Fallout 2 Review

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(More customer reviews)this game dos not run properly on os x 10.5.3 or later. video drivers are messed up so unless u like playing in half a screen and can deal with what could best be described as really low resolution predator heat vision i would pass on this one. besides fallout 3 will be out in a few months

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Railroad Tycoon 3 Review

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(More customer reviews)After anxiously waiting for a Mac release of Railroad Tycoon 3, I find that it's a much-needed upgrade of Railroad Tycoon 2. However, that's really all it is -- I'd be tempted to call it Railroad Tycoon 2.5 rather than 3. There are probably enough changes to track building and industries to warrant a new version number, but other than that and a few interface changes, RT3 is essentially the same game as RT2.
The most obvious difference is in the graphics. The new 3-D engine is fantastic. You can actually watch the side rods of most of the steam engines go round and round. Tracks are a bit high off the ground, which is a little distracting at first, but overall the graphics are a huge improvement.
Track laying is substantially improved from the previous version of the game, as well. Most significant is the return of tunnels, one of the most maligned omissions in RT2. You can also build a bridge over another railroad or duck under an existing bridge, a feature fans of this game series have long wished for.
Gone is the grid with its limitations of tracks at only eight angles. You can now create smooth, sweeping curves at any angle you please. That said, the gradients could use some tweaking. Particularly annoying are the ramps leading to bridges. It's silly to have a 3% grade just because you're crossing a river. Likewise, I found it very difficult to create a railroad in even slightly hilly terrain that didn't resemble a roller coaster. And don't think this is a model layout design aid, either. It's impossible to force tracks to go where you want them.
Maintenance shops and service towers are now separate elements. You can't place a service tower at a depot and have a locomotive serviced while it's making its station stop. This hurts the game's realism a bit and can be annoying if, like me, you're used to the old style station expansions. The good news is that such facilities can be placed anywhere, even where there's no station, and you can demolish them to save money when they are no longer useful.
The construction and demolition tools aren't all that intuitive. To bulldoze a building, for example, you have to enter the track building interface and select the bulldozer. And industry construction is done from the station building interface. No doubt this was done to minimize the number of tool buttons in the main interface, but it feels klunky -- especially if you're used to the old RT2 interface.
While access to the controls has changed somewhat, most of the core game controls will look extremely familiar to anyone who's played RT2. Building and changing train consists works essentially the same way as in RT2, with a few excellent additions. One major change is the "auto manage" option which autmatically sets the train's consist depending on what loads are available at the station. You can select the minimum and maximum number of cars on each train, and select whether the train will carry any kind of car, just freight cargoes, or just express cargoes. You can also manually control the trains' consists. For more realism it would be nice if passenger cars were always placed together in the consist, but I'll admit that's picking a very small nit.
A couple of very handy shortcuts have also been added to train building, including the ability to copy trains. Mac users will find this process rather klunky and very un-Mac-like, but at least it's there and works. One new feature I really like is the ability to replace locomotives based on their class or age. This comes in very handy for keeping your locomotive fleet current. There's also a checkbox which will make the consist the same at all stations in the train's route. Beware, though -- the change happens as soon as you check the box and isn't undoable by unchecking the box!
The economy and stock market works essentially the same as it did in RT2. You can buy and sell shares of your railroad or your competitors, set your company's dividend, sell bonds, and sell stock. Selling stock is just as useless for raising money as it was in the previous version, even though you're now allowed two sales of stock per year instead of just one. You also still have to have a good credit rating to sell a bond.
I haven't gotten into the map editor yet, but from reading the manual, RT3 seems to have the one limitation I was afraid it would have -- you can't use maps from RT2. With the huge number of user-built maps from RT2, this is probably the biggest disappointment in the entire game. It's understandable, however, given the number of changes made to the industries and track building. Still, some sort of conversion utility would be nice for map developers so we don't have to start from scratch.
All in all, this is a fair upgrade over the previous version of the game. I'm not all that sure that this version was worth either the wait for the Mac port or the $45 price tag, but now that I have it I certainly won't be getting rid of it!

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Sid Meier's Civilization V Review

