First my grateful thanks to those who have contributed the reviews in this and other editions. It is good to see that members are prepared to invest their time offering their opinions on the games they have played to fellow members of the Association and that my pleas do not go unanswered. Remember it doesn't matter what the format is or whether it is written by hand, on a typewriter, whatever, you can even send it on an email if you like. If you are prepared to invest the effort writing your honest opinions about games then I am prepared to put it in this column. There you have an offer you can't refuse so sit down and write that review. I have as usual been trawling through my mountain of flyers etc. but there seems to be a dearth of new strategy and war games at the moment. The usual hype is already starting about autumn and winter releases but I will leave that to the next issue when hopefully some of you will have played the demos and reported back on first impressions. The other games being produced at the moment appear to require a Pentium of at least 350 MHz or even 500 MHz, up to 128 megabytes of RAM and 3D! It could be that the Games Industry is once again beginning to forget that not everybody out in the big wide world can either afford or even wants to be upgrading their machines every few months to play the latest games. It must reach a point where the high degree of technology required reduces the market available for the game, which leads to higher prices. If this trend transfers itself to Strategy and War Games, I for one will be seriously considering whether I can justify the expense of a machine upgrade just to play these games. I was taught 30 years ago that the clever part of design and programming was to keep it simple, fast, and small and achieve the required functionality. Nobody ever claimed that was the easy option but it did enable the programs to be put on the maximum number of machines to perform the required task. As with everything there is a balance to be struck between the sophistication of the AI engine and the surrounding sounds and graphics. I would prefer the highest level of sophistication in the core AI engine possible even at the expense of the graphics. The most important thing is the challenge and of course the ability to keep me coming back over and over again so that I get value for money. If you have any views on this then please let me know. Right having got that off my chest lets move on and please keep sending in your reviews. Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #131 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com