What I think of the games I have

• Nintendo 64 Games
• PC Games

Nintendo 64

I presently only own Mario World 64, Lylat Wars and Mario Kart 64.  They are both excellent games, far better than any other platform game/driving game on any other platform.  Mario World looks fantastic, and is vast.  Mario Kart is somewhat easier than its predecessor, but makes up for that by being better with lots of players.  I wish it was harder, though.  Super Mario Kart on the SNES was impossible in Special Cup.  The best I ever got (and the best I have ever seen anyone get) is a Silver Cup.  I have now sold my SNES, but am still curious as to what happens when you get that elusive Gold Special Cup.  Lylat Wars is really good fun.  It is quite easy to do the missions, but rather harder to get enough hits to get the medals.  The Rumble Pak is very cool indeed.

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PC

Quake II is unbelievably good. On my lowly P133 it gets a significantly better frame rate than its predecessor.  It has far more interesting one player missions than anything else.  It is massive.  It has a remarkably good attempt at a story.  The story is still rubbish, but it is, at least, involved with the game.  I think it is as big an improvement over Quake as Doom was over Wolfenstein 3D.

Games I play at the moment are: Total Annihilation, Quake, Krush, Kill 'n' Destroy, Red Alert/Red Alert: Counterstrike, Ultimate Doom '95, and Command and Conquer.  Red Alert is used solely for the skirmish mode, as the missions are too easy.  Command and Conquer had better, harder, missions, and cooler units, but I don't get any nukes.  I have an old (i.e. bugged) version; I upgraded it and got the nuke, which was pretty powerful compared to the Red Alert ones, but then I had to format my hard disk (doh!) cos it accidentally got a little screwed up, so I lost the upgrade.  (It said "Missing Operating System" and it really sucked. I had accidentally overwritten the first hundred odd megabytes of the disk with zeros, and it really wasn't pleased. And I had no backups.  Not even a start-up disk, or a set of DOS install disks.  Fortunately I had another computer, and a CD of dubious origin which had DOS disk images.  Thank god for piracy.).  I don't think there's any point in shelling out for Covert Ops because I've already completed them. They were pretty difficult, but didn't take too long.

Total Annihilation is unbelievably cool.  I have just got it, and it is brilliant.  It beats the pants off Red Alert, and all the rest.  I should be occupied with it for a while.  The skirmish mode actually has some intelligence.  The computer builds the higher tech weapons, and uses them.  It is miles better than Red Alert, where all you have to do to win is build a nuke silo and some Tesla coils.  Nothing can touch your base, and you can launch tactical strikes, where you nuke the computer and then rush it with tanks. But in Total Annihilation it doesn't work.  For once, some degree of planning and skill is needed.

Total Annihilation is a bit on the easy side.  I have completed the Arm missions, on hard difficulty, and the Core ones aren't as difficult.  The hardest mission is about seven or eight, with the Arm, when you have to build loads of boats to attack the enemy, who have a base at the top of the screen.  If you don't build the boats fast enough, then they successfully wipe you out.  But, as with all the missions, once you have a firm foothold, you can't lose.  Unlike Red Alert, you cannot just sit back and build up your army - you have to attack within the first 45-55 minutes,or else they start to expand their base, and become very hard to stop.

KKND is incredibly difficult.  It is difficult because you have about five minutes at the beginning of each mission to establish your base, and build an army, and then you suffer wave after wave of enemies.  On early missions the solution is to build hundreds of SWAT men or shotgunners, but on later missions even that doesn't seem to work.  The cut scenes are quite funny.  Well, they made me laugh.

Need For Speed III is a racing game that's fairly good fun, but it's only at its best when you have a few people playing, with winner stays on.  I've not played the LAN version, but that's probably even better.  However, if everyove has a machine then it removes the competitive element of winner stays on.

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