hot spots such as Iraq
strength: aping Atari’s underrated and over- and Bosnia, but the short answer to that
looked Act of War. question is “No one cares where you’re
Not that anything’s wrong with aping, as Act fighting in a game this bad.” When you’re
of War demonstrated so well by shamelessly busy messing around with some inscrutable
and effectively borrowing from Command buttons while your tanks drive into each
& Conquer: Generals. But the trick is to ape other, your Humvees race ahead to certain
well—and since Joint Task Force can’t even death, and your soldiers stand around taking
manage basic pathfinding, it’s no surprise that fire, Baghdad might as well be Timbuktu.
it’s also bad at aping. It fails at providing any- • Tom Chick
thing memorable beyond excruciatingly bad
VERDICT
cut-scenes and voice work.
You control a multinational force, led by
commanders, each of whom has a cheap
version of the hero skill tree from WarCraft
Will renew your apprecia-
tion for Atari’s Act of War.
3 10 • You can tell the bleeding-
POOR
III. As the commander of the commanders It’s not Act of War. edge, ripped-from-the-headlines
and their men, you’re supposed to secure Games topicality by the fact that these
TM for Windows ®
guys are Arabs.

your little infantry guys behind cover, load THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE
PARAWORLD
Been-done-a-saurus
PUBLISHER: Aspyr Media DEVELOPER: Spieleentwicklungskombinat GENRE: Real-Time Strategy AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Teen
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1.6GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 3.5GB hard drive space MULTIPLAYER: 2-8 players VERSION REVIEWED: Near-Final Reviewable
an RTS will scour for the “yawn” but-

REVIEW ton after 15 minutes. On the plus side,
deliciously lame dialogue butchered
Dinosaur-themed PC titles are by penny-ante voice actors provides
wont to bring to mind a little brilliant comic relief. If you have a pen-
game called Jurassic Park: Trespasser. chant for Ed Wood films, ParaWorld’s
In case you don’t remember it, you cut-scenes may justify the purchase.
should know that in a recent poll, 95 Not much here for the rest of us,
percent of gamers said they’d rather though. The graphics are colorful…but
be mauled by actual dinosaurs than not spectacular; the dinosaur units rep-
ever play it again. So it’s with con- resent an interesting but boringly real-
siderable relief that I can say Aspyr’s ized idea. ParaWorld’s cons outweigh
new RTS ParaWorld is about 300 (or at least balance) every pro. The one
bazillion times better than Trespasser. outstanding feature: a beautiful origi-
Unfortunately, that still leaves it about nal score. Too bad nobody buys these
72.3 times short of “good.” •
things for the music. Eric Neigher
Conventional in every way,
ParaWorld serves up that
VERDICT
same-old, WarCraft II–era RTS
fare. Build your base, weather
the initial A.I. onslaught, tech
up, and crush your foes…then
Unintentionally hilarious
“B-movie” writing; soaring
original score.
5 10
AVERAGE
• Transport units like this try, try again. It’s enjoyable Conventional gameplay;
Games
giant turtle make easy for the first couple missions, cluttered controls; nonsensi-
targets for the faster, more cal storyline; sloooow pace.
TM for Windows ®
maneuverable reptiles. but anyone who’s ever played THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy Reviews
LEGO STAR WARS II:

THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY
Laugh it up, fuzzball
PUBLISHER: LucasArts DEVELOPER: Traveller’s Tales GENRE: Action AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Everyone 10+
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 3GB hard drive space, gamepad (recommended) MULTIPLAYER: 2 players VERSION REVIEWED: Retail Box
Lego motif that restores the joy that the prequel

REVIEW trilogy sucked from the franchise.
LSW2 is almost a carbon copy of the first game,
It’s one of the inalienable truths of life: letting you bound your way through the galaxy
Even a tiny plastic Billy Dee Williams is and collect plastic “studs” to later exchange for
smoother than you. While the Lego-fied Lando any of a zillion different things. The big differ-
suffers from the same friendly fire problems ence here: the inclusion of all the vehicles—you
(punching and kicking his erstwhile pals while can pilot AT-STs, X-wings, and more…and the
the enemy peppers them all with blaster fire) that vehicle sequences (especially on Endor) are ridic-
plague the chaotic larger parties in this game, ulously fun. It’s a short game, but you’ll want to
he never slugs a girl. Unlike those louts Luke and replay it in free play mode to get all the unlock-
Han, Lando knows the ladies are for smooching, ables and other bonuses—and to laugh at all the
not smashing—accidentally attack Leia as Lando, •
silliness just one more time. Robert Coffey
and he’ll plant a kiss on her outstretched hand.
That’s just one tiny moment of whimsy in a VERDICT
game jam-packed with them. Lego Star Wars
II distills the three original Star Wars films to
the set pieces that truly matter, such as the
A fun, funny breath of
fresh air for a franchise
that’s grown tedious.
8 10
trench run, the speeder chase on Endor, and the Crowded parties and
GREAT
• Chewie and Han Millennium Falcon’s escape in the asteroid field. some targeting issues lead Games
wear jaunty Indiana
Jones fedoras…just And it does it all in an ecstatically hallucinatory to friendly fire incidents.
TM for Windows ®
because they can!
GFW.1UP.COM • 107
Reviews King’s Quest III: To Heir Is Human The Sierra Collections
KING’S QUEST III:

TO HEIR IS HUMAN
Another labor of love
PUBLISHER: Infamous Adventures DEVELOPER: Infamous Adventures GENRE: Adventure AVAILABILITY: Free Download (www.infamous-adventures.com) ESRB RATING: Not Rated
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 166MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, 50MB hard drive space (300MB with voice pack) MULTIPLAYER: None VERSION REVIEWED: Public v2.0 with voice pack
screen as each character speaks, accompanied by

• The Avalanche’s REVIEW some humorously (intentionally?) bad voiceovers—
perennial All-Star
“Burnaby” Joe Sakic. including a surprise appearance by former Sierra
Fan-crafted remakes arguably trump designer Josh Mandel, reprising his now-infamous
retail products when it comes to keeping the role as King Graham—via an optional speech pack.
adventure game genre alive; recent projects like Longtime King’s Quest fans, rest assured that all
King’s Quest II+ and Maniac Mansion Deluxe cer- of the original KQ3 puzzles remain unaltered (with
tainly outshine 90 percent of the soulless adventures one minor late-game exception involving a deadly
that actually make it onto shelves. The newest free yeti) sans irritating copy protection (the classic
rehash to hit the Web, the Infamous Adventures KQ3 involved lots of careful typing). And King’s
group’s King’s Quest III (a remake of Sierra’s 1986 Quest newbies: Prepare for a fun—though short
gem), pays suitable tribute to the original…and has and relatively unsophisticated—peek into the
plenty of fun with its source material in the process. •
annals of adventure game history. Ryan Scott
The characters, story, and locations remain wholly
intact: You step into the shoes of a medieval slave VERDICT
named Gwydion, who desperately seeks a way to
rebel against his sinister captor—an effort that main-
ly takes the form of (surprise!) numerous inventory
A fun trip down memory
lane for Sierra diehards.
7 10
puzzles. The game’s original EGA visuals and parser
Newcomers might balk at
GOOD
interface are updated to a 256-color, point-and-click Games
simple story, short length,
motif that mirrors Sierra’s early ’90s releases, with for Windows ®
and hokey voiceover work.

TM

crudely rendered head shots that pop onto the
THE SIERRA COLLECTIONS

Compromised classics
PUBLISHER: “Sierra” DEVELOPER: Sierra GENRE: Adventure AVAILABILITY: Retail Box ESRB RATING: Everyone (King’s Quest); Teen (Space Quest, Police Quest);
Mature (Leisure Suit Larry) MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 800MHz CPU, 128MB RAM, 1.2GB hard drive space MULTIPLAYER: None VERSION REVIEWED: Retail Box
REVIEW
Never played Sierra’s classic point-and-click adventure games during their
mid-’80s heyday? Drop any and all notions of graphics over gameplay, rush
out to your local software shop, and snag these $20 budget boxes now. Legacy
fans: Continue to cry yourselves to sleep over how spectacularly current IP (intel-
lectual property) owner Vivendi Games mismanages Sierra’s legendary name.
• Leisure Suit Larry wonders Each of these four boxes compiles one of Sierra’s groundbreaking adventure-
when he’s gonna score with game franchises: Roberta Williams’ fairy-tale-inspired King’s Quest series; the zany
some ladies. We wonder when
we’re gonna score some better Space Quest sci-fi spoofs; Leisure Suit Larry’s amorous escapades; and the gritty and
Sierra compilations. (for their time) realistic Police Quest adventures. The icon-based (and earlier parser-
powered) interfaces, clever puzzles, and stellar stories still act as a measuring stick
for the genre. Everything here’s indisputably worth any cerebral gamer’s time.
The shoddy presentation lets the hot air out of the balloon.. Sure, they’re budget
releases—minimal packaging with paper CD sleeves—but they’re also incomplete,
with the King’s Quest Collection missing two games (and a working installer), Larry
missing five (including the
CD version of LSL6—just the VERDICT
crappy floppy version here),
and Space Quest and Police
Quest down one each. No
extras; no interviews. It’s the
Some of the PC’s most
important classics, available
in XP-friendly format.
4 10
The most disrespectful
BELOW AVG.
PC-gaming equivalent of put-
•To what cruel fate do presentation imaginable for Games
ting the Queen of England up for THE
Windows ®
Vivendi’s claws carry Space

• games of this pedigree.
TM
Quest hero Roger Wilco?

