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From: colas@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: FAUG demo of Powermonger by E.A. -- long review
Keywords: simply incredible
Message-ID: <1990Dec10.133123@avahi.inria.fr>
Date: 10 Dec 90 12:31:23 GMT
References: <1950@unlisys.in-berlin.de> <1990Dec5.110344.6364@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <1787@seti.inria.fr>
Sender: news@mirsa.inria.fr
Reply-To: colas@avahi.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo)
Organization: Koala Project, Bull Research France
Lines: 66
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In article <1787@seti.inria.fr>, rouaix@margaux.inria.fr (Francois Rouaix)
writes:
> Well, PowerMonger hit the shelves yesterday in France.
> So I spent a good amount of last night playing it ;-)

Same for me! (What? already 3 in the morning! :-))

First: This game is AMAZING... be prepared to spend much more
time than populous, however, you don't see time passing while playing, there
is always something going on.

There don't seem to be any disk access during game, apart for saving games.
(But since I have 3Megs on my 500, It may use this memory as a ram disk)
Did somebody run it on a 512K machine, and if so, are there disk accesses
during game?

Some (totally minor) "bad" points:
- landscape get often a  bit too high on the screen when zooming in mountains
- seeing things on global map is more difficult than in populous

> 	- copy protection: the game is protected BOTH with special
> disk format AND look-in-the-manual. The manual protection is
> *tedious*.

Pcopy backups it without problem (Fish disk #402) or turbobackup.
The manual protection is *nice*, because they tell you at what pages you must
look, so you don't have to browse the entire manual. I think being able to
backup my copy is a VERY GOOD THING, even if for that I must browse in the
manual, and this only at the start of the game. Be fair to Bullfrog, most
manual-protected software are more annoying than this one!
Besides, the floppy disk is well organized (by B.A.D.?), so loading is very
fast. 

> 	- save game: the game nukes the system, to the point that if
> you have a second floppy drive, you HAVE to leave a disk in it to be
> able to save a game to df0:. This is mentionned in the docs, although
> quite unbelievable !

As long as it is documented, it's a "feature" :-) too bad it doesn't use it
for save games, though...

> 	- works in NTSC and PAL. The display is nicely centered on the
> screen.

works in NTSC with palboot on my PAL screen for full display.

> PowerMonger appears to be one of the best simulation games in its
> kind. Don't hesitate !

Should I say more?

> It's cheap as well 

It is in fact one of the cheapest games for the amy!!!

PS: Just PLEASE stop bashing about non-use of OS resources. I think that by
making it fast loading, without disk access during playing, and with no
disk-based protection, Bullfrog is really trying to make life easier on the
player, so I feel it a bit unfair to criticize them, especially from people
who didn't try it!!! For instance, Marc Farren, instead of speaking of
overlays, etc, did you realize there is no disk accesses during game?

--
Colas Nahaboo, Bull Research France -- Koala Project -- GWM X11 Window Manager
Internet: colas@mirsa.inria.fr, Phone: (33) 93.65.77.70, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 66
INRIA Sophia, 2004, rte des Lucioles, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE