Ultima IX - Ascension
                  On a P-600 & Voodoo 3000

                 Reviewed by Alex van Kaam

Finally it has arrived, 6 years after Ultima VIII - Pagan. As most
of you know the release in the USA was around Thanksgiving day,
but the game was so infested with bugs that they cancelled the
release in Europe (and the rest of the world ?) until it was more
playable. and that day has come.

After opening the box I found the usual cloth map, what would
Ultima be without it :-) a deck of 8 cards, the one the gypsy
uses, 3 long leaflets in 3 languages with the keyboard commands on
1 side and the history of Ultima on the other side, the same
history you can find in the museum in Britannia. Next came 2
manuals and 2 CD boxes.

Now that was strange since both contained the same 2 CDs, the
installation and the game CD. I soon found out that one of the
boxes had the wrong printing on the CD. strange they left it in
but hey now I got it twice I guess <g>

Installation went without any errors and version 1.18f is the
version you get on the CD, this is the same version as the latest
patch you can get. So there is no need for you to download that.

Now before I continued, I selected the Glide version of Ultima IX
to play, there is also a D3D version and this might be more or
less stable then the Glide, from what I know it's probably less
stable.

Running it at 800*600, Mip Mapping on, Medium Textures, 16 Bit and
EAX enabled.

You start the game in your house on earth, sleeping in bed, and
you are woken up by Hawkwind. Hawkwind tells you that the Guardian
has invaded Britannia and Lord British needs you!  He also gives
you advice on how to control the Avatar, and in case you did not
know it, Ultima IX looks a lot like Tomb Raider, so you see the
Avatar from behind as he walks through the world.  However this is
where the resemblance with Tomb Raider stops.

Controlling the Avatar can be done in several ways, right clicking
the mouse and he walks where you're looking, or using the cursor
keys.  There is no option to change the keys which is a bit of a
shame as I personally prefer the W,S, A and D keys for moving.

The control system does need some time to get used to so I will
just sum up a few keys you will need often:

TAB to switch between combat and normal mode, in combat when you
left click you strike your weapon, in normal mode when you left
click you operate or examine whatever the green cursor is on.

B to open your backpack, if you have any small pouches in there
you can open them by clicking on them, right click on an open
pouch will close it.

S spell book

J journal where you can find your notes and load and save a game.
A quick hint here is that once you get deeper into the game you
get more in your notes, if you select the notes from the index you
will have to go through all the pages, however if you select beast
index and go 1 page back you will be on the last page of your
notes.

CLTR+L or CLTR+S to load and save a game.

~ which gives you the movement of your cursor like when you have
your backpack open.  Also handy when you have slain an opponent
and want to get the gold he dropped, you either use the ~ to go
into free movement, get the money and use ~ to go back in the
'control Avatar' mode or you need to use TAB to switch to normal
mode and get the gold.

Anyway, once you're used to this it is not as hard as it sound,
and remember if you jump (space bar) you jump to the location the
green or yellow mouse cursor points to.

Now for the looks of the game, graphically it can't be compared
with new games like UT or Q3, that does not mean that it looks
bad, not at all, it just does not look smooth, lots of pixel
stuff. This is probably a game which will benefit 200% from the
FSAA on the new Voodoo 5000+.  In dungeons the game looks better
than outdoors.  Which does not mean it looks bad outdoors, with
the weather changes, the wind, the sun moving, the sun rising in
the sky, the sun setting in the evening, rain and thunder, this
all helps in making a very believable Britannia.

You can manipulate almost every item, smash barrels, pile them up,
drop bottles in a pit of water and they will float (you can even
climb on them to get out of the pit . probably a bug <g>).  This
freedom has a small drawback in the fact that some items might
remain floating in the air, but you can easily forgive this once
you see your footsteps in the sand, or after a kill your shiny
sword will have blood on it. details, details and details is what
this graphics engine shines at. but at a cost. My P600 and V3 have
moments when they have trouble with the frame rate, especially in
rooms with lots of candles, a fire place, some bubbling alchemy
stuff.  but once you're through the room it's over and all you
remember are again the details.

Sound wise with the EAX turned on it shows the same detail, the
sea hitting the beach, birds in the sky, your foot steps in the
sand. all perfect.  As are the voice of the characters.  The music
is again nice and rises up as you're heading into trouble. once
again.

As for the story/plot, like all the Ultimas this is again taken
good care of, it is not as deep as Ultima VII which will probably
remain the best Ultima ever, but it's a good plot, and it does
ease new players into the game, however I think it's probably a
bit too shallow for the older player.  Puzzles are very much
object based, pressure plates, hidden walls/doors, running around
getting items, showing your bow skills on moving buttons etc. etc.
nothing really new, however some can be hard and irritating at
times, once you reached the Hyloth dungeon you will know what I
mean :-)

Now what about the crashes I hear you ask, well, since starting
the game 2 days ago it has crashed 8 times:

- as I saved the game in the same room as the Gargoyle queen, it
crashed, and when I restarted the game it autoloaded the last save
game and crashed again..kinda of a loop I guess.  You need to
delete the Start.Dat file in your savegame directory, the game
will then start from the start in your house on Earth, find the
journal and load a save game before the one that crashed.
- About 2 times in Hyloth
- About 3 times in Moonglow while I was in/on my boat in the sky
- And 2 times on my way to Yew (in the caves)

All except the last crash dumped me to the desktop and I had the
game running in 20 seconds again, just make sure you save often
and use new save slots. Don't keep overwriting your save game
because if it fails to load at one point you're in trouble !  As I
said this is using Glide, D3D might be better or worse, the latter
is often the case :-(

So what are my thoughts about the game?  Well I like it, I like it
enough to forget to save for a few hours and have a crash and
reload the game and do it all over again. not that this should
happen to often though!  I like the story and although it's
created to ease new players into the Ultima games I think it's a
bit too easy/shallow for the older player, as I said above.  Also
I think that most new players will look at the graphics first then
go hmmm, then try the game, have some trouble getting used to the
controls and then just cancel it... which is a shame... As for the
older player, he knows what to except from an Ultima game and
won't be stopped by the first impressions he gets.  I sure was not
and am having a great time despite a crash now and then.

It's not THE BEST Ultima game story/plot wise but it's also not
the worst.

... oh yes, and Lord Blackthorn is back ...

                              - o -