at a Motel 6. Ryan Scott OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

The Hot List Reviews
THE HOT LIST

Five still-available games to buy right now
MISSING: GAME PSYCHONAUTS

ADVENTURE FEVER OF THE YEAR OK, so it’s not a prop-
Thirsting for more witty dialogue EDITION er graphic adventure
The original Missing: game, per se, but this
and perplexing inventory puzzles
Since January and hilarious, psychedelic
after playing Sam & Max: Culture Shock? its expansion pack, third-person action-
Miffed at Vivendi Games’ less-than-stellar Missing: The 13th adventure/platformer
Sierra boxed sets? Head down to your local Victim, relied on did spawn from the
an interesting bit messed-up mind of
game store (or just jump online) and order
of metagaming, Grim Fandango and
up a few of these classic adventure games e-mailing players with clues and directing Day of the Tentacle
you may have missed the first time around. them to various websites to hunt for the designer Tim Schafer—and that certainly
solutions to many in-game puzzles. Not too counts for something.
Get ‘em while you still can!
far off from EA’s Majestic. Psychonauts’ oddball story (kids at the local
Games for Windows: The Official psychic summer camp become pawns in a
Magazine editor (and Missing reviewer) madman’s evil ploy) and bizarre character
Darren Gladstone mused at the time that designs bear the clear stamp of Schafer’s acer-
he had a lot of difficulty keeping up with bic wit, and the action-packed gameplay is
the many missives that wound up in his essentially just a different way to gift-wrap the
Yahoo.com account spam folder—but traditional puzzle elements Schafer is known
given a workable e-mail provider, Missing for. Owing to a lack of name recognition
makes for one of the best games yet from (and some mediocre marketing by publisher
publisher DreamCatcher Games. The Game Majesco), Psychonauts didn’t exactly fly off
of the Year Edition supplies both the base store shelves—so do yourself a big favor and
game and the expansion...just in time for rescue a copy from the budget bin before it’s
the upcoming Missing sequel, Evidence: The too late. Barring that, you can download it
Last Ritual. from Valve’s Steam service.
ESCAPE FROM
WANTED: A MONKEY ISLAND
WILD WESTERN “Hello! My name
ADVENTURE is Guybrush
Most longtime Threepwood, and I
adventure game want to be a pirate!”
fanatics fondly Few adventure game
remember the knee- fanatics can claim
slapping antics of they don’t know
Freddy Pharkas: those hallowed words.
Frontier Pharmacist LucasArts’ zany
(Sierra’s stab at a Monkey Island fran- MYST: 10TH ANNIVERSARY
Blazing Saddles–style parody of the wild, chise tops many genre fanatics’ “All-Time Best” DVD EDITION
wild West), but few realize the similar lists, and though we’ve seen no sign of the The original Myst caused a stir when it came
sort of fun to be had with DreamCatcher ’s series since 2000, many eagerly await/hope/ out back in the grand old days of 1993. For
Wanted: A Wild Western Adventure (itself a pray for a fifth installment. Until that hap- many, it spelled a revolution in adventure gam-
sequel to 3 Skulls of the Toltecs). pens, keep yourself busy with the franchise’s ing—realistic-looking environments and a first-
OK, so series hero Fenimore Fillmore fourth offering, which updates the classic person perspective meant some of the world’s
isn’t quite up to Freddy Pharkas’ caliber cartoony look with 3D graphics and an inter- most immersive gameplay (at the time). But
(no pun intended), but the adventures of face to match. Bumbling buccaneer-wannabe for a lot of adventure game stalwarts, Myst was
this horse-ridin’ hombre—who bears more Threepwood once again crosses swords with his an affront to the standards set by Sierra and
than a passing resemblance to a certain undead archnemesis LeChuck, while continuing LucasArts; they quickly dismissed it as a boring
Tom Hanks–voiced cowboy from Pixar ’s Toy to seek buried booty and woo his newly wed- click-fest with a poor narrative. With each suc-
Story—should steal more than a few grins ded wife, Governor Elaine Marley. Sounds an cessive entry, the series gained more followers.
from anyone in the mood for amusement awful lot like a certain Disney-themed pirate Now, five games strong, Myst’s had an undeni-
(and not just for the incessantly hokey movie, doesn’t it? Helpful hint: Monkey Island able impact on the adventure game genre. See
voiceover work). beat the films to the punch (and took its inspi- how it all began in this three-game boxed set.
ration from the theme park ride!).
>
DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND RESCUE
A COPY OF PSYCHONAUTS FROM THE
BUDGET BIN BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.
GFW.1UP.COM • 109
Extend
Where your games live on forever!
• Tom’s MG42 is burned alive

while trying to flee flamethrower-
brandishing engineers.

INSIDE
WAR GAMES PATCHES MMORPG
Line of Attack Updates Crisis on
What can war games The v1.05 patch for The Infinite Servers
learn from Company Battle for Middle-earth The total newb’s guide
of Heroes? II completely reinvents to Eve Online.
114 116 the game. 118
TOM VS. BRUCE

Two gamers enter, One gamer wins.
COMPANY OF HEROES
Let’s get Coyin’
PUBLISHER: THQ DEVELOPER: Relic Entertainment GENRE: Real-Time Strategy ESRB RATING: Mature
VIRTUAL SHOOT CLUB BRUCE: In official military talk, the abbrevia-

tion for “Company” is “Coy.” I told Tom this,
The first game to bear the official Games and pretty soon he was sending me messages
for Windows logo: Relic Entertainment’s like, “You wanna Coy?” and “Whaddya doin’
World War II RTS, Company of Heroes. What right now…Coyin’?” Back when we played
better game for us to cover in our gamer-versus- Guild Wars, he got no end of delight from the
gamer column in the first issue of Games for fact that the Axe Mastery skill sounds like “Ass
Windows: The Official Magazine? Plus, we both Mastery.” It’s kind of like that all over again, just
think the game is aces. But next month, just to to give you an idea of the level of sophistica-
• Bruce’s jeep
prove we’re not toeing any corporate line, we tion I’m dealing with here.
gets chewed up by
Tom’s MG42 and promise we’ll do an obscure game. TOM: Bruce has a victory point near his base
then destroyed by a TOM: Bruce Geryk and I have been doing that we’ll call “Bruce’s victory point.” It’s kind
Panzerfaust.
these articles longer than the U.S. fought in of out in the open, but it’s got some farm-
World War II. Traditionally, we play real-time houses covering it. I have a victory point near
strategy games, which I win. Every now and my base that we’ll call “Tom’s victory point.”
then, we’ll play some turgid World War II war It’s closed up behind hedgerows and a wall,
game, which Bruce wins. I figure Company of and it’s got a single farmhouse overlooking
Heroes is the best of both worlds. I can pit my it. A third victory point sits in the open fields
skill at shift-clicking, attack moving, and build to the west. It’s probably going to get pretty
queuing against Bruce’s knowledge of things bloody out there.
like CRTs and how many centimeters of armor BRUCE: As you’d expect, “my” victory point
are in the front of a Tiger tank. is in the middle of some wide-open kill zone,
BRUCE: Traditionally, I play the good guys to while Tom’s is packed away nicely behind
Tom Chick’s bad guys. I’m the Humans to his Zerg, an impenetrable force field and covered by
the Allies to his Axis, and the Republican presi- a giant laser. Kind of weird how that always
dential candidate to his chairman of the Politburo. happens! You should start keeping track right
This gives you a reason to cheer for me, because now of how many things “just happen” to
I usually lose. The reasons for this are manifold, work out this way.
but the main one is this: Tom gets games about TOM: One of the first things I do is put a
a month before anybody else and plays them in machine gun team in the farmhouse overlook-
his weekly professional gaming training sessions ing my victory point. I believe the saying goes,
(called “Shoot Club”) until he has the hotkeys “Good MG42s make good neighbors.”
stuck to his fingers. Oh yeah, and he’s really good. BRUCE: Naturally, Tom has a dilithium-
TOM: The map is Angoville, an idyllic patch powered underground bunker to put his
of farmhouses and hedgerows that we’re about machine gun in and I have a small farmhouse.
to seriously mess up. I’m at the south end and Having an impenetrable bunker wouldn’t help
Bruce is at the north end. This map contains me right now, though, because I’m not smart
three victory points, and whoever controls the enough to use it. My guys are running around
majority of them starts the other guy’s score grabbing objectives, which is what I was told
ticking down from 500. First player to zero is a good strategy. Hey…what does it mean
loses. You know Battlefield? Coy is like that. that a unit got sniped? >
>>TOM GETS GAMES ABOUT A

MONTH BEFORE ANYBODY ELSE
AND PLAYS THEM UNTIL HE HAS THE
• Bruce’s riflemen are sniped by Tom’s sniper. HOTKEYS STUCK TO HIS FINGERS.
GFW.1UP.COM • 111
Extend Tom vs. Bruce
•Bruce’s riflemen kill

Tom’s Volksgrenadiers
with a grenade…and
• StuG vs. Sherman showdown!
are then sniped by
Tom’s sniper.
• Shermans are safer traveling in pairs…until

they’re flanked by StuGs.
TOM: Another thing that makes a good neigh- territory in the west while the Volks head back BRUCE: Yeah, they say “die,” all right. In this
bor early in the game is a sniper. Sure, they’re to push toward Bruce’s victory point. case, Tom’s MG42 died when my engineers
expensive, but they’re a terrible annoyance to BRUCE: One of the things I don’t like about Coy: invented flamethrowers. They’re very smart
your opponent. The subtext of the “Unit sniped” the micromanagement of things like grenades engineers, and I’m sure they’ll go a long way in
message is “Hey, guess what? The other player is and Panzerfausts. It’s very WarCraft III-ish, which life. If Tom doesn’t snipe them.
about to entirely kill one or more of your squads annoys me a little bit because your soldiers are TOM: The Germans have rocket artillery
unless you do some serious micromanagement otherwise good at using cover and maneuvering. called a Nebelwerfer, which is German for
trying to hunt down a single stealthy dude whose TOM: The crucial thing about direct control of “artillery that shoots rockets.” However, I
powerful one-shot kill is going to rack up tons of grenades and Panzerfausts is that they cost muni- don’t need artillery; having spent my experi-
combat experience for your opponent.” Plus, I can tions, so they’re a form of resource management. ence points on the Terror Doctrine, I now
imagine my sniper is Ed Harris from Enemy at the In any given game, you’ve got limited munitions. have the power to drop propaganda leaflets
Gates. If Bruce builds a sniper, he can imagine he’s Part of the strategy is how you use them. on Bruce’s soldiers. This causes them to
Barry Pepper from Saving Private Ryan. Speaking of which…ho ho ho, now I have a retreat back to base—presumably to show
BRUCE: That whole sniper thing from Enemy half-track! The first player to get a vehicle on these leaflets to their buddies or something—
at the Gates is most likely apocryphal, but it the field usually enjoys an edge, which might at which point they can march right back out
sure makes a good story, huh? Company of include forcing the other player to burn muni- onto the battlefield. It doesn’t kill them, so
Heroes is good at making stories that way. tions in trying to counter that edge with stuff it’s a humane way to stop Bruce when he’s
They’re no more real, since they’re just in a like sticky bombs or Panzerfausts. I send my got a squad of soldiers trying to capture a
computer game instead of a movie, but it’s half-track against Bruce’s victory point. This will flag. It’s the martial version of “catch-and-
amazing how long I remember things like the probably cause him to freak out and focus all release.” With a click of my mouse, his sol-
time I put a machine gun in the big house by his forces over here, leaving the west side of diers are propagandized into thinking better
the central victory point and then dropped the map to me. So I send my lonely little sniper of what they’re doing.
artillery strikes on Tom’s assault teams in the out to grab some territory. Go get ‘em, Ed. BRUCE: The first few times Tom did this, I
street below. Unfortunately, that was in a previ- BRUCE: Tom’s Panzerkampfwagen totally thought it was a bug in the program, maybe
ous game. Which I lost, by the way. freaked me out. I haven’t researched sticky put there by an elite German haxör. This is
TOM: While my sniper, Ed, picks off Allied bombs yet, for no good reason I can think of probably the most ridiculous game mechanic I
riflemen in the west, Bruce diverts an annoy- other than it just slipped my mind. So, of course, have ever seen in any game, if you don’t count
ing little jeep from his victory point, inadver- I’m now faced with a cheesy half-track—or in the Volatile Rum in World of WarCraft.
tently driving it past the farmhouse housing German, a Sonderkraftfahrzeug—that’s chewing TOM: Up near Bruce’s side of the map, he
my MG42. The machine gun chews it up just up my riflemen. I need to focus all my forces and I are doing a fairly extended dance around
enough so that my Volksgrenadiers (German over there. Wait, look who just wandered into his victory point. He’ll send a team of riflemen
for “folks who throw grenades”) can quickly the middle of my other rifle squads…. into range of my half-track to try to grab the
kill it with a Panzerfaust (German for “one of TOM: Oops, here come two squads of Allied victory point. They’ll hold out under fire for a
the fastest ways to get killed by a Panzer tank, riflemen after my sniper. I divert my Volks, but while, but he’ll eventually pull them back after
which will immediately see where you fired they’re quickly killed by grenades. However, in he’s turned the victory point neutral…at which
from and kill you, but great for softer targets the firefight, Ed does a lot of damage and drives point my pioneers bundle out of the half-track
like jeeps and half-tracks”). All’s quiet on the Bruce’s troops back. Area secure. Or, as they say to take it back. We do this a few times; it’s very
western front, so my pioneers start grabbing in Germany, “Die area secure.” courteous and even somewhat formal, like war

