ALIEN NATIONS (aka AMAZONS v ALIENS) Review and postscript by Bev Truter NOTE: This game has a bug in the third Amazon mission, which needs a patch to make it finishable, downloadable from JoWooD's homepage. See also an article in this issue Having hunted high and low through all the local and not-so-local software and games shops in Melbourne for this game, without success, I was delighted when Sue discovered it in the el cheapo bin at one of the software shops she frequents. She very kindly bought it for me, and posted it all the way to sunny Australia (well, not so sunny at the moment, but that's another story...). After playing another city-management game for nigh on 4 months now (Pharaoh, to be exact) I felt a change was needed, and Alien Nations proved to be a very different game in many respects. First off, the minimum system requirements are a Pentium 233 MHz processor with 32MB RAM, 2 MB PCI graphic card, 4x CD- ROM drive, 130 MB free space on hard disk, DirectX 6.0, and mouse and keyboard Windows compatible. However, my son's decrepit old Pentium is about the equivalent of a Pentium 1-and-a-half, and his graphics card wasn't quite up to scratch either; yet I experienced no problems running the game in either 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 screen resolutions; except for some wild flickering of the monitor as it chugged away during the RESTORE or LOAD procedures. This, I gathered from my son, is due to the fact that Alien Nations is somewhat primitively programmed, and certainly doesn't run as smoothly as other, larger games of the same type, eg Pharaoh or Caesar 3. Alien Nations is more 'cartoonish' than the latter two games, and has a more lighthearted feel to it - far less tension and nailbiting than Pharaoh, which I played in very serious fashion. There are three 'nations' to choose from in A.N. - you can choose to build a city and manage the fortunes of Pimmons (blobby blue/grey claymation-type figures), Amazons (scantily-clad curvaceous females), or the Sajhikis (resembling ferocious insects, vaguely similar to ants). Each nation has 10 missions to play through, and the manual accompanying A.N. suggests that the Pimmons are the easiest nation to play, with the Sajhikis being the most difficult, i.e. warlike. However, the first 3 or 4 missions for all three nations seemed reasonably easy to cope with, introducing you gradually to the basics of building, schooling, research, trade, diplomacy and combat; which is where I've become temporarily stuck. Unfortunately the manual wasn't a whole heap of help, being decidedly slim and lacking in detailed information. Plus I think it's been translated from German, which makes some of the instructions it contains for running the military side of things rather baffling. What, for instance, is the "STRG" key on your keyboard? To form groups of 'units' (ie, soldiers) one has to press "..one of the STRG keys plus a number; eg. STRG + 1..." So far I haven't been able to form battle groups by this method, as I haven't fathomed the mysteries of the "STRG" key/s yet, so my poor little soldiers can't get their act together and attack in a large group. But, back to the beginning again...Apart from dwellings for your population (each dwelling holds 3 people, who each pay 7 coins in tax) and a town hall (where the founder of your city resides), the only other buildings available to build without prior research being done are a school and a laboratory. If you wish to build any other type of building, you first have to provide funds for research (carried out in the laboratory) for each type of building, and when the research is completed you can then set your transporters to work constructing the building, and send one of your people to school to become an operator for the building. For example, to build a farm you first need to research both agriculture and cocoa plantations, and thereafter train a farmer in the school to run the plantation. Each nation has the same types of buildings and occupations available for research and training, but they all vary in architectural style and building's names. And so it continues, with you creating a delicate balancing-act between size of population, food needed to feed them, demands to satisfy (they want a news-stand! They want a tavern! They want a circus!) and raw materials (wood, stone and iron) to keep flowing into your warehouses. The more people in your city (they automatically move into the dwellings you build), the more farms you need to supply them with food; and the more your 'overheads' will cost. Yes, it costs varying amounts of money to keep each building in operation, and the only way to manage the finances of a rapidly-growing city is to occasionally shut down operations for a while - eg, you can close down the laboratory if research is not being done, or an iron mine if you have enough iron ore for a while. If you discover other nations' towns in your 'world' you can trade with them (if you are at peace with them, and have an embassy and a market-place). But sometimes there's no pleasing anyone, and you will be forced into defending your city, or even attacking another nation's city. Being basically a pacifist at heart, I always try to opt for the diplomacy and trade option; and only use military force when I absolutely have to. But you might be more bloodthirsty and prefer a decent skirmish or two - each