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(More customer reviews)The working relationship between a game designer and his publisher is never a simple one. So I would not know where exactly to place the blame, Sid Meyer or 2K GAMES. But in the end, it does not matter. Because it is simply sad to see a great gaming franchise came to this.
THIS IS NOT A CIVILIZATION GAME
A great number of major features of this beloved series have been simply removed. A fellow gamer called this "Civilization For Dummies" and he is absolutely right.
There is no trading maps or technologies. There is no claiming resources outside your borders by building a colony. There is no need for transport ships as units apparently are now all..amphibious (and they need 15-20 turns to cross an ocean!). There are no city-growth milestone requirements (granary, aqueduct, refrigeration). There is no culturally conquering an enemy city (detonating a "culture bomb" by consuming a Great Artist will only get you extra territory tiles but no cities). There are no spies nor health/pollution balance. And there are no armies (please read on).
ARMY CASTRATION
Someone please tell me what was so wrong with armies that had to be yanked out? Napoleon almost conquered Europe with one army. Germany almost conquered the eastern hemisphere with three and the US still holds a two-and-a-half armies doctrine. How can a turn-based game be called Civilization unless one can emulate, well, a real civilization? Building an army, seasoning it on minor conflicts and then going for the enemy's capital was one of the most fun parts of any Civilization game. Why Sid, why?
YOU MAY BE ABLE TO LAUNCH INTO SPACE YET CANNOT CLIMB MOUNTAINS?!
Movement should be hindered by rough terrain. Units that have 3 or 4 moves on the plains should not be expected to do more than 1 or 2 on a mountain, right? Well, no. Mountains seem to be those magical places no unit can climb or pass through (not even ...helicopters of jet fighters!). And I cannot see how this makes for more complicated strategic decisions than timing your movements, claiming the high ground and having a bonus for elevated artillery?
UNIT STAMPEDE
A major issue for me, this was what really ruined the game. For some unfathomable reason units cannot be stacked. A worker can coexist with a military unit but that's it. Artillery and shock-cavalry are very vulnerable to attacks and (with the new hexagon layout) one would need ...six defensive units to protect a single artillery battery.
As a result, units keep getting on each other's way (especially when ordered to move for distances that require more than a turn), they refuse to even pass through friendly units (!) and the "tactical" considerations that result from this are trivial. And whenever besieging an enemy city, one has to endlessly maneuver his units around it (while exposed to its bombardment) whereas wounded units are never easy to withdraw.
You cannot even garrison more than a single unit within a city. Not that it would make a difference, since the garrisoned unit is not automatically awaken to fight back when the city is under attack(!), the city is left to defend itself.
CAN YOU REALLY COMMAND WITHOUT A...CENTRAL COMMAND?
The economy is nose-diving into the red and you want to reduce the percentage going into research for a while to avoid having units of yours deleted one by one? The fickle people of your civilization are unhappy and you want to placate them by increasing their entertainment allocation? You have discovered conscription and you want to upgrade all your musketeers into recruits? Well, TOUGH LUCK! There is not central command screen to do so. Only advisers that you have to thank for annoying you.
You have zero control of both your cities resource distribution and your national economy. And units have to be hunted down and upgraded one by one.
Speaking of the economy, when are going to see a Civilization game where one can run and manage a national debt?
NO FREE EYE-CANDY IN THIS UNIVERSE. NOT EVEN A STALE ONE.
The game does look new and polished and the units are well designed but not cutting edge and not without a steep hardware price. If you expect anything comparable to STARCRAFT II crispiness you will be disappointed - at my 1280x1024 resolution it is not easy to discern roads from railroads.
The system I am running my copy was top of the line about a year ago and still I had to tweak the video settings with a mix of high and medium to get it running. Even then, whenever I scroll to a different location of the map, I can see the image fleshing out, just like zooming in a Google-Earth map.
So one can only wonder: why should one need a...Cray to run a Civilization game at full?
STEAM OF WAR
The game requires OnLine Activation (and rumored perpetual reactivation every few days) and has to be tied to a STEAM account. Effectively this means that the game is a piece of rentware the buyer never really owns and yet it is sold at full price. I realize that to some people this may not be a serious issue so, in case you are wondering, I deducted a single star from my overall rating of the game because of its DRM scheme. To every other gamer however, you can now make an informed decision.This was a major disappointment. I never though I'd say this but I while playing the latest Civilization game I caught myself wondering if they would ever make...CALL TO POWER III.
New gamers, steer clear of this mess, this is NOT what a Civilization game plays like.
Seasoned gamers, we know better than to call this a Civilization game.
Sorry Sid, EPIC FAIL.

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Sid Meier's Civilization V is the fifth offering in the multi-award winning Civilization turn-based strategy game series, and now it is available to players on the Mac platform. As with earlier installments in the series, Civilization V features the famous "just one more turn" addictive gameplay that has made it one of the greatest game series of all time. In addition to this it also features improved diplomacy, unprecedented modding tools and functionality, new ranged combat over a hex oriented board rather than squares, an in-game community hub facilitating improved online play and more.

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Macally iShockX Dual Shock Feedback Gamepad for Mac & PC Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm very pleased. So far it has worked with all Mac games I've tried: X-Plane 9 (the prime reason I wanted a gamepad), HyperTank, StuntMani, RC Helicopter Simulator, Colin McRae Rally, Flat Out 2 and Halo.
I even get the 'rumble,' with the one programs I have that supports that feature (Colin McRae Rally). After many years of having a Mac computer it's something new to have access to so many games and this is my first such gamepad and/or joystick thing. And it's fun and quite a new experience at the computer: real video arcade quality with some of these programs.
On the Mac it installs itself on the System Preference Panel, so you can check that all the buttons and sticks work. The Big Warning -- thought -- is not with the gamepad but not all the software programs are so clear about how to set it up, assign the sticks (um...especially the 3-year old Helicopter simulator was a hassle to get right and still seems 'too sensitive,').
So setup for each program will take a little learning and I'd check to be sure the program says it will work with a gamepad (Bioshock Demo, for example, seems to indicate it only work with the X-box gamepad)
But, the iShockX, itself: 5-stars; plug and play; it works.

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