Tom vs. Bruce Extend
• That’s what we call close combat! • Bruce is fond of

using masses of rifle-
men; Tom is fond
of killing them with
his half-track’s new
flamethrower.
• Sometimes, artillery is better late than

never…even if just for the satisfaction of
enjoying the fireworks.
used to be in the olden days. Neither of us is BRUCE: I guess that’s why they call it a tank TOM: As Bruce’s second Sherman flanks my
carpet bombing each other’s populations or destroyer. The Sherman’s actually an anti- StuG, my original StuG and PaK 38 arrive just
anything like that. infantry tank in this game, which is kind of his- in time. Bruce’s tanks get caught in the mid-
BRUCE: I would love to carpet bomb Tom torical in a way. What isn’t very historical: Tom dle; I sit back and enjoy a nice Sherman sand-
into the Stone Age, but I have the small prob- can’t spell “Sturmgeschütz.” Or even “StuG.” wich. Total score: Bruce is down two Shermans,
lem of munitions. I need 200 to launch one of TOM: I can’t spell that first thing, much less and my dinged-up StuGs will be as good as
my devastating artillery barrages, but Tom’s put those two dots over the U, but I certainly new after a little love from the local pioneers.
cleverly cut me off from enough supply points can capitalize the G in “StuG.” The problem is Now that the area’s cleared of hostile armor,
to make the thought of off-board artillery an that Microsoft Word keeps trying to correct it. my Puma parks just outside Bruce’s base to
unimaginable luxury. In one way, it’s a great And while I’m a wiz at micromanaging an RTS, intercept any infantry heading out for battle.
mechanism for incorporating war-gamey things I can’t be bothered to micromanage a word BRUCE: How cute—Tom has a little
like artillery support into a real-time strategy processor, even if it is made by our new corpo- Kubelwagen parked near my base. He’s harass-
game. In another way, it totally sucks. rate overlords. ing my infantry and generally causing trouble.
TOM: And in yet a third way, it’s Bruce’s BRUCE: Fair enough. Maybe Tom can use But, as Patrick Swayze once famously said,
awakening to the harsh reality that maybe some of his World of WarCraft subscription “Wolverines!” Or, at least, one Wolverine. And
he shouldn’t have spent all those munitions fees for a Berlitz course. that’s all for that Kubelwagen. Now to deal with
throwing grenades at my lowly Volks earlier on. TOM: Now Bruce reclaims his victory point that StuG.
Speaking of which…as we sent engineers out to with another Sherman tank. Wait…make that BRUCE: Tom’s really shut me down at “my”
grab territory when the match started, I went a pair of Sherman tanks. I quickly divert a victory point. So, concentrating not only all
to the trouble of closing off the easternmost StuG and a PaK 38 antitank gun east to rein- my virtual forces, but also all my actual mental
territory with barbed wire. But Bruce hasn’t force that side of the map. Except, while I’m energy, I arrange a coordinated attack on the
even had the common courtesy to try to take doing that, Bruce swings his tanks around to farmhouse, with grenades and everything. It
it. For the entire game, he never even moves the west victory point. We essentially swap starts off well, but somehow ends up failing,
close to it. If a guy lays down defenses, the flanks in a sort of polite do-si-do. Luckily, I’m which is roughly how the entire game has gone
least you can do is be stymied by them. fielding a second StuG, which trades fire with for me. I’m not eager to see how this alternate
BRUCE: To be honest, I haven’t even figured both Shermans. universe will look once Tom’s Nazis take over.
out how to lay down defenses myself. As usual, it’s BRUCE: Since I’m nothing if not a student TOM: “Was ist Nazis? Wir sind keine Nazis.
because I don’t have anything worth defending. of history, I try and angle for a side shot on Wir sind deutsche Wermacht.” •
TOM: Bruce and I have a bit of a standoff over Tom’s StuG with my Sherman, since that’s what
the west victory point. He’s got a jeep watching they did in real life. Unfortunately, in real life, FINAL SCORE
it, but I’ve got a bunker—and Ed, my sniper— they didn’t have to click a mouse a million TOM: 428 BRUCE: 0
covering it. I bring in a Puma armored car to times to do it.
make sure Bruce doesn’t get any funny ideas. But
PLAYERS
then Bruce shows up with two rifleman squads Tom Chick Bruce Geryk
and an M4 Sherman tank. Luckily, as soon as it In addition to being one of the video- GFW contributor Bruce Geryk has
attacks, my first Stug tank destroyer rolls off the game industry’s most prolific freelance written about videogames for over 20
assembly line. It pulls up and goes front-armor- critics, Tom Chick also runs the popular years. He loves war games like most
website QuarterToThree.com. people love oxygen.
to-front-armor with the Sherman. The Stug wins.
GFW.1UP.COM • 113
Extend Line of Attack Falling Pieces
LINE OF ATTACK
Your monthly guide to hardcore war-gaming
THE MIND’S EYE

“It’s about gameplay, not graphics!”
Grognards cling to the idea that ugly
graphics don’t matter, because in a good war
game, the game mechanics keep you engaged.
Yet, in a contest between the nice 3D perspec-
tive of Combat Mission and the earlier 2D look of
games like Panthers in the Shadows, the winner’s
pretty clear, and with good reason: imagination.
Games rely on our mind’s eye. Plenty of war- • The ubiquitous top-down perspective makes most
war games look like the tactical sims that they are...
•Hollywood
...while Company of Heroes looks more like a
movie.
gamers got hooked on the genre due to its histor-
ical connections, and strong visuals are an effec- Relic Entertainment’s Company of Heroes does or the lobbing of a grenade into a bunker. Even as
tive way to build on those connections, no matter something that most “real” war games haven’t yet you “build” riflemen and “research” flamethrow-
how much we bellow about substance over style. managed: It draws you into the world it depicts, ers, you get enough “real war” moments to make
Come on—who thinks the divisional insignias in rather than the one you’ve created in your mind you see possibilities in future games. For any kind
The Ardennes Offensive would have worked just as to translate the game’s crude symbology. Even •
of war-gamer, that’s exciting. Bruce Geryk
well if they’d been the numbers 1, 2, 4, and so on, with frantic clicking, ahistorical game mechanics
instead of cool historical symbols? Early cardboard (who ever heard of using V-1 rockets on the bat- Bruce Geryk
war games featured rudimentary maps, but soon tlefield?) and RTS resource conventions, it manag- Bruce thinks that games with nice
switched to more elaborate and attractive terrain es to transcend games like Close Combat by trans- graphics are just swell.
depictions. Why? It’s all part of creating a connec- lating certain combat moments perfectly to the
tion; it’s an illusion—but oftentimes a strong one. PC screen: the setting up of a heavy machine gun,
FALLING PIECES
The best in casual games
FRYIN’ THE BIG FISH

As accommodating as GFW’s companion
site 1UP.com is, it might prove a little intimi-
dating for your mom (or parole officer). It’s great
that hardcore gamers have a place to hang out—
but where do…errrr…softcore gamers go to chat
about those relaxing tile-matching time-wasters
they love? My Big Fish Games—that’s where.
Big Fish Games (www.bigfishgames.com) isn’t
• At its heart, Ciao Bella is a soap opera, all about
just one of the biggest casual gaming websites:
At 3 to 4 million unique visitors per month
• Elena relaxes in the sauna in Ciao Bella. guiding Elena to eternal happiness with Elio.
(according to Internet traffic monitor comScore that downloads and purchases a game through pick your two free games are pretty dull. Instead,
Media Metrix), it’s the ninth-largest U.S. game site your page nets you 25 percent of its purchase I suggest you start pimping your page and begin
across all types of games—including core, casual, price in on-site credit toward your next game. collecting credits for Ciao Bella: Part soap opera,
and MMO. And now Big Fish gives all those visi- After just 20 days, My Big Fish Games closed in part The Sims, part adventure/strategy game,
tors another reason to dig into the site via My Big on 100,000 members…and its customer-support Ciao Bella tasks you with managing all aspects of
Fish Games (www.mybigfishgames.com). department was swamped with “thank you” a young woman’s life, with a large emphasis on
Like 1UP.com, membership costs nothing and e-mail from grateful casual gamers. finding romantic fulfillment. It won’t be every-
requires only an e-mail address. Once you sign one’s cup of tea, but the game has a great styl-
up, you get your own webspace to proselytize CIAO BELLA •
ized look…and plenty of charm. Robert Coffey
your five best-loved games. Just signing up gets Should you sign up for My Big Fish Games, you’ll
you two free games…and even better, any player quickly find that the five titles from which you Robert Coffey
>> PART SOAP OPERA, PART THE SIMS,

Robert wants everyone to buy games via
http://my.bigfishgames.com/CitizenPain
so he never has to spend his own hard-
PART ADVENTURE/STRATEGY GAME. earned money again.

