GEnie Livewire e-zine/LW9412MM.ZIP/GAMER.TXT

Text File | 1994-11-27 | 6.9 KB | 172 lines

As the holiday season wraps its arms around me and my
bank account begins to freeze, the lyrics of a song
materialize right before my tired eyes:

   "All I want to do, is have some fun,
    I got a feeling I'm not the only one."

It's not certain that Sheryl Crow was thinking about
GEnie's multi-player games when she wrote that, but
if she wasn't, she should have been. Because there
are more ways to have fun on GEnie than you can shake
a modem at, and more people ready, willing and eager
to join in than fans at a Star Trek convention.

When it comes to multi-player games, GEnie is the
champion of virtual unreality. But just when you
thought they couldn't get any better, they did --
with new games, new versions, and major upgrades.
Here's a sample.

It's a Small World

While some folks are content to build cities, others
have higher aspirations -- they prefer to build
planets. In Federation II, the adult space fantasy
(Page 220, keyword FED), players have the unique
opportunity to design and build a planet of their own
that other players can experience and explore.

Of course, you don't start out that way. You have to
play your way up -- from short-hop deliveries to
galactic trading. With enough cash and status, you'll
be able to design your own planet, attract more trade
and tourists, amass even more wealth, and get into
politics. If you're lucky (or even if you're not),
you could end up being Emperor of the Galaxy.

Although you play as an individual, Federation is a
game of alliances and cooperation. There's
competition, of course. But it's essentially
non-violent, emphasizing social interaction and
strategic thinking over brute force. A player can
spend time blowing up NPCs (non-player characters) if
he wants, but he'll gain nothing from it. Attempting
the same thing with players, however, will gain less
than nothing.

Fed II is a text-based game, but a special graphical
front-end is available for Amiga systems and
IBM-compatibles. Employing a windowed environment,
FedTerm greatly streamlines game play while offering
multimedia capacity. You can even configure it to
display custom sound samples and graphics.

And now, with a brand new version designed to run
under a different operating system, FED-II is faster
and more efficient than ever. "It's packed with new
features," says Federation's Fi Craig. "There's room
for more players, there are more and bigger planets
to explore, and the owners of the planets can change
them whenever they choose, adding new puzzles and
giving you an endless variety of new experiences."

We Got the Power

For interaction of a different sort, drop into the
cockpit of an armored CyberPod and tap into the power
grid in Simutronic's CyberStrike -- Computer Gaming
World magazine's 1993 Online MultiPlayer Game of the
Year.

Cooperation and teamwork are important, but here the
emphasis is on hand-eye coordination. Conquest and
control of the power grid is accomplished by blowing
up enemy towers and CyberPods, while protecting your
own team's towers and remaining relatively intact. In
the world of CyberStrike, power is everything --
literally and figuratively.

Cyberstrike (Page 1380, keyword CYBERSTRIKE) is a
VR-type game that is run exclusively through a
graphical front-end. To play it, you need a minimum
of an IBM-compatible 386/25 with a VGA graphics card
and 2 megabytes of RAM. To download it, simply select
menu item 2 on Page 1380; the files are
self-extracting, so you just copy them to a separate
directory and run them.

Here too, major changes have been made. Just released
Version 1.5 incorporates a host of new features,
including 16-bit sound, custom sound file support,
new joystick routines, Thrustmaster FCS support,
enhanced pod performance and speed, new shields, new
modules, and extra view keys.

Some rules have also been changed to improve
gameplay, most notably one which eliminates the need
for multiplier points to purchase pods, and applies
weight values instead. Now, speed and maneuverability
have to be factored against armor and firepower,
producing a greater variety of play options.

Player reaction has been enthusiastic. WARLOCK
(S.Stavropoul) summed it up nicely: "Sounds
incredible guys!! Can't wait to play it!! HEHEH.
Using your doomed pod as a weapon. Better sb16
sounds. New shields. Old bugs gone. SOUNDS AWESOME!"

New Kids on the Bahn

Speaking of new, a pair of new arrivals to the GEnie
family this year brings modern variations to some
classic fantasy roleplaying games.

MUD-II by MUSE Ltd, is a new breed of multi-player
RPG designed by Dr. Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw.
MUDs, or Multi-User Dungeons, originated years ago in
England as a university project (need we say more).
They quickly gained in popularity and soon evolved
into a vast collection of text-based multi-player
games. MUD-II is the latest and greatest step in that
evolution, offering gamers the ultimate enticement: a
chance to take part in designing the game.

MUD-II: The Quest for Immortality (Page 1550, keyword
MUD), presents you with an ever-changing landscape of
puzzles, populated by unusual creatures and
unexpected dangers. Continued survival and success
ultimately lead to becoming an immortal, or 'wiz,'
where you actually become part of the team that runs
the game. But that's not the end of the game, it's
only the beginning. With immortality comes a whole
new set of commands, a whole new set of challenges, a
whole new set of responsibilities.


Island of Kesmai started out over ten years ago as
the Dungeon of Kesmai (DoK). Combining text
descriptions and ASCII graphics in a multi-player
environment, DoK's emphasis was action and adventure
over pure roleplaying. It too became a huge hit.

Kesmai improved the game, developed a powerful
graphics front-end for Macintosh and IBM-compatibles,
and brought it to GEnie as Island of Kesmai or IoK
(Page 830, keyword ISLAND).

IoK is big. Roughly 120,000 squares of playing area,
populated by 5,000 critters of various types and
temperament. It's computer-moderated, with lots of
action and little emphasis placed on roleplaying. But
it's full of surprises. For instance: You can roll up
to EIGHT different characters, and switch among them
at will; 'bequeath' the experience, bank account and
locker possessions of a dead character to a new one;
even transform a critter's carcass into a suit of
armor. Small wonder it has become so popular.

Come Together

Solo computer games isolate people, put them
one-on-one against silicon and software. But
multi-player games are socially interactive. They
bring people together from all over the world. Not
for politics, not for science, but for the sole
purpose of having fun.

What was good is now better; drop out of reality for
some improved interpersonal interaction.

I got a feeling you won't be the only one.