GiE's classic gaming week wraps up with a game that I'll be playing throughout the weekend and beyond, "Battlefield 1942". This 2002 release still packs the replayability with multiple maps and great Allies/Axis action. This one was a breakthrough in online/LAN playing with different maps and different jobs for your soldiers. Play assault, scout, medic, anti-tank or engineer as you battle back and forth to take the flags.
The best thing that this game brings to the table, vehicles! Jump in a tank, half-track or P-51 Mustang on the single player maps or get your sea legs under you on an aircraft carrier or submarine on the larger multi-player maps.
Installation of the game and the two add-ons (Secret Weapons & Road to Rome) was flawless. In no time, I grabbed by Thompson and was fighting Jerry in the Battle of the Buldge.
Happy gaming!
It was my eighth grade year when I was introduced to the Apple IIe. There was one machine for the whole class and we would all take turns entering our basic code for our class projects. After class, we would throw in the "Escape from Castle Wolfenstein" floppy disk in the drive and revel in its green screen glory. Every footlocker we opened brought us that much closer to freedom. Just don't let the guards see you or they would chase you from room to room yelling "halt" in their German machine language.
Many remember "Wolfenstein 3D" and it's sequel "Spear of Destiny" on the PC. This was a precursor to the classic "Doom" by ID Software. In 2001, ID gave the Wolfenstein franchise a makeover with "Return to Castle Wolfenstein". This first person shooter puts you in the combat boots of BJ Blazkowicz as he escapes the dungeon of the castle and makes his way through the Nazi infested countryside to eventually confront the main bad guy Heinrich.
This game was the perfect combination of a single player story and multiplayer action. Once I made it through the single player storyline, it was off to the online action. I cannot event count how many hours I logged in the multipayer mode. Most of the maps were well balanced that you had to have soldiers and engineers on your team and had to work together to win the day.
The install on my Vista machine was flawless and was able to jump right in and start playing. Launching the multiplayer found a few people still playing, but I'm sure if I install the patches, I'll find more.
Friday's classic game: "Battlefield 1942".
Having worked in the broadcast industry for over 20 years, I have gravitated to strategy games that based themselves in the biz. One game that places you smack-dab in the over sized Hollywood studio executive chair is "Hollywood Mogul".
This is a text based business simulator. You start out with a generous bank account and set out green-lighting feature films. You choose everything from picking the scripts, the scriptwriters, actors, producers down to how much and where you spend your advertising dollars. The gameplay can be a little tedious at times, but the payoff is when your project takes off and generates lots of green, which lets you churn out more films.
This reminds me of one of my favorite games for the Amiga. It was a business sim set in the world of television. I have yet to find its PC equivalent.
The website for "Hollywood Mogul" is still up and they are currently selling "Hollywood Mogul 3". I'll have to check it out one of these days.
Thursday's game: "Return to Castle Wolfenstein".
Day two of my classic gaming week was spent installing and playing an old favorite of mine, "Diablo 2". Now I remember why I was so thankful when I finished playing this 2000 game from Blizzard... it killed my right mouse-clicking finger!
Just going back through the first few levels had me switching between my pointer and middle finger. This was a very basic hack and slash dungeon game with a little customization thrown in. But because it was Blizzard who created the game, it had solid gameplay.
Getting D2 up on my Vista machine took a little bit of disk swaping (3 cd's) and just a tad of tweeking, but the thing that surprised me was that from the time I double clicked the icon to the time the game started the opening cinematics was four and a half minutes. I had almost forgotten that I had clicked the icon in the first place and so the opening Blizzard logo took me by surprise. So, I spent Tuesday dungeon crawling and leveling up.
Wednesday's game: Hollywood Mogul.
It's vacation time at Gamer in Exile and instead of traveling across the state, this year, the GiE family will be taking a "stay"-cation. So, I thought that for the week I'll be at home, I would go back into the game stash and pick out one classic game to install and play each of the weekdays during the vacation. On Monday, I revisited 1999's "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri".
I remember playing "Civ 3" for what seemed like days at a time and so "Alpha Centauri" seemed like a logical progression of that franchise. To me, this game was what happed after you sent your civilization into space.
The game originally was issued for Windows 95/98. It was a smooth instillation, but there was a yes/no screen right when I launched the game that had invisible text. The only thing on the screen were two rectangles. Clicking the right box exited me out of the game, the left box allowed the game to continue.
I played most of Monday with "Alpha Centauri" and spent most of the day relearning how the tech trees progressed. After three games, I finally got back into the swing of things. By the fourth game, I had been elected as head of the council and brought peace to the new planet.
Tuesday's game, "Diablo 2".
GiE's classic gaming week wraps up with a game that I'll be playing throughout the weekend and beyond, "Battlefield 1942". This 2002 release still packs the replayability with multiple maps and great Allies/Axis action. This one was a breakthrough in online/LAN playing with different maps and different jobs for your soldiers. Play assault, scout, medic, anti-tank or engineer as you battle back and forth to take the flags.