Extend Updates
AFTERLIFE
UPDATES
Our two cents on the latest mods and patches
IRON GRIP: THE OPPRESSION

www.isotx.com
This total conversion Source mod (cre-

ated by a Dutch art student) combines
traditional shooter gameplay and real-
time strategy elements, all wrapped in a
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: unique vision of the future. The first
public beta went live in late September,
THE BATTLE FOR with the Iron Grip team working diligent-
ly on bugfixes ever since.
MIDDLE-EARTH II V1.05
The winds of a 7,200-word changelog blow over Middle-earth
PUBLISHER: Electronic Arts DEVELOPER: EALA GENRE: Real-Time Strategy AVAILABILITY: Download (bfme2.ea.com)
ESRB RATING: Teen MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: 1.6GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 6GB hard drive space
MULTIPLAYER: 2-8 players VERSION REVIEWED: v1.05
tougher), they take only about half as much

MY PRECIOUS! damage from most units. They also start to
repair themselves sooner, so it’s harder to
In the grand tradition of the follow-up on a failed assault. ULTIMA V: LAZARUS
Lord of the Rings extended- Walls—which no one ever used—now cost www.u5lazarus.com
edition DVDs, now we have a less and only take damage from siege units.
sort of “extended edition” for The fortress add-ons that let you custom- Ultima geeks eager for a new single-player
EDITORS’ EA’s Battle for Middle-earth II. ize your base are tougher and cheaper, too. sojourn into the lands of Britannia should
CHOICE Nine months after its release, It used to be easy enough to just ride your take a peek at this ambitious and well-
Games cavalry up to a fortress and knock it over; crafted mod for the original Dungeon Siege.
TMfor Windows the real-time strategy game of
®

Peter Jackson’s movies of J.R.R. now, such a direct approach is a great way Lazarus reinvents the classic Ultima V:
Tolkein’s books essentially gets rebooted. to squander units. Catapults, battering rams, Warriors of Destiny for a modern audience,
Now the Nazgul are really fearsome, the and Ents suddenly become important parts and as of the most recent build (v1.20,
Dwarves are really tough, Goblin wall-crawl- of any army. Version 1.05 swings the pendu- available from the URL above), it’s bug-
ing becomes marginally useful, and the lum back toward the beta, when some testers free—and fully moddable itself!
heroes of the Men of the West and the Elves complained that tough buildings and walls
aren’t quite so all-powerful. led to stalemates.
The reboot comes in the form of an exten- Not everything’s copacetic, though. heroes get shuffled up and repriced. One
sive patch. Version 1.05 (followed shortly Leadership, formerly a simple, broad bonus side effect of the hero changes: The Create-
thereafter by v1.06 to correct a problem with you could apply to your units (indicated by A-Hero mode is even more out of whack,
the multiplayer lobby) changes everything a glowing yellow light), gets balkanized into with custom heroes running roughshod over
you thought you knew about real-time strat- several different types of bonuses from vari- the game balance. Maybe the upcoming
egy in Middle-earth. This used to be a really ous sources. It’s an unfortunate example of expansion pack will restore custom heroes to
fast game, with armies sweeping across the one of the game’s more elegant concepts something resembling a well-tuned feature.
map like waves, crushing buildings with ease; turned fussy and complicated. Overall, version 1.05 signifies an enormous
it wasn’t the sort of RTS that gave you the overhaul, with more nuanced options for
room to just hunker down. Buildings sat in THE NINE RIDE AGAIN what to build and how to use your armies.
the backseat while armies drove the game. Version 1.05 radically changes the inter- With more back-and-forth, post-v1.05 match-
play among units, so prepare to relearn es tend to last longer. And with a game of
RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAMS who trumps whom. Rangers, Rohirrim, and BFME2’s caliber, that’s a good thing.
But BFME2 v1.05 changes how buildings Dwarven battlewagons get beaten with the • Tom Chick
fit into the calculus of combat: Although nerf stick; Elven eagles, mumakil, and naval
defensive towers and resource buildings units receive lots of love (although, alas, VERDICT
receive fewer hit points (with the exception
of Dwarven mines, which are conspicuously
naval combat still amounts to little more
than a pointless diversion); and everyone’s
Better pacing and
9 10
>
balance all around.
VERSION 1.05 RADICALLY CHANGES THE Ready to relearn

EXCELLENT
INTERPLAY AMONG UNITS, SO PREPARE everything you knew? Games
for Windows ®
TO RELEARN WHO TRUMPS WHOM.

TM

Extend Crisis on Infinite Servers
CRISIS ON INFINITE SERVERS

Trekking across the vast MMORPG landscape. This month: Eve Online.
EVE ONLINE
If you’ve ever made any sort of substantial
time commitment to an MMO, you prob-
ably know “that guy.” You know—the guy who
operates his own personal command center with
a dozen or so PCs…all running macros, develop-
ing multiple characters on multiple accounts,
and farming in-game cash and sweet loot at all
odd hours of the day (and night). In short: the
guy who, long ago, crossed that dangerous line
between “hobby” and “obsession.” In my world,
this perfectly describes my buddy Hwang.
I met the guy during my PVP-crazy Ultima
Online days, where he purchased multiple houses
during the game’s postlaunch land rush…and
wound up making a huge in-game profit when
he sold the real estate off for many times its
original value. Hwang was sort of a tycoon that
way—but he grew bored of UO’s slapdash econo-
my after a few years and soon began beating the
Shadowbane drum. And once we (quickly) tired of • These look like good stats, I guess. Too bad Eve doesn’t bother to explain their importance.
>> SHEESH…HOW’S A NEW PLAYER

EXPECTED TO KNOW ALL THIS?
that, we went, like vagrant wanderers on a digital of the game’s four equally bizarre-looking races
highway, from one MMO to another: First to Star (I chose the Caldari, based on Hwang’s advice),
Wars Galaxies, then City of Heroes, and most I stared blankly at a menu that stated “Choose
recently, Guild Wars. All decent games, yes…but bloodline and gender.” I swiped my mouse cursor
none quite achieved that balance between my over the three Caldari bloodlines: Achura, Deteis,
PVP tendencies and the virtual dollar signs in and Civire. I sprang for the last one, as the Civire
Hwang’s eyes the same way UO did. Then, a few bloodline enjoys proficiency with missile launch-
months ago, Hwang called me up to rave about
an entirely new game. Well, new to us, at least.
ers—something I figured might come in handy
for blowing other players to smithereens.
• The character-creation process doesn’t quite
trump City of Heroes’ near-limitless palette of
“Hey, man!” Hwang greeted me in his usual Hwang quickly expressed dismay at my deci- options…but it comes closer than most other MMOs.
upbeat tone. “I’ve been checking out Eve Online sion. “You gotta pick Deteis, man. That Missile
for the last month or so. It’s pretty sweet—great Launcher Operation skill’s nothing to sweat of the creation process. He told me the “correct”
player-run economy, the biggest-ass universe over…. You can get that real easy. You gotta look choices for my character’s ancestry, school, depart-
you’ve ever seen, and yes, even PVP to keep you at the stats! The Deteis have the best stats, hands ment, field, and specialty—all of which determine
happy. And it all takes place in outer space. I hear down.” I examined each bloodline’s attributes, what kinds of skills you start out with. I named my
it even scored a ton of angry Galaxies players after noting that each character possessed five defin- space-tycoon-to-be “Gamelon” (after my old UO
that awful ‘New Game Enhancements’ reboot. It’s ing stats: Intelligence, Charisma, Perception, thief) and clicked the “Enter Game” button.
a nice change from the fantasy stuff, I gotta say. Memory, and Willpower. Nothing in the menu “Welcome!” a computerized voice chimed as
You wanna come check it out, too? I’ve already indicated their relative importance. Sheesh… I stared at a tiny space pod floating in a bleak,
got a pretty nice setup going, and I can definitely how’s a new player expected to know all this? gray hangar. “I am Aura, your spacecraft’s com-
kick down some cash to get you started.” Hwang laid it out for me. “You’ve got these five puter. Congratulations on your pilot’s license.”
I recalled hearing a steady stream of good stats, right? Those determine how fast you learn Hwang warned me about this part—an obfuscat-
things about Eve, which originally launched back skills. Like that Missile Launcher one—the higher ed newbie lesson on piloting and hangar facilities.
in 2003 while Hwang and I were still hot for your Perception, the faster you learn. You can “The tutorial’s wonky,” he told me. “You’d better set
Shadowbane. I eyed it with passive interest…but learn any skill you want, with no limits. But your aside a couple of hours to get through it, but trust
between my then-current fix and the impending stats are pretty much set in stone. I mean, you me—it makes all this piloting and economy stuff
Galaxies launch, I never had the time to check it can increase ’em some during the game, but if look harder than it really is. I’ll show ya the ropes,
out. But here, three years later, my languishing you gimp your stats now, it’s always gonna hurt. I man. You’re gonna love Eve even more than UO!”
interest in Guild Wars left me yearning for a new went through three characters before I figured it •
To be continued… Ryan Scott
MMO. I took Hwang up on his offer and signed all out. Trust me, bud—Deteis all the way!”
up for a two-week Eve trial account. Ryan Scott
BUILDING A BETTER DETEIS GFW‘s intrepid reviews editor spends
I HEART MISSILE LAUNCHERS After tweaking my character’s facial features until his nights hurtling through the wild
After firing up the game client, hitting the “Create he looked like something vaguely approximat- space of Eve Online. He still thinks
Star Trek is for losers, though.
New Character” button, and picking from one ing “cool,” I let Hwang walk me through the rest

Extend On FileFront
ON FILEFRONT
The latest and greatest demos and patches
Games for Windows: The Official Magazine and FileFront.com have joined forces to bring you
both the best possible PC-gaming coverage and access to the hottest game downloads—dem-
os, mods, drivers, patches, and more. Head to GFW.FileFront.com to try these out for yourself.
BATTLEFIELD 2142 (DEMO) F.E.A.R.: EXTRACTION