to his own! After having a go at playing each nation, and finishing about 11 (of 30) missions in a fortnight, I'm very happy indeed with my bargain-bin purchase of A.N. Managing each city, achieving the goal of each mission, and watching my fledgling cities grow, prosper and (hopefully) make me very wealthy is an absorbing pastime. Despite the almost childish look and feel of A.N. it proved quite difficult to run each city efficiently, particularly in the later missions. It's hard work, keeping your people happy and increasing the size of your city until you have things running as smoothly as possible. And then of course there's always the option of sending new city founders out into the big wide world to establish other cities for you to manage - managing 2 or 3 cities simultaneously requires much to-ing and fro-ing and decision-making, but gives a real buzz when you get things right. So far each mission has taken me about 30 minutes to 3 hours to complete, but I suspect that time will increase as the missions for each race become more difficult to finish. Overall, a most enjoyable game to play, if building and managing cities and their inhabitants appeals to you. -------------------------------------------------------------------- ALIEN NATIONS: Postscript on the 'patched' version Just when I thought all my problems were over with the buggy mechanics of struggling my way through A.N., disaster struck. First of all my son (whose computer I use for gameplaying) discovered the PE_magistr virus doing nasty things all over his computer. As part of the de-virussing process he deleted all my games, upgraded all sorts of bits and bobs, then reinstalled all my games, including the original (unfixed) version of Alien Nations. Yay! It now runs much more smoothly, minus most of the whirrs, clunks and grinds!! But hiss, boo and more sobs, now I can't progress to the next mission by typing the WINNER cheat - doing this in the original version just results in a pathetic little message informing me "YOU HAVE LOST THIS MISSION", and clicking "OK" sends me back to the same mission's start. So next I installed the patch for A.N. and tried again. Yes!! This time typing WINNER ends the current mission, and sends you forwards into the next mission in sequence, where I discovered (yet again) that I was back to square one - i.e., can't load any saved games. But persistence is my middle name, so off I plunged into the Sajkhi missions, correctly guessing that the first 3 missions at least would be easy-peasy to play through, and not bothering to make any saves. Wrong move.[See footnote 1] (Some hours later)...finished playing mission 3 of the Sajkhis through to the end (using the patched version of A.N.), saving several times, and swept through to mission 4. However, I had played #3 so badly (my whole nation was starving slowly to death, and I'd run very low on funds) that I attempted reloading a saved game, forgetting all about the saved-games-problem. Ooeerrr, gulp, , plod once more through the tedious process of uninstalling A.N., then reinstalling it (without the patch). For some unknown reason your saves are not uninstalled along with the rest of A.N., and when you reinstall A.N. minus the patch all saved games are still mysteriously there, and better still, loadable - don't ask me why. But my woes with A.N. were not over yet... (Some days later)...in playing mission #4 of the Amazons, the aim of the game is very simple: to produce chocolate cakes, sell 5 of them to the Pimmons, and buy 5 bottles of mushroom juice from them; via merchants and marketplaces. But although I sold 37 cakes to the Pimmons, and bought umpteen bottles of their mushroom juice, the "YOU HAVE WON THIS MISSION. PROCEED" message never popped up (in the un-patched version, which I was using so I could load in my saved games). So I had to reload the patch for A.N., for the umpteenth time, restart mission 4 of the Amazons, type WINNER to proceed to the next mission, then uninstall the whole lot, reinstall A.N. from the CD-ROM so I could load saved games, and *finally* I was ready to start mission #5. Phew! (Several days later)...why bother? . I hereby abdicate as leader of all 3 nations; I'm sure the Pimmons, Amazons and Sajkhis will do very well on their own, or perhaps they can all get together and democratically elect another leader. Farewell Alien Nations! Hello Cultures! Basically one is faced with 3 options when playing A.N: 1) To play Alien Nations with the patch, thus making saved games irretrievable; or 2) To play Alien Nations without the patch, which means there are at least 2 games which are impossible to complete, and typing in the WINNER cheat doesn't work. 3) To give up, and find something less bug-ridden to play. I finally opted for the last solution. [footnote 1] Oh yes, and there's also the problem of A.N. crashing regularly, leaving you staring in bafflement at a blank monitor, before Windows kicks in and starts rebooting itself. This appeared to happen at least once per mission, making it vital either to save regularly, or have plenty of patience with replaying entire missions from scratch when crashes occur. I think Alien Nations 2 is available now, called "The Nations", but given the problems and bugs I found in A.N., I'd be extremely wary of buying Nations until I've seen some reviews of it, or spoken to a few people who have tried playing it. - o -