Top Secret Magazine M.A.X. 2

This Game's Graphics looked pretty nice in the pictures, so I decided to give it a try. The game definitely IS fun, and has pretty good graphics in "Enhanced Mode", however it runs slow in both the low and high resolution modes. This "Lag", as it is called, is quite annoying. It makes it hard to select units and move the screen around fast (to send units places), which reduces the overall fun factor of the game. The game does have a lot of cool features and other things, though...

I believe the story is that there is a powerful Alien race, and their enemies are the Concord. The Concord have owned the territory for many years, and they have similar technology to the Alien race's. The Concord have no collective DNA strands to share, so the humans and the Concord are involved in a shared-DNA process. The Humans fought a war for independence from the Concord, and were able to gain
full admittance to the Concord as a general member, but at the long-term cost of their freedom as a species. The Alien race wants to stop the humans from getting the Concord technology so that the Humans won't be too powerful of an enemy.

So about the game's cool features. Trees catch on fire when you shoot an explosive at them, and the fire takes health points away from your units. Another feature is transparent smoke radiating off of damaged units. You also have the option to zoom in, or zoom out of the game...when totally zoomed out, the units look like pieces of sand, and when totally zoomed in, they are the size of marbles. Another feature I think is cool is the ability to select wether you want the game to be Real Time Strategy, Turn Based Strategy, or Simultaneous Strategy. I do not know of ANY other game besides M.A.X. that allows you to do that. (Although there may be some out there.) This game is not all peaches-n-cream, however...it has downsides, too...the game generally runs slow, you can only select about 6 to 8 units at a time, and it's not exactly the most fun game out there.

In the end, I would choose StarCraft or Total Annihilation over this title. Although this is a good game, others can be more fun. If you are a real time strategy gamer, you may want to give it a try. If you just want the A++ games, however, this isn't exactly for you.

Company:
Interplay www.interplay.com

Category:
Strategy

NOTES:

Interest: 80 %
Maniability : 70%
Graphics: 85%
Sound : 75 %
Originality : 65 %

TOTAL : 77 %

Requirements:

Operating System:
Windows 95/98
w/ DirectX 5.0 or Higher

Processor:
Pentium 133 MHz or Higher

Memory:
16MB RAM
(32MB for Enhanced 3d Graphics)

Video:
2MB SVGA

Michael Pieczynski

DEMO