This demo features the Sidi POINT (DEMO) AD INDEX
2K GAMES
Power Plant map, two playable The first expansion pack for the SID MEIER’S RAILROADS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
armies (the European Union and spooky first-person shooter F.E.A.R. ABS
ABS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66-67
Pan Asian Coalition), the new is H.E.R.E. Check out some of the ANTEC
ANTEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Titan mode, and the popular new weapons, enemies, and loca- ASPYR MEDIA
Conquest mode. tions in this single-player demo. 1701 AD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
ASUS
PHYSX CARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
ATARI
AGE OF PIRATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
STAR WARS: EMPIRE DARK MESSIAH OF MIGHT CODEMASTERS, INC.
ARCHLORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-5
AT WAR: FORCES OF AND MAGIC (DEMO) COMCAST CORPORATION
CORRUPTION (DEMO) Becometh thee a warrior, mage, GAME INVASION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
CYBERPOWER SYSTEMS
Take the new Empire at War or assassin in this single-player CYBERPOWER (#1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
CYBERPOWER SYSTEMS
expansion for a spin. Play the demo of Ubisoft’s Source- CYBERPOWER (#2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
role of Tyber Zann on a quest to powered mighty, magical first- DELL COMPUTER CORP.
DELL COMPUTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-7
retake your criminal empire. person adventure. GAMETAP
GAMETAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
GAMETAP
MYST. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
GAMETAP
HEROES OF ANNIHILATED PREY V1.2 (PATCH) SAM & MAX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
IBUYPOWER
EMPIRES (DEMO) This update tackles some IBUYPOWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62-63
Real-time strategy and role- bug issues that plagued the IBUYPOWER
IBUYPOWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
playing unite! Try out two game—and also adds new maps IBUYPOWER
IBUYPOWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102-103
different races, an extensive and multiplayer models for you INTEL CORP.
GAMING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
single-player mission, and the to enjoy. MICROSOFT
LAN-playable skirmish mode. AOE 3: WARCHIEFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
MICROSOFT
FLIGHT SIMULATOR X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
NAMCO BANDAI GAMES AMERICA
WARHAMMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
COMPANY OF HEROES V1.2 (PATCH) FLYBOYS SQUADRON (DEMO) NAPSTER
NAPSTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
This Company of Heroes patch addresses SLI Movie-based games typically suck. Vehicle- NCSOFT CORP.
GUILD WARS: NIGHTFALL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
(scalable-link interface) issues, squashes a few based MMOs typically tank. Can this WWI NEWEGG
NEWEGG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64-65
bugs, and kills some pesky exploits. flying MMO turn the tide? Try the trial version. NEXON AMERICA, INC.
MAPLE STORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
SAITEK INDUSTRIES LTD, INC.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: AGE OF EMPIRES III V1.09 (PATCH) AVIATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
SAITEK INDUSTRIES LTD, INC.
THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE-EARTH II Among the many tweaks in this Empires- ECLIPSE II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
V1.05 (PATCH) building patch: bonus XP for faster leveling. SEGA OF AMERICA
MEDIEVAL TOTAL WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-9
Apparently, all is not well in Middle-earth— SEGA OF AMERICA
MEDIEVAL TOTAL WAR (COVER POSTER) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-B
luckily, this patch tweaks a bunch of units, HEROES OF MIGHT AND MAGIC V SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT
fixes some maps, and tunes up the interface a V1.03 (PATCH) EQ2: ECHOES OF FAYDWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82-83
STARDOCK ENTERTAINMENT
bit. Check out our full review on page 116. More fixes and tweaks? Check. Map editor? GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
THQ INC.
Check. Four new maps? Hell yeah. COMPANY OF HEROES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96-97
SPACE EMPIRES V (DEMO) THQ INC.
DAWN OF WAR: DARK CRUSADE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate LEGO STAR WARS II V1.01 (PATCH) UBISOFT ENTERTAINMENT
DARK MESSIAH OF MIGHT AND MAGIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2-3
across the big, scary expanse of the cosmos If you have trouble installing LucasArts’ UPPER DECK
WORLD OF WARCRAFT TRADING CARD GAME . . . . . . . . . . 61
in this demo of the latest game in the blocky take on the original Star Wars trilogy, WIZARDS OF THE COAST
Space Empires 4X space sim series. don’t use the Force—use this patch. MAGIC ACQUISITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

THE OFFICIAL WORD

A LETTER FROM
PETER MOORE
The latest developments in the Games for Windows world
As our friends at Ziff Davis and (www.gamesforwindows.com),
the 1UP Network roll out the we’re taking a stand for the busi-
very first issue of Games for ness and the platform with our
Windows: The Official Magazine, Games for Windows initiative,
I want to welcome you and tell and you, the gamer, will benefit.
you about the exciting develop- I also am very excited for
ments happening in the Games our next release, Windows
for Windows world. Vista. For the first time, we
First, we are extremely excited approached Windows from
to be working with the Ziff Davis a gamer’s perspective, and I
and the 1UP Network team. think you’ll see why when you
When we decided Microsoft get Windows Vista. We’ve cre-
Windows needed its own official ated a place in the operating
games magazine, we talked to system, the Games Explorer,
a lot of folks in the industry. We where you can find, play, and
ADVERTORIAL
wanted a strong and independent learn more about your games.
voice for the platform, one that We built Windows Vista on
wouldn’t be afraid to tell it like it DirectX 9, which your games
is, whether we liked it or not. Jeff will use in a more integrated
Green and his team really stood way with the operating system,
out, and now that we’ve arrived and all applications can now
at the first issue, we couldn’t take advantage of the world’s
be happier with our choice. I leading graphics technology.
think you’ll really like what the But we didn’t stop there.
Games for Windows: The Official Windows Vista will also ship with
Magazine team has in store for you. It’s a beautiful, informa- DirectX 10, which delivers the cutting edge in graphics and
tive, and irreverent publication worthy of its heritage. realism. We’re working hard with our friends at Electronic
Next, I want to give you a brief preview of what we’ve Arts, THQ, Namco Bandai, and others to make sure you get
been cooking up in Redmond for Games for Windows. great DirectX 10 games early next year. DirectX 10 will deliver
As you may have heard, Microsoft is rededicating itself to the most realistic, immersive, and intense game experiences
our first gaming platform: Windows. Make no mistake— you’ve ever seen on Windows—you’ll see what I mean when
Windows is a first-class gaming platform. As the platform you play Crysis, Company of Heroes, and Hellgate: London on
owner, we’re going to treat it that way. Windows Vista and DirectX 10 hardware.
We’ve been working on this for a while, and you’ll see We’re also bringing the power and community of Xbox
the fruits of our efforts in retail stores across the U.S. and Live to Windows in two Microsoft Game Studios titles that
on the packaging of the best games on the platform. We’re will be exclusive to Windows Vista: Shadowrun and Halo
working closely with our friends in the industry to make 2 for Windows Vista. These games will deliver the quality
sure you get quality games that are more user-friendly online experience you’ve come to expect on Xbox 360 to
and fun than ever before. We’re addressing many of the Windows Vista, and Shadowrun will even allow you to play
problems you’ve complained about over the years—the against Xbox 360 players in a true first for both platforms.
installation process, confusing system requirements, game It’s obviously an exciting time to be a Windows gamer, and
quality, lack of standardized game controllers, and so on. I welcome you to Games for Windows: The Official Magazine.
As you’ll see in the next three pages and on our website Enjoy!
Peter Moore
Corporate Vice President; Interactive Entertainment Business,
Entertainment and Devices Division; Microsoft Corporation
INDUSTRY
BUZZ
Microsoft Announces
World’s Greatest
Gaming Platform
“Microsoft is responding
in force with Games for
Windows, an initiative that
includes strong visual brand-
ing, a more uniform appear-
PC gaming gets a new look (and we think it’s hot!)
ance for game boxes, and
even Games for Windows– Over the next few months, a major transformation will take experience. Microsoft recognized this as an opportunity
branded hardware. place across top retail stores in the U.S., including front- to provide consumers with a technical guarantee on PC
“The [Games for Windows runners Wal-Mart, CompUSA, and Circuit City. No longer will games that would ensure a high-quality and easy-to-
retail] display was incredibly PC games resemble a Wild, Wild West of scattered towns use gaming experience on Windows. Enter: Games for
effective, using the Windows and lawless revelry. Finally, PC games will become a cohesive Windows.
logo, classic Microsoft fonts, category, recognizable and well-defined against the backdrop While Games for Windows had been around for several
and uniform packaging to of console titles and other “productivity” software. years, most consumers equated the logo with Windows
communicate that Windows At the helm of this transformation is Microsoft compatibility. And that was it. Neither treated strongly
isn’t just the world’s most Corporation who, with strong support from leading pub- as a brand nor thought of as a quality mark, Games for
popular operating system— lishers, hardware manufacturers, OEMs, and aforemen- Windows underwent a major facelift starting in 2005.
it’s also its ubiquitous gaming tioned retail partners, is seeking to unify the PC games Today, Games for Windows is fast becoming a deeply
platform.” category in a way that it has never seen. There had developed brand, appearing on highly popular titles
–Logan Decker, PC Gamer, always been a terrific depth and breadth of exciting PC such as LEGO® Star Wars® II: The Original Trilogy
August 1, 2006
games for all ages and players. What was missing from (LucasArts), Company of Heroes (THQ), and Microsoft
the equation was the energy to create and support tech- Flight Simulator X (Microsoft Game Studios). But, what,
“Shopping for PC games is a nical standards that would bring clarity to the PC games you may ask yourself, does it mean?
little more difficult (at least
ADVERTORIAL
in terms of shelf browsing) Games for Windows represent four key standards:
due to no visual mark telling
the consumer what hardware
1 QUALITY: Games for Windows–branded titles undergo extensive testing—and not only by the
requirements the game has publisher. Microsoft also plays a role in quality-checking each title to ensure it meets performance and
and a lack of standardized box reliability standards on a Windows PC.
sizes for easy browsing. Now
Microsoft hopes to change 2 COMPATIBILITY: There are many meanings to compatibility. Games for Windows–branded titles
all that.” are compatible in many ways, including the following: a) titles are compatible with Windows-based
–Blake Snow, Joystiq
PCs, both 32- and 64-bit versions; b) titles that use accessories, work with the Xbox 360 Controller for
Windows—and, in 2007, you can add to this a number of Xbox wireless accessories as well by way
“You may have heard about of the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows; c) titles are compatible with the widescreen
Microsoft wanting to underline format; d) titles are guaranteed to exploit the Games Explorer and Parental Controls, new features
its commitment to PC gaming appearing on Microsoft’s highly anticipated new operating system, Windows Vista.
now [that] it has clearly estab-
lished itself as a contender in
the console marketplace. Its
way of doing this is to release
a ‘Games for Windows’ brand.”
–Matthew, Geek.com
“The Games for Windows

brand is more than an aesthet-
ic change…In order for a game
to garnish the brand, a strict
set of technical guidelines that
ensure consumers have a con-
sistent, reliable gaming experi-
ence on Windows XP and Vista
must be met.”
–James Orry, Pro-G
“On top of standard guide-

