PLANETARION

                 Reviewed by Michael Raven

One new Internet game that's surprisingly good is Planetarion
(www.planetarion.com). Once you have joined it (it's free before
you get worried) you are given a planet, and a small pile of metal
to build stuff with.  Once you've built a metal mine you get
constant and regular supplies of metal, and you can begin to
explore other parts of the game. Researching new sciences allows
you access to better spaceships, new buildings and other advances.
There is a wide selection of things to research in the game, and
can take quite some time to complete.

Asteroids can be mined for extra resources, and even stolen from
other planets so that you have more asteroids to mine. Once you
have researched the required sciences, buildings can be built to
allow you to find new sciences, increase production of metal and
other rare resources, and new spaceships. Again, building of these
can take some time, so be sure to pick the right building as after
that you can't build anything else until the present construction
is complete.

A feature unique to this game is the Wavescope. Using a type of
radio telescope, you can gain instant information on any system
within the game. According to my admittedly poor calculations,
there must be over 8000 people playing this game already, so there
are numerous planets to attack and ally yourself with.

You can send messages to any person in the game, and a discussion
board is set up for each galaxy (each galaxy holds 20 planets) so
that the people within that galaxy can discuss things, like
alliances, battles and strategies. This is undoubtedly the main
part of the game, as any single planet cannot hope to do much, but
an allied galaxy of people can take on similar amounts of forces.

One of the features of the game that makes it so attractive is
that you don't have to spend great amounts of time playing it to
do well. The team that created it recommend that you check your
planet about twice a day, to check for attacks and the like, but
even when you're not connected, your fleets are still in position
and will defend, or attack targets, regardless of whether you're
overseeing it.

This game is still in beta, and had bugs in it. There is at
present a serious combat bug, which means that combat cannot take
place in many places, but I'm not going to complain about this as
if the bug had not been present a 'friend' of mine would have
wrecked my planet!

I strongly recommend that you try this game out, and if you don't
get on with it, well, e-mail me the coordinates of your planet and
I'll make sure your asteroids don't go to waste!

Overall:87%
e-mail:mike_raver_1999@yahoo.co.uk
homepage:http://inforave.cjb.net


                              - o -