M.A.X. 2

Rating: 3.5/5

M.A.X. 2 may look like yet another real time strategy (RTS) game, but to compare it with recent best-of-breed RTS games like Total Annihilation and StarCraft would be unfair. It isn't quite in their league graphically, nor is it as polished. However, for a certain kind of 'serious' gamer it has its place.

The first M.A.X. (Mechanised Annihilation and Xploration) came out in 1996 and was turn-based - you could play turns alternately or submit your orders at the same time.

Bowing to market forces, the new version 2 contains a third, real-time mode, but even this contains a rather clever option that allows you to automatically freeze time as soon as you click on a unit so you won't feel rushed. For multi-player games, M.A.X. 2 offers a variety of time limit options so that games don't drag on forever if you are faced with an indecisive opponent.

Units have movement points, and while the maps have all been hand-drawn you can superimpose a grid and see the "terrain types" - roads, plains, rough, hills, water and impassable. In other words, this is a kind of hybrid of RTS games and a traditional computer wargame.

M.A.X.'s basic outline of play is familiar enough. You start with some basic units and points you can use to buy more. Then you explore, finding raw material and gold deposits, you make factories which enable you to construct more units, and you construct fortifications around your base.

There is a story line, but it is hardly worth going into - the single player mode is just a succession of scenarios - 160 in all! - which begin with a brief bit of text giving background and the mission objectives. If you fail in one scenario you just have to keep playing until you win. To Interplay's credit, though, you aren't limited merely to "destroy the enemy" objectives. In both single and multi-player scenarios, you can play with "capture the flag" objectives as well. There is a scenario editor included, and there are 31 rather attractive pre-rendered maps to choose from.

Unfortunately we were unable to test M.A.X.'s multi-player capabilities as so far there are few people around with the game to play against on the internet. Usenet discussion indicates that some bugs remain in the internet play code, but Interplay is working on them.

The company boasts that there are eight human/alien hybrid 'races' to chose from, plus one totally alien race, the Sheevat, and some optional alien life-forms (from pesky to quite dangerous) but you get less variety than this suggests. If you are playing the human, your choice of 'race' just lets you specialise in espionage units, tank units, defensive units etc. The actual mix of units available and their appearance doesn't change. There is provision for research during the game, but it only lets you improve the performance of existing unit types, not create new "super-units." The game boasts "over 90" different units, but this boils down to a manageable assortment of land, sea and air units plus fortifications and a few "special forces" units.

The Sheevat have many units that overlap with human ones, but there are some with special characteristics, too. One of their units can infect human hosts, another fires 'biobombs' which weaken all of the opponents in an area, and they all generally like to travel in groups - the more of them there are together the more effective they are. They are sufficiently different that playing them or fighting them off requires different tactics.

Interplay boasts that its "revolutionary graphics engine blows away the competition." This must be wishful thinking. There are some nifty touches, true. You can set up to 8 "spycams" to give you an instant overview of a part of the battlefield or the area around a favorite unit or group. It features over 50 levels of map magnification, controlled by a slider on the side of the map, and you can control your units at any size you choose. You can even tilt the screen from a top down angle to a 60 degree angle onto the battlefield.

The 'adaptive unit personalities' mean that while your units don't have a morale - they won't refuse your orders - they will gripe when they are being sent into certain death to give you a chance to see the error of your ways.

There is also a rather handy "unit reports" screen where you can see what your units are up to at a glance. They are in a scrollable list that can be narrowed down displaying only construction units, only stationary units or a variety of other views.

What you can't do, unfortunately, is take advantage of a powerful graphics card or large screen to see more than a 640 by 480 view of the screen, and a good third of your screen is taken up by various controls. Even at the highest magnification, the units are still rather hard to make out and being made up of fixed views instead of being built up out of polygons they just look old-fashioned. They don't animate when they move - they just appear to slide across the screen.

Unit control can be a little old-fashioned, too. M.A.X. 2 does let you group units together and lets you set them to be anywhere between aggressive - "fire on anything and chase your prey" to cowardly - "run from everything". Alas it appears you have to set unit behaviour group by group and units will not move automatically to patrol an area or explore. If you don't set paths for your units to follow, they will stand around and rust until an enemy bumps into them.

We reviewed the first post-release update of the game - version 1.2 - and were dismayed to see a number of annoying bugs remain. When we upgraded from our late beta version of the game to the latest version, we were no longer able to play the scenarios. Before upgrading we found that at least one single-player scenario wouldn't work when you played it in real-time mode. It required you to hold the field for 30 turns, but it obviously didn't know how to translate turns to minutes for a real-time player. The unit overview also cuts off at the right hand margin a little bit early - unfortunately when you are getting an overview of your construction units it cuts off the number of turns remaining before the unit your are building is complete - a pretty vital piece of information!

In fairness to Interplay, though, it is hard to tell whether any of these problems were caused by the earlier version of the game that we were provided. And it appears that Interplay has an aggressive upgrade/bug fix program in place - at least two more patches are planned.

If you are a RTS gamer looking for more of the same, you may find M.A.X. 2 a disappointment. It contains some rather nifty interface improvements and some new wrinkles in unit types and strategies but it isn't as polished as the competition. But there are many people out there, myself included, who prefer turn-based games to real time ones. Real time games often reward players with fast reflexes and a thorough grasp of keyboard shortcuts and the user interface instead of testing your combined arms strategy or production management.

There just aren't that many turn-based games these days, though, and most of them are historical. If you enjoy the Command and Conquer concept but prefer a turn-based game, M.A.X. 2's variety of play modes could be just up your street.