lines, there is standard packag-
ing, which looks pretty secksy!”
–“bapenguin,” Evil Avatar
3 SAFETY: Parents can rest easy knowing that the Games for Windows brand is an assurance that
branded titles will support game ratings as well as simple-to-use parental controls on Windows Vista. “Microsoft has today
[September 18, 2006]
4 EASY TO PLAY: We all remember that fateful day when we couldn’t find that special game. unveiled its new Games for
Remembering file path names is akin to remembering your girlfriend’s/mother’s/neighbor’s birthday; Windows PC software brand-
sometimes, it just doesn’t happen. Fortunately, Games for Windows–branded titles are easy to install, ing and associated packaging,
find, and remove, particularly in Windows Vista, where all of these titles install directly into the Games as another step to emphasize
Explorer and into your Media Center so that they’re easily accessible from whichever UI you are the company’s ramped-up
using. Additionally, using the new gaming features in Windows Vista, such as the Games Explorer and pledge of support to the PC
Parental Controls, is a no-brainer (more on this in next month’s issue of Games for Windows: gaming market.”
The Official Magazine). –Jason Dobson, Gamasutra
By developing an easily recognizable brand on a foun- partners alike are “I say great job to MS for
dation of high quality standards, Games for Windows rejoicing in this being the ones to step up
ultimately promises consumers, first and foremost, a fun new evolution in and try to fix PC gaming. This
games experience. Being able to let go of previously com- PC games. You, is definitely going to help
mon frustrations, consumers can be confident Games for too, can see it games get released with fewer
ADVERTORIAL
Windows–branded titles will work reliably, won’t give you for yourself this bugs and better compatibility.
compatibility issues (where it counts), and are customizable holiday at Circuit [I] can’t wait for all the MS
for parents who want to create a safer gaming environment City, Wal-Mart, or haters to start scratching the
for the family. CompUSA. And bottom of the barrel for rea-
What’s more, Games for Windows promises even more have fun playing. sons not to do this.”
thrilling titles after the holidays, including Crysis (EA), Hellgate: –Korban,
Shacknews community member
London (Namco Bandai), The Lord of the Rings Online: response to Shacknews post
Shadows of Angmar (Turbine and Midway), Age of Conan: The
Hyborian Adventures (Eidos), Supreme Commander (THQ),
and Halo 2 for Windows Vista (Microsoft Game Studios). And
the list just keeps growing….
So far, the industry has embraced the Games for
Windows efforts; this holiday, analysts, bloggers, and
❑ Xbox 360 Wireless

Controller for Windows
Tech Supporting better living through computer gear
CAVEAT EMPTOR
The holidays are almost here, and
you know what that means: running to
the local Best Buy at 2 a.m. after Thanksgiving
dinner to fight for a sale-deal PC; making a list
of gifts to mooch from loved ones. It’s also the
perfect opportunity to reward the person you love
most—yourself. And what says “Happy Holidays”
better than new computer peripherals?
We could just mail it in with a list of sweet-ass
gear that only Bill Gates could afford—“Buy this!
Consume that! You need to own two of these
graphics cards and dual 30-inch monitors if you
have any hope of being cool!”—but you get that
from enough places already. What you need is a
straight shooter in your corner to not only recom-
mend good gear, but also tell you what you don’t
need. Well, friends, that’s what you got right here.
These next few pages are garlic for all the
bloodsucking retailers that want to upsell you the
most expensive stuff in the store. We’re going to
tell you exactly the kind of gear you should avoid
buying—or at least make you ask yourself, “Do I
really need to get this before 2007?”
We’ll even tell you what we prefer to rock in
our own homes and offices.
You’re welcome. • Darren Gladstone
>> WHAT SAYS

“HAPPY HOLI-
DAYS” BETTER THAN
NEW COMPUTER
ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC BRIAN SMITH, TEXTURAMA.COM

PERIPHERALS?
NO-BS GUIDE TO
What to buy (and what not to buy) for the holidays

INSIDE
Hard News Tech Medics
The skinny on DirectX Your PC in the ER?
10 and a chance to win Loyd Case is on call.
a custom notebook! Now turn and cough.
130 131
KEYBOARDS
Until we get all cyberpunk and implant data jacks
into our heads, mankind will require keyboards.
Still, nobody wants a standard-issue blah beige
model that gets packed in with mom’s ‘puter.
Luckily, a whole aftermarket full of options awaits
you. Here’s a handy checklist of features you’ll
see in stores—and whether or not you should
really care.
MULTIMEDIA CONTROLS AND SHORTCUT KEYS.
Don’t take these for granted. We use the volume
control knob on our keyboards almost as often as
the spacebar.
USB HUB. Any good keyboard is going to have
at least one extra USB port—anything to avoid
getting out of your chair to plug in peripherals!
WIRELESS. Some people really want to avoid
the clutter of wires, but we don’t see the use.
How far are you really traveling from your PC,
anyhow? Still, if you insist on cutting cords, make
sure that your keyboard lasts a while between
batteries—and buy a set of AA Energizer
rechargeables, stat!
TOUCHY-FEELY. They call it “touch typing”
for a reason—and if you don’t like the feel of
your keyboard, then what? Online ordering is
convenient, sure, but it’s better to go to the local
CompUSA and test-drive your potential purchase.
After all, you try on a pair of shoes before you
buy ’em, don’t you?
GIMMICKS. Some gaming keyboards have
separate key layouts for games. Take the Zboard,
which offers a different pop-off keyboard top
for multiple popular games. If you’re a n00b (or
just like to play a lot of World of WarCraft), the
gimmick board might be worth it. Just remember
there’s no scientific proof that a game-specific
keyboard will make your life any easier. >
HOW WE ROLL
LOGITECH G11
This is a keyboard with pimp style (minus the
G15’s goofy LCD display). It’s illuminated, has
programmable macro-ability, multimedia bells
and whistles, and keys that feel damn fine.
PC HARDWARE
GFW.1UP.COM • 127
Tech Holiday Shopping
MICE
Everybody and their mother has tried to
MONITORS
You don’t go out and buy a new monitor very
GRAPHICS
A good monitor’s nothing if you don’t have a
reinvent the mouse wheel, and more than any- often, so when you do, you gotta make it count. good graphics card driving it. You probably fall
thing else in our holiday guide, this is the one CRTs are pretty much going the way of cassette into one of two categories: You already have
category that ultimately boils down to personal tapes, so learn to embrace the future—and a good your graphics cards covered and you’re riding
preference. Hopefully these hints will help you LCD display in the process. out the storm until DirectX 10, or you desperately
figure out what your preference is. THE SKINNY ON WIDESCREEN. These days, need something right now.
EXTRA BUTTONS. Yeah, yeah, yeah—you get don’t settle for a standard 4:3 aspect ratio display. DON’T BUY ANYTHING YET! No joke. ATI and
left and right buttons and a scroll wheel, that’s Widescreen is where it’s at, and every game that Nvidia probably will burn this page out of every
just fine. But trust us, even just one extra button carries the “Games for Windows” label is required issue on newsstands, but check it. DirectX 10 is
by the thumb can work wonders. The only trick: to support widescreen—and most developers are right around the corner. As we go to press, you
Can you comfortably hit that button without be- doing it anyway. So, basically, “all the kids are can only buy DirectX 9.0c cards. Want to get the
ing a yoga master? doing it”—plus you get to watch movies the way most out of Vista—and Crysis? Hang in there,
DOWN WITH THE DPI. Don’t be a slave to they were made. because the first few DirectX 10 cards could be
numbers. Most mice are plenty fast and will work RESOLUTIONS. The only resolution that should sneaking onto store shelves very soon.
on just about any surface—unless you’re dumb matter to you is the display’s advertised native ADDENDUM TO WHAT WE JUST SAID! If you
enough to try playing on a mirror or glass panel. resolution. That is the best and likely the only absolutely need to get something right now
LEFTIST. Southpaws get no respect, but a few resolution that you’ll want to run your games and you don’t mind getting a DX9-only board,
nice mice out there—such as the old Microsoft at. Can your current graphics card support that we suggest EVGA’s e-GeForce 7600 GT CO. Just
IntelliMouse Explorer—support both lefties and resolution? Will your games? Try to shoot for a don’t get suckered into buying the current top
righties. minimum of 1650x1080. dogs—you’ll probably just want an “interim”
WEIGHT WATCHERS. Anybody play darts? SIZE MATTERS. Avoid anything smaller than 20 card for now. After all, there will be plenty of
Hardcore players own specially weighted darts. inches. The sweet spot in price and performance $400 DX10-capable graphics cards in a couple
The same concept holds for gaming mice: a love- seems to be the new 22-inch, 1650x1080 displays. of months. If you spend any more than $200 on
or-hate deal that depends on how much you EVERY MONITOR’S A SNOWFLAKE. Because of a current-gen graphics card at this point, you’re
want to load down your hand. the way monitors are manufactured, no two will what we in the business call “a dumbass.”
MACROMANIA. Some mouse makers cram ever be alike. There might be a dead pixel here or WONDER TWINS. There’s a lot of talk about
RAM inside mice. Others put software on the PC. there, or a slight difference in colors. Nvidia’s SLI (Scalable Link Interface) and ATI’s
Just ask yourself: “Do I really need mouse-based SEE THE LIGHT. Everything looks great on the CrossFire dual-card setups—but in our experience,
shortcut keys?” computer-store show floor with its optimal fluo- it’s not worth buying two cards for a single com-
WIRELESS. Unlike wireless keyboards, this is rescent lighting, but how will that display look at puter. Just worry about hitting the native resolu-
a totally valid gaming option—especially if you home? Make certain that the store you buy your tion of your monitor (see “Monitors,“ left, for more
like throwing stuff at people who beat you. Just display from has a reasonable (i.e., “any reason!”) on that) and getting the most bang for your buck
make sure that any mouse you buy comes with return policy. from your card. Another thing to keep in mind if
rechargeable batteries. NEED FOR SPEED. Many monitors these days ad- you double your pleasure is that you won’t have
TOUCHY-FEELY. Like a keyboard, you really vertise a speed in milliseconds (ms). The closer that much room left on the motherboard for anything
need to lay your hands on any mouse before you number is to zero, the better. Honestly, though, else. So much for that sound card….
buy it. Some have rubberized textures and some anything around 8ms or less (which covers most FIGHT THE POWER. You’ll probably need a
fit snugly in your hand—but not every one. LCD displays these days) will do ya fine. good-size power supply in your PC to run a
GIMMICKS. There are tons of little gimmicks to BRIGHTNESS AND GLARE. Turn down the bright- good graphics card. Make sure that you’ve got
watch out for here. While we can’t wait to check ness on your monitor. Most displays’ factory default at least 500W under the hood.
>>
out crazy new gear like the revolutionary Novint is a little too high. Use the bundled software (if
Falcon 3D controller, we’ll have to settle for the
little things right now—like the ability to adjust
provided) to adjust it. Also, glass screens work great
in dark rooms but can cause glare elsewhere.
A GOOD MONITOR
speed sensitivity on the mouse. CABLES. Does the monitor come with the cables MEANS NOTHING
Oh, and one last word of warning: you know
those “gaming surfaces” you see for $70-plus?
you need? That’s a corner many companies
cut—and DVI don’t come cheap.
WITHOUT THE RIGHT
They’re just mouse pads for suckers. GRAPHICS CARD.
HOW WE ROLL HOW WE ROLL HOW WE ROLL

LOGITECH G7 LASER DELL 3007WFP ATI RADEON X1900
This mouse’s new $100 cousin, the MX Revolu- We get heady with power when staring head- We drive our 30-inch monitor relatively
tion, kicks much ass, but c’mon—100 bones long into Dell’s 30-inch abyss of a monitor. The problem-free thanks to this mighty little card
for a friggin’ mouse? We still like this wireless native 2560x1600 resolution eclipses small pets, (and it’s not even in CrossFire). Wait, did we say
mouse because it’s slightly weighted and comes but you probably won’t miss ’em anyway. If you little? This sucker has a Dyson vacuum attached.
with two rechargeable batteries and a built-in have $2,000 to spare, this is a simply gorgeous These cards still aren’t what we’d call “cheap,”
speed-tweaking control. Now if only it had a display. If you’re not a pampered tech editor, a mind you, but we will continue to hold out until
rubbery texture. good 22-incher can run about $600. the first good DX10 card shows up.

