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WAR
OF THE WORLDS Battles of the traditional kind By PATRICK ANDREWS Those Martians have never been cute and cuddly in an E.T. sort of way. Just ask H.G. Wells. Or Orson Welles. No, if you want someone to play an alien villain, holler for a Martian. GT Interactive's The War of the Worlds is based on Jeff Wayne's 1978 musical version of H.G. Wells' century-old novel on a Martian invasion of Earth. Throw in the 1938 radio dramatisation that sent the United States into a panic - and the 1953 movie - and the computer game designers and programmers could draw inspiration from a rich history of sci-fi conflict between Earth and Mars. Ominously, though, it has always been the bugs that have brought about the Martians' downfall in The War of the Worlds. With a stylish introduction and Wayne's music setting the scene, the game quickly reveals itself to be a cut above the rest of the real-time strategy class when it comes to atmosphere. Moody lighting, dramatic music, very British voice-overs, and the sight of three-legged Martian pods emerging from the gloom, heat rays zapping everything in their path, make an instant impression. Set in Great Britain in 1898, with the British still kings of the hill, the Martians quickly set themselves up in Scotland and northern England, wiping out all the feeble defences in their path. Forced back into Wales and southern England, the humans have to rev-up the industrial war machine to pump out tanks and ships in great volume and research better weapons and defences. The game doesn't offer anywhere near the variety of units of real-time strategy rivals like Total Annihilation and Starcraft and even researching new units tends to produce unimaginative results. After armored lorry mark I, for example, come armored lorry mark II, and yep, armored lorry mark III. But it doesn't seem to matter because the struggle between these two traditional sci-fi rivals is well-balanced and the game can develop into an absorbing series of attacks and counter-attacks, with attacks at any time of the day or night and some territories changing hands regularly. The Martians' goal is the main human base in London, while the humans have to overrun the main Martian base in Scotland's Grampians. The Martian units are far superior technologically, particularly in firepower, but also with their night vision. The British, who after all have home-planet advantage, can produce great hordes of tanks, armored trucks and mobile guns if the resources are well managed. This is also an era when Britannia ruled the waves, so the human side can use ironclad ships to pound the Martian bases from longer range. The building phase is one of the keys to the game, particularly if you're playing on the human side. Building units can be done easily from the main war-room view, but switching in and out of the zoomed-in view necessary to build factories, mines and defensive structures is a slow process. Other irritations are the slow-down if there are a lot of units on screen in battle mode and the lack of difficulty settings. If you find the game too hard or too easy, too bad, because it's a matter of one challenge fits all. The game looks, feels and sounds so good that these issues aren't necessarily fatal flaws. But there are glitches that can ruin the game for some players. Among the problems that can emerge are ships that sometimes beach and destroy themselves when trying to fire at a distant target and a Bermuda triangle effect where ironclads can apparently simply disappear from the screen without trace. Most serious are the random crashes back to the desktop that, coupled with the autosave function, can render a saved game unplayable. This seems to occur mostly as you enter the battle mode with large numbers of units or on heavily fortified sectors. If the game crashes, things reach a new high in tension as you check to see whether the saved game will load correctly on re-start. If not, it's game over. Some players have completed War of the Worlds without hassles, others have hit a brick wall after hours of switching in and out of battle mode without problems. So, it becomes a lottery. Feeling lucky, punk? GT Interactive's tech support division has acknowledged some of these problems, but customers have been told that there is not going to be a fix for the problem. Instead, they have been told that if they find the game totally unplayable they can exchange the game for a product of equal value. Yep, it seems bugs and Martians don't mix. ORIGINALITY
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