It was with great delight when I found I had won a competition. I never win anything and it's not through lack of trying. But yes, one morning the postman knocked and handed me a parcel. I couldn't think what was in it, but on opening it I felt a warm glow as I realised I'd won something which was very popular on the Mac platform at the time. I had won Unreal by Macsoft from MacUser magazine.
Luckily, I had a well equipped G3 to handle its needs. It recommends a G3 266 with about 96-128 RAM allocated to it. If you have a Voodoo card/ATI Rage Pro card, all the better. So, I gave it 100mb RAM. And boy what a sick fest the game was.
The name of the game is to kill everyone/thing which moves without getting killed yourself. Unreal is really two games in one. There is the 'world' game where you begin in a crashed space ship and you have to escape, avoiding mutants and aliens with big guns and knives. This takes you through various scenes and levels, getting harder and more complex as you go. The other game is the Botmatch. This is the one I keep playing. You against 1 to 15 other players, having to shoot it out infinitely or to a user defined parameter. There is a choice of worlds too. You can run through industrial mazes, through large mansion like buildings, through caverns and caves and much more.
But here's the rub. With the instructions, which I decided to read a few dozen hours into the game, I noticed the cheats. Well hey, I saw them and they were in my mind. I had to try it just once. So I typed in GOD. I couldn't be killed. I typed in ALLAMMO and had 999 ammunition for each weapon I'd collected. I typed in FLY and was able to fly around the game. I typed in GHOST and could walk through the walls and floors and right out of the game itself so to look down at the other players killing each other in the name of entertainment.
Of course the game was ruined now. I went through every level, every weapon, and winning every time. Why bother trying to win, when you can be GOD! So now when I begin each level, I know who's going to win. Still, I promised myself someday, when my training pays off, I'll attempt the game without the cheats. But it's going to be hard when you know with three letters, this tricky situation will go your way! At least I managed to finish Abuse without cheating, not on easy either!
Another cheat to try: At the castle scene at the very beginning, type ~ (tilde) then either FLY, WALK, AHOY, etc then return and another ~ (tilde). You'll be able to explore the opening scene, find the caves etc.
I'll end by saying that cheats are a good thing. Especially if the game becomes so tedious you'd rather smash the monitor than keep on trying the same level over and over. But at the same time, put them in a sealed envelope, not among the instructions where a wandering eye sucks them straight in. Skill after all, comes from practice. And as my teacher used to say, if you cheat, you're only fooling yourself!
Unreal web site at www.unreal.com for updates, news and other folk who wish to play you over the internet!