Holiday Shopping Tech
SOUND
The first question you need to ask yourself right
WI-FI
Going wireless is a big step. Hell, that could be NEW
now is: “Do I give a damn whether or not I’m go- the subject of an entire magazine. But since
ing to annoy the neighbors?” That’s going to help we’ve got a bunch of other stuff to talk about, TECHNOLOGY
Other peripherals running the gamut from
set the course for your audio decisions. here are the bare-bones basics.
AUDIO SNOB? It’s impossible to get a proper 802.11G VS. 802.11N. 802.11g is the current optical drives to network cards make all sorts
in-store audio test. Ask about a store return policy standard for all wireless data transmission. of promises about improving your experience.
first and check it at home. The best way: classical 802.11n—that’s the future. Unfortunately, 11n The following gear defies simple categoriza-
tion for two reasons: 1) It’s still too new to
music. The bass should be rich, not hollow; mids won’t be finalized until early 2007. So all those
fully test in time for this issue. 2) We still need
and highs should be crisp, not tinny. Now go eat big promises you’re seeing from 11n wireless
a little time before we can fully recommend
some caviar, ya jerk. routers on store shelves right now? They’re just
anything.
ROCK THE HOUSE! If you have a monster moni- a wee bit premature. Besides, 11g will cover In other words, you’ll see this stuff on store
tor and actually use your PC for a whole lot more everything you need. shelves—and while it may sound good (or
than games—y’know, to cuddle up and watch a WHY?-FI. Here’s something to consider if goofy) on paper, we at least want to let you
movie in front of a 30-inch screen—consider a you’re really pinching pennies or you haven’t know the deal.
monstrous audio setup to match. Maybe a 7.1 bought a wire-
speaker system will cut it in your home if you less router yet: Do PHYSICS CARDS
don’t mind potentially tripping over speaker wires. you actually need The idea behind AGEIA’s
Alternatively, Creative Labs’ GigaWorks ProGa- one? If you have a PhysX card is a solid one.
mer G550W 5.1 system tries a slightly different notebook PC or any Hardware that can run circles
approach. The rear satellite speakers connect Wi-Fi–ready devices, around Havok’s software-
wirelessly via a 2.4GHz frequency and all things you already know based physics? Thousands of
objects that you can manipulate onscreen at
considered, the G550W still manages to deliver a the answer’s “yes.”
once? It’s on, baby!
sonic soul-punch. If not, consider
However, when 3D cards first appeared 10
A GOOD PAIR OF CANS. Headphones, that is. waiting until the
years ago, a few killer games had to come
Maybe you’re considerate. More likely you just 11n standard gets along before people actually understood the
want to shut out the real world for a couple ratified next year. reason to buy additional hardware. And that’s
minutes. There are many things to consider when where physics-card technology is right now.
it comes to headphones…. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Rise of
HOW’S YOUR HEAD? Make sure they’re snug
HOW WE ROLL Legends, and City of Heroes ain’t enough for a
but won’t cut off circulation. Also, make sure that LINKSYS WRT54GX glowing recommendation just yet. Neverthe-
cloth-covered headphones won’t overheat your Unless you’re throwing wireless-LAN parties
or have many people jumping online at once,
less, considering that the technology is built
head. They won’t do much good if you need to you’re just wasting good money with some into the Unreal Engine 3, the future of PhysX
take ’em off every five minutes. wireless gaming-specific router. looks pretty good, as many games now use
DO I NEED A HEADSET? If you game online, the UE3. Our advice: Hold out for some of those
answer’s probably yes. If so, some headsets offer new big guns to come along to see just what
the tech can do.
detachable mics while others shove ’em right up
in your face. The closer the mic is to your grill the
more distorted your voice gets.
CPU
For the past few years, the choice has been simple
KILLER NIC CARD
Windows chugs along, hog-
DO I NEED A SOUNDCARD? Every PC nowa- when it comes to CPUs: AMD all the way; apply ging resources and precious
days comes with at least half-decent audio. The rubber stamp, and move onto the next category. ping time—it can spell the
problem is that, if you rely on onboard audio, you However, Intel sucka-punched AMD with its new difference between a PC
can experience a slight performance drop. Play Core 2 Duo processors. gamer’s life and death. We
high-fidelity games with 5.1 audio output? Do you THE KING IS DEAD! Intel, welcome back to the understand the need for a good network card,
chat up plans of attack in Battlefield 2? Consider a top of the heap. That is, until AMD fights back but Bigfoot Networks’ Killer NIC promises a
dedicated soundcard. with some crazy new tech. In the meantime, every lot, optimizing packet performance for gam-
gamer worth his WASD knows to go Core 2 Duo. ing by working outside of Windows. In fact,
DON’T BUY THE BEST. Ye-huhwhat? You heard a 400MHz Linux CPU runs the show, actually
us. Don’t drop coin on the most ludicrous, improving game performance as well as online
top-end CPU right away. You got that $1,000 speed. Want to multitask? A separate USB
2.0 port on the board lets you program apps
to burn? Just so you know, Intel’s “middle-of-
to take advantage of it. Download huge files
the-road” E6600 only costs about $350 and will
in the background while playing online, for
deliver some damn fine in-game performance.
example. That sounds great, except the drivers
IF THE CPU DON’T FIT…. We know you know
aren’t final as of press time. Initial tests are
this, but remember that looking good—but the crashes upon shutdown
not all motherboards don’t. Also, 270 bucks for a NIC is a bit much.
are created equal. Can Stay tuned for more on Killer.
your PC handle the
new CPU? All Core BLU-RAY/HD-DVD DRIVES
2 Duo PC builders: Don’t bother getting a Blu-
Try out the ASUS ray or HD-DVD drive for your
P5B Deluxe PC just yet. All that storage
motherboard. space might seem sweet,
HOW WE ROLL but current units are typical
“first wave” products: They’re slow DVD and
CREATIVE LABS SOUND BLASTER CD burners, and not especially fast at the BD-
X-FI FATAL1TY CARD WITH RAZER
BARRACUDA HP-1 HEADPHONES
HOW WE ROLL ROM (Blu-ray) and HD-DVD stuff, either. And
We’re major audiophiles, and the X-Fi card fur- INTEL CORE DUO 2 E6600 we didn’t even get into the prices. The drives
nishes the audio performance we crave (Razer’s Some used to say, “Evil Inside.” Maybe, but it themselves cost more than some PCs. You still
Barracuda card wasn’t ready as of press time); never felt so good to be bad. Look, we know
AMD is going to fire back soon enough, but
want to be an early adopter? Didn’t think so.Ȼ
the USB-powered headphones deliver audio
bliss. They ain’t cheap, though. Intel is the current speed king.
GFW.1UP.COM • 129
Tech Hard News
HARD NEWS
The bleeding edge of tech
THE DIRECTX DEAL

Windows Vista is coming. At some point. Microsoft swears. No, really. And with Vista comes
DirectX 10. We were originally hoping to batter you with numbers to explain exactly what you
can expect out of games that support DX10. Unfortunately, DX10-friendly graphics cards didn’t ar-
rive in time for this issue—but, as they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” So check out these
screens from Microsoft Flight Simulator X until we can give you some concrete results.
DIRECTX 9.0C
This is what the game would look like if you
were to install it on your Windows XP rig this
afternoon. Looks nice enough, right? You lousy
ingrates, always wanting more.
DIRECTX 10
According to a Microsoft spokesperson, this half of the screen-
shot is merely an artist’s rendition of what Flight Simulator X will
look like in DirectX 10—so that’s all we’ve got to go off for now.
The telltale signs that DirectX 10 will deliver: the cloudy sky with
light bursting through; the glassy lake’s cresting, foamy waves;
the subtler reflections in the water; and the emerald forest. How
does one achieve such graphical splendor? Here’s the relatively
“quick” explanation from David Blythe, software architect for
Microsoft’s graphics platforms unit.
“Applications can send a lot more material changes or changes
to the description of geometry a lot more frequently. But that
doesn’t show up as a ‘bullet point’ feature, like ‘oh, flip this
switch and you get better performance.’ It underpins the design.
“And then there are a lot of things about feature consistency
WIN
A NEW NOTEBOOK!
in hardware implementations that allow developers an easier
job of targeting a wider variety of platforms. That doesn’t show
up as any single feature, but it’s a big deal to get agreement on
what this common set of features is.
“When you start getting into individual features—things like
adding an integer instruction set—the new geometry shader
XTRAS
is a fairly big deal. In terms of adding that in the middle of the

CyberPower and Games pipeline and having access to all the parameters of a primi-
for Windows: The tive—for example, the three vertices of a triangle or the two
endpoints of a line—and being able to operate on that as a
Official Magazine whole, [it] sort of changes the game. There are things that we’ve
want to hook up one done where part of the objective was to make it possible to
lucky reader for the do more processing on the GPU and to do this in a way where
there wasn’t a lot of mediation that needed to be done on the
holidays. Log on to CPU. So you can do iterative types of computations on the GPU
GFW.1UP.com right without having to return data to the CPU, do a little bit more
work there, and then return the data to the GPU.”
now for details on how
Of course, no one says, “Wow! Look at the interactive instruc-
you could snag a free tions in that screenshot!” All you need concern yourself with for
customized CyberPow- now is that DirectX 10 is Vista-only, and that the first DX10-
ready cards are almost here. Once they arrive, we’ll let you know
er Xplorer X5-6800
the score. 2007—and the DX10-rocking Crysis—can’t come
Notebook! soon enough.Ȼ

Tech Medics Tech
TECH MEDICS
Loyd Case has the cure for your ailing PC
Q: I’m playing EverQuest II with two identi- A: If the framerate in Company of Heroes looks
cal PCs sharing a 6MB high-speed Internet like a slideshow of your great uncle’s experi-
connection through a D-Link GamerLounge. ences in World War II, you should go ahead
The PCs each have two EVGA 7600 GS video-
cards in SLI mode (I’m running the game at
and upgrade. After all, a current-generation
processor, motherboard, and memory will still
STATEMENT OF
1024x768 resolution), Pentium D 3GHz CPUs,
and 1GB of RAM. Is there any way I can
work great under Vista. Be aware, though, that
some games you have now may simply not run
OWNERSHIP
Games for Windows: The Official Magazine
eliminate or reduce the lag I’m getting? well under Vista, though game compatibility has
Frank been getting a lot better with each beta release
of the new OS.
A: Ah, lag—the ever-present problem that The catch here, as you note, is the graph-
plagues almost all MMORPGs. ics cards. DirectX 10–capable hardware is just
Have you tried changing servers? One of the around the corner. But those first cards will
main issues with lag is the distance and number almost certainly be $500-plus monsters, and the
of “hops” it takes to get from your system to the early drivers may have some teething problems.
server you’re using. While many MMORPG com- You might want to consider getting a decent
panies have gotten smarter about distributing midrange card, such as an Nvidia 7900 GS or
their servers geographically, the number of hops 7950 GT, then wait for prices for DX10 hardware
can still be pretty large. and driver issues to settle down a bit. DirectX 10
Some technologies attempt to minimize lag in will offer substantial improvements in capabil-
gaming. Ubicom builds hardware and software ity, but it’s likely that game support won’t be
that goes into routers for prioritizing network widespread for a year or so anyway.
packets. Products like the D-Link DGL-4300G
router and the Hawking HBB1 Broadband Booster Q: Is there a high-end videocard that will
incorporate Ubicom tech. Nvidia’s latest nForce support a resolution of 1920x1080 (the native
570 and 590 chipsets also have packet prioriti- resolution of my 37-inch LCD HDTV monitor)
zation. Then you have Bigfoot Networks’ Killer that does not ship with a fan. I am putting
Network Interface Card, which only recently hit the together an HTPC (home-theater personal
market. We’re still running early tests on the Killer computer) and would like to keep it as quiet
card, but it promises improved game performance as possible. Any help would be appreciated.
and greatly reduced lag by operating outside of Gordon Rick
the Windows stack. Maybe that can help some,
but ultimately, the problem may lie outside your A: Not a big fan of the noise, eh? Fanless vid-
network. Stay tuned for more on that one. eocards do exist, ranging from very low-end to
fairly high-performance boards. How success-
Q: I’ve been upgrading my computer in fully they work depends on the cooling that
bits and pieces over the past five years, but exists inside your PC case. You still need some
when my new laptop came in and beat my way to exhaust heat out of the case. Zalman, a
desktop’s 3DMark score by nearly triple, I Korean manufacturer of PC cases, actually builds
realized it was time to upgrade. I’m anxious fan-free PC cases, but they’re very heavy, very
to start planning the new rig, but my only expensive, and don’t look good in a home-the-
concern is whether or not I should wait for ater rack.
DirectX 10–capable graphics cards. I don’t So an HTPC will likely have some fans, but if it
want to make this serious investment only has one or more slow-turning fans on the back
to have it become largely obsolete in a short of the case, then the noise level will be mini-
time—but I also don’t want to wait around mum. One of the best recent fanless videocards
if this next step forward isn’t as ground- is XFX’s spiffy, passively cooled 7950 GT, which
breaking as I’ve heard. Should I go ahead offers good game performance, supports HDCP
and build my new rig around XP and DX9, or out of the DVI port, and is completely silent.Ȼ
should I wait until the release of Vista and Got questions? Send them to
DX10 next year? [email protected]
Aaron Williams
GFW.1UP.COM • 131
End Game Greenspeak
GREENSPEAK
Because we have the extra page
FEAR AND
LOATHING
FOR WINDOWS
Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love
Internet Explorer
COLUMN
Bill Gates was driving waaaay too fast. I was in the backseat, listen-
ing to Motörhead on my shiny new Zune. We were heading down I-5, on
our way to Vegas after losing our minds together in Los Angeles.
“Hey, Mr. Gates!” I yelled (because that’s what he lets me call him now), “toss
me another one of those Mr. Pibbs!”
“You’ve had enough already, dude!” he cackled, flinging a can my way.
“No, sir! This party is just getting started.”
“I feel you, bro,” he replied.
OK, so I guess I kind of made that up. Not the part about calling him “Mr.
Gates,” though. I mean, in the unlikely event (especially after this) that I should
ever actually get to meet him, I’m sure that’s exactly how I’ll be greeting him.
Though the temptation to call him “G-Dog,” “Billdo,” or “Marvin O’Gravel
Balloon Face” might get the better of me. the past few years, they were already hosting a gaming platform that has been
The point is, actually, that I don’t know the guy. Nor do I know hardly entertaining millions of gamers every single day: Windows. Their desire to push
anyone at Microsoft. So though this magazine has the fine (and quite that platform forward, to take it seriously, coincided perfectly with our desire to
eye-catching!) Microsoft logo on the front, and though we are the official take CGW to—to use a horribly clichéd term—the next level. And so this part-
magazine of their recently christened Games for Windows platform—a nership was born.
fancy-pants way of saying PC gaming, minus the annoying Linux and Mac But as I said up front: We’re still us. We’re not paid by Microsoft, told
noise—neither I nor any of the other editors or artists on this staff work for what to write by Microsoft, or subject to approval by Microsoft. And if
or get paid one cent by Microsoft. Who we work for is Ziff Davis Media in they do things that we’re not happy with—LIKE NOT GIVING US HALO
San Francisco, in offices that we share with the staffs of 1UP.com, Electronic WARS ON THE PC, YOU BASTARDS—I promise you we are going to call
Gaming Monthly, and Official PlayStation Magazine—fine entities all, and them on it, with, like, capital letters and italics and stuff. Our first and
ones you should definitely check out if you haven’t yet, because they are most important goal always was and ever will be to serve you guys and
good and good for you and will help put hair on your chest. (I am speak- gals: gamers like us. The only issue that really concerns me about this
ing to the ladies here.) whole deal is how to come up with an acronym for the mag that’s short-
Uh, anyway, the reason I am wasting valuable space here, when we really er and easier to say than GFW: TOM. Yeeeeesh.
should be talking about more pressing issues—like why it is that I find the slave Before parting, however, I should say, in full disclosure, that despite
Princess Leia in Lego Star Wars II disturbingly hot—is that I need you to under- everything I’ve just said, we did indeed go through a little corporate
stand, here in issue No. 1, who we are and what we’re about. Because I get it brainwashing. Nothing too extreme—think something along the lines of
that that logo up front may confuse you a little. The Manchurian Candidate or whatever is going on in those secret CIA
First, in case you didn’t know already, this isn’t really issue No. 1 for those of prisons, and you’re on the right track. I can’t really remember a whole
us who actually made it. Until this month, we have been known as Computer lot about those sessions, nor can I explain what all these marks on my
Gaming World magazine, and we’ve been doing this for 25 years and 268 arm are, but I do know that I will never listen to my iPod again, I’ve
issues. Me, personally, I’ve been with the magazine since June 1996, making this uninstalled Firefox from my PC, and I think that, goshdurnit, Microsoft’s
my 116th issue in a row, something I should probably not think about further Zoo Tycoon 2 is the greatest game ever made. Also, I prefer to think of
without my therapist present. Also, apropos of nothing, let it also be known that that screen on my PC now as the “blue screen of life.”
in all this time I have not managed to finish Baldur’s Gate II, which is still on my So welcome aboard, folks! Whether it’s your first issue or your 269th, I’m glad
hard drive. you’re here. And I’m glad
This new identity of ours—Games for Windows: The Official Magazine—in I’m here, too. Heck, I’m Jeff Green
addition to being a rather unwieldy mouthful of a name, also represents a just glad about everything If you’re interested in joining the
quantum leap forward for this humble hobby of ours. It represents, among now I guess. See what hap- collective, or perhaps buying some
other things, Microsoft’s somewhat belated realization that, while ably pursu- pens when you join the Florida swampland, e-mail jeff_green@
ing their home console entertainment plans with the Xbox and Xbox 360 over •
Borg? Jeff Green
ziffdavis.com today.
Games for Windows: The Official Magazine (ISSN 1933-6160) is published monthly by Ziff Davis Media, Inc. 28 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016. Periodicals Postage Paid at New York, NY 10016 and addi-
tional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Games for Windows: The Official Magazine, P.O. box 57167, Boulder, CO 80322-7167. Canadian GST registration number is 865286033. Publication
Mail Agreement No.40009221. Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. Printed in the U.S.A.

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WORLD OF WARCRAFT ASSASSIN'S CREED NEW!

Display Until December 12

PREVIEWED REVIEWED TECH

TOP 10 2007 20 WOW TCG 28

ASSASSIN’S CREED 30 PLAY TO PRAY 44

12 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

NEW DAY RISING

years—from November 1981 until November 2006—has now become, SALES

14 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

16 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

LESS IS MORE? ending. It’s just that some of us find the

18 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

20 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

GFW TOP TEN

Start Top 10 2007

22 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

Top 10 2007 Start

Start Top 10 2007

24 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

Top 10 2007 Start

Start Top 10 2007

Start WOW Trading Card Game

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

• More DOTs! The Onyxia’s Lair Raid

Now for the pure evil part: Booster packs are

>> BOOSTER PACKS COME WITH SPECIAL

28 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

Start Assassin’s Creed

PREVIEW Protagonist Altair works under the sun in plain

30 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

Assassin’s Creed Start

• Fight and/or fly, when

Start Assassin’s Creed

32 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

• We had a few big problems with Age of

36 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

that game (Darwinia) in March 2005 particular direction based on their

LEADERS OF THE BAND

38 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

40 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

Start Play to Pray

44 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

Play to Pray Start

Start Play to Pray

46 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

Start Rogue Warrior

• Don’t want to go out

•Rogue Warrior features a clean, HUD-less

•One thing’s made perfectly clear at

•Your squadmembers each have their

•On multiplayer maps, each team picks its

48 • GAMES FOR WINDOWS: THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

Rogue Warrior Start

twitchy trigger fingers can go in with guns blazing,

THE SHARKMAN careful teamwork and communication, and now

Start David Cage

THE GFW INTERVIEW:

David Cage Start

INTERVIEW awkward. I’m convinced that such systems