There are two recent games that I've played that definitely bear mention. I am an avid PC games fan, I find them much more engaging than most console games ( except maybe the ones that are ported to or from a PC ). But I've found in the last couple of years, the PC game market has been flooded by 3D shooters and RTS games that are all the same. But EA Games has recently been on a rampage of truly great games. Two of these are Clive Barker's Undying and most recently, Peter Molyneux's Black and White. In Clive Barker's Undying, you play an Irishman returned home to help an old friend with "family problems". You soon find out that your friend accidently killed his entire family in an occult ritual and their spirits are returning one by one to gain vengeance upon him. But there is more than it seems at play. Right off the bat, the game is very spooky, creating a very realistic environment with amazing graphical textures and well developed storyline and more than just pow-pow-shoot-em-up as you would have in most 3D shooters ( with the exception of "Thief" ). Although the game plays like a 3D shooter, there is the added advantage of learning "spells" as the game progresses and there are puzzles to solve as you make your way through the eerie old house alive ( Not to mention the other dimensions that you visit in pursuit of evil supernatural creatures ). If I were going to compare it, I would say it has the same cinematic richness that Half Life had, but with a completely different feel to it. More of an old spookhouse rather than a high tech horror type of game. Definitely a great game to play at night with the lights turned out. If you can! The other game is a little more lighthearted. It's called Black and White. It plays on the old belief that every time people call to the heavens for the first time, a god is born and so you, the player, come into existence as a god. The game is the latest by Peter Molyneux ( Populous, Dungeon Keeper ), and what an addition it is. The game offers a completely 3d rendered view of your realm of worship which you can rotate and view any which way, and you are in control of the citizens in the villages within that area of worship. The aim of the game is to make people believe in you through the use of miracles, moving objects, making your presence known and best of all, your "godly creature". Your Creature is a creature you pick at an early part of the game and becomes a "tamagotchi" type of creature throughout the game that you need to train to perform acts of wonder on your behalf to impress the villagers and help you in your acts of godliness. The REAL twist on this game is, as the name implies, whether you chose to be good or evil. Throughout the game, you have a good and an evil conscience ( in the form of a little angel and a little devil ) recommending courses of action to take and you can chose to be a good benevolent god, or an angry vengeful evil god :). As one of the daily tips in the game states "There is no right way to play Black & White". If you chose to help the sailors that are trying to leave your island, you can give them some wood to help build their boats... or you can instruct your creature to eat them all to punish them for trying to leave your island. There is one MAJOR problem with the game however. Until they release the patch they are currently working on, they've left the game in a VERY buggy state and many players are left with the feeling that they are playing a BETA version of the game ( When in fact they aren't ). This is a truly GREAT game, very engaging and time consuming, I would DEFINITELY recommend getting your hands on this one, BUT I would definitely wait until they've released the patch to fix the myriad of bugs in the game. Stephane Morrell Undying: I don't have the actual reqs for this one, but I played it on a Pentium III-500 with a GeForce256 32MB Video card, 128MB of RAM running Windows 2000 Professional and it ran like a dream. My Brother ran it on a P2-450, 128 MB or RAM, Windows ME and a Voodoo Banshee card. Black and White: Windows 95/98/2000/ME; 350 MHz Intel Pentium II MMX processor; 64Mb RAM; DirectX 7.0a (supplied with CD); DirectX; 7.0a compliant sound card; (PCI/AGP) 8Mb 3D Hardware Accelerator Card with Direct3D support; 600 Mb free hard disk space; 4x CD-ROM drive (Refers to a 4 speed CD-ROM drive); Internet features require TCP/IP Internet connection at 56Kbps or faster, or Internet access via LAN (Local Area Network)

---

[Back to Collector Times]

[Prev.]

[Return to Reviews]

[Disclaimer]

[